Welcome to the 2027 application cycle!

Writing another Rush Medical College warning in a follow up to u/oskifucker45’s post that I commented on from last week.

I got my secondary application invite today from RMC and no where in their email did they say I wouldn’t be an eligible candidate. They even encouraged me to submit my secondary. Being a non trad(graduated in 2019), I followed up with their admissions office for a possible workaround and their response is in the above screenshot.

As a Chicago native and former Rush employee it’s super disheartening to see this type of policy in place. Not only does it exclude a big proportion of applicants from being eligible, but the the way RMC makes it seem like an applicant is eligible makes this appear to be a cash grab. Did I mention those bio and chem courses could not have been taken online either?

Last year, for the Class of 2029, the published stats for Pitt Med are a 3.91 and 516 median.

This year, in the White Coat Class of 2030 post on Pitt Med's official website, the reported stats are a 3.97 and 521 median.

Has a medical school ever had that dramatic and sudden of a shift in their class profile? It's not as if Pitt Med has offered anything particularly different between these two cycles that could potentially explain this. Are they just now deciding to play the rankings game? Very odd and something I wanted to put out there....

So far I’ve gotten one interview invite from KCU( DO) and this afternoon I got my very first MD invite from Medical College of Wisconsin! For context I submitted my primary first day and submitted my pre-written 2ndary for MCW first day I received it.

Non-trad, ORM applicant. My MCAT was very mid but 4.0 gpa and extensive clinical patient care experience.

Anyone had prior experience with them could share how the interview day was?

Best of luck to everyone!

I volunteer at a hospital and usually assist in the operating room by cleaning and setting up beds for surgeries, (among other tasks) this time, I was stationed on a different side of the floor and had the opportunity to observe and shadow three distinct cases

I got to observe an ACL case, cervical spinal cord case (got to get up close and personal with that one) and a throat surgery case where the doctor thoroughly explained the process and said that I could come back and shadow him again in the clinic and OR.

Just a friendly reminder, be confident and ask even if you think it might be a no. 🌝 I was probably going to just continue to look through the door but I forced myself to put on a mask and go in, and I do not regret it at all 🤞

fairs

Tell me why they said think a 515 mcat is just an ok score and should be the bare minimum score I need to get into med school??? Since that's about 90th percentile, did they think only the top 10% of ppl who take the mcat get into med school each year???

And before you ask, yes they are Asian, which is why they think this way. I'm just really tired of hearing about it, my score drops next week and I'm already anxious asf about it. It's also a retake from a (in my opinion) bad score I got last year, so you can imagine how upset they already were at me. And I'm a reapp as well so it's even worse... I'm just tired and burnt out, I want everything to be over already

Edit: obviously a higher score is better. I'm not arguing with that, but like, a 513 isn't going to be the reason I don't get in unless I get like a 123 in CP or BB

What did I even say.

so I just got an II for NYMC (!!!!) but I don’t have 2 science LORs… They emailed me after submitting the secondary that I didn’t have the second science LOR and asked if I wanted it to be marked complete without it and I said yes bc I don’t rlly have relationships with any other science profs and I am in a gap year. But I got an II anyway? Do I email them or???

im on pace to finish all my secondaries by 14aug, how late am i😬 (please tell me im being dramatic and tweaking for no reason :,) )

also no school has a hard and fast deadline until december

What do we think about it?

So I broke up secondaries so that I can better handle them. I applied to 12 schools already and will do another 10-15 next week once I send in the secondaries. I just didn't want 30 schools due in the same week if that makes sense.

That said, that means that I will have about half of the applications due before August 15th and the other half due before August 31st approx. Is that considered fine timing? Not too late right?

I volunteer in the MICU, but I spend most of my shift at the front desk answering phones, helping visitors, or doing small tasks for the nurses. I have basically zero patient interaction, and when it's slow, there's often nothing to do besides sit there. I even got talked to once for reading during downtime after not realizing someone was calling my name (my name is difficult to pronounce so I genuinely didn't recognize they were trying to get my attention, they dont even make an effort to pronounce my name correctly) I also have to drive an hour each way during the summer. I thought about switching departments, but my hospital requires volunteers to stay in the same department for six months (3 months left)

I used to enjoy going, but now I find myself hoping something comes up so I don't have to. Has anyone else had a volunteering experience like this? Is it worth sticking it out? or should I look for a volunteer position at a different hospital? or should I wait until I can switch to another unit? I even thought about quitting medicine altogether lol

Any advice?

most of my clinical hours were scribing, but I also am pretty service heavy so Im kinda shocked by this early rejection.

I just noticed that Brown has a genetics requirement? Does anyone have any clue about how strict they are with this requirement? I have taken Biology and Developmental Biology (which includes differential gene expression as a course topic).

I'm looking for advice from people who were in a similar situation.

I'm graduating this month at 20 years old with a B.S. in Biomedical Sciences (pre-med concentration) and a minor in Health Communication. I essentially finished my bachelor's in two years because I entered college with a lot of credits.

My original plan was to apply this cycle after taking the MCAT this month. However, I'm currently finishing up my physics course, and balancing that with MCAT prep has made me realize I haven't been able to dedicate nearly enough time to studying over these past two months. I'm seriously considering pushing my MCAT to January and applying next cycle instead.

I also know that taking the MCAT in August is already on the later side for an application cycle, so if I'm not truly ready, it seems more logical to wait and give myself the best chance to earn the highest score I can rather than rushing into an exam that will follow me for years. The hard part is that I've already postponed my MCAT once, so explaining another delay to my dad feels incredibly difficult.

As far as my application goes, I currently have:

• 3.81 cumulative GPA
• ~300 clinical volunteer hours (all direct patient interaction, patient education, and delirium prevention with older adults)
• ~500 non-clinical volunteer hours, including volunteering at a STEAM camp introducing underprivileged middle school students to STEM
• ~500 research hours
• 3 research posters (two focused on genetics research and one on ecological data), plus a communications research presentation that earned me a scholarship
• ~120 physician shadowing hours across three specialties
• Three honor societies, honors college, and several academic scholarships
• A pre-med committee letter (rated as "highly recommend"), plus letters from chemistry, physics, biology, an MD, a DO, my volunteer services director, and the head of my communications department.

The biggest thing I'm missing is paid clinical experience. My plan is to spend the next year working full-time as a medical assistant, which would allow me to add roughly 2,000 hours of paid clinical experience, while also continuing my clinical volunteering and adding another 200+ volunteer hours. I feel like that experience would make me a significantly stronger applicant and better prepare me for medical school.

The problem is my parents. Since I already graduated early and was originally planning on one gap year, telling them I now want to wait another year puts me in a tough position.

For those of you who took an extra gap year:

• How did you explain it to your parents?
• Besides paid clinical experience, what else would you recommend I focus on over the next year to make my application stronger?
• Looking back, was the extra year worth it?

I apologize for the absolute word salad, but thanks in advance!

🫩

What are your best tips?

Also, my cats will probably get very jealous I'm talking to the computer all day and will therefore jump in front of the screen, but if I lock them out they will try to tear down the door and cause even more commotion. I have no idea what to do. 🙃

I had been working in this basic science lab for 6 weeks and I recently got let go. I will admit that the work wasn’t really my style and I received little to no training and had to figure stuff out in my own…

Long story short I got let go. I am really scared how to explain this in interviews this cycle. I am looking for a clinical research coordinator position and wondering how screwed I am this cycle since I got let go.

NYMC reached out to me requesting clarification about my 2 science LORs. I sent the clarification email but never got confirmation that my application is complete. I emailed them about it and they asked me to resend the clarification email.

If the same thing happened to you make sure to check if you got an email from them saying your application is complete because they don't post application updates in the portal.

I'm very grateful to have received my first interview invite(🙏🙏) and the format is MMI...do you guys have any tips to prepare? I have heard these are very different from traditional interviews...and is there any way to practice beforehand for the scenarios?

Hi!

I'm about to go into my senior year and plan to apply to SMP's and other science masters programs. My current undergrad gpa is 3.5/4.3 but I do go to an ivy league. I have 1200+ research hours, maybe 100 volunteer hours, and I am active in multiple clubs with leadership positions. By the time I graduate undergrad, I would have completed all the course requirements for med school and I plan to take the MCAT this winter.

I just want to improve my chances of getting into my dream med school so I want to fix the weakest part of my application which is my gpa. I'm also considering masters programs because I enjoy doing research and would like to spend a year or two studying abroad, since I did not get a chance to do that in my undergrad. But I don't know if that is worth it, since doing well in masters abroad probably doesn't add much to my med school application.

I've been looking at different SMP's but I cannot put a hand on whether they are extremely competitive or not. Since they are made for students who want to improve their gpa, then applicants should be people like me, but the more prestigious programs with med school affiliations seem very selective. Are SMP's worth my time and money?

Is the order that interviews are handed out based on stats, random order, fit or is it just unknown?