Hi, this is my first time posting here, I would love some insight!!! :)
I have already applied this cycle, waiting on interviews. Here it all goes:
-Year In School: Graduated with BS in biology from big state school in 2012. Been working ever since.
-State of Residence: Mass., but you have to have lived here for 7 years for in-state residency consideration at UMass (only public med school here), so I don't qualify. I'm married, so can't use parents' address either, and I have been working in Mass. for four years. It's my state of legal residence but according to UMass I am not an in-state applicant.
-Applied to:
Albany (rejected) Georgetown (rejected) George Washington (rejected) UA-Phoenix (rejected) UA-Tucson (rejected) Brown (rejected) UMich (rejected) WMich (rejected) Maryland (rejected) Rosalind Franklin Rush Loyola Temple Drexel Jefferson Tufts Wake Forest UConn Quinnipiac Toledo Wayne State
-cGPA: 3.5 (3.8 in senior year, strong up trend)
-sGPA: 3.4
-MCAT: 30 (Dec2014)
-Research: Neuroscience lab in senior year, 3 papers in middle impact journals as a middle author. Endocrinology lab in junior and senior year, write a grant and got money from the department, first-authored and presented a poster. Since graduation: Neuroscience lab at MIT for two years; virology lab at HMS for less than a year (took time off to study/take MCAT); currently working in vaccine research/immunology at a collaborative lab with HMS, MIT, and MGH. No papers since undergrad.
-Clinical volunteering: ~100 hours, 3 hours/week, interacted with patients.
-Non-clinical volunteering: I tutor underprivileged students in math and STEM and help them prepare for science fairs. This is my second year: 3 hours/week for six months out of the year.
-Shadowing: 16 hours total (low, I'm hoping to add to it for an update I'm going to send to the schools) with an oncologist and an ED.
-Extracurriculars: In college I was an ambassador for the school for two years (gave tours to prospective students); transition leader for students transferring to our campus (1 year); taught two classes independently (supplementary course attached to their core biology courses); TA for a genetics class (1 semester); cancer research fundraising, 1 year.
-Employment: like I said, I've been working for the three and a half years I've been out of college; in college I worked/researched in labs during junior and senior year. In freshman and sophomore year I worked part-time jobs in retail and was also an assistant in the admissions office at my school.
-Specialty interests: I am really interested in gyn, in my secondaries I talked about patient education, outreach, and disadvantaged patients especially women and especially related to sexual health.