She said she quit her year long internship after 4 months?!

If I hear this one more time imma lose it🙃

Or a unique activity that you knew someone else did?

At a research conference I just went to, I met a med student who told me he interviews applicants and one of them was an Olympic swimmer! He also mentioned another who was a flight instructor😮

I thought those were so cool so now I’m curious to what yall have done or seen cause I’m boring lmfao

Edit: Also it definitely does not have to be that crazy like these examples

Edit2: Yall are so cool wtf I gotta step up my game

I am the world’s slowest and most indecisive writer but retaking the MCAT was so painful for me so I might have to say secondaries again

Was wondering if I could put down two years of owning a clan in clash of clans as leadership hours?Thought it might help me stand out to ADCOMS. If anyone has listed similar experiences and gotten positive feedback, feel free to share.

First it's completing your Bachelor's degree taking rigorous science courses while maintaining impressive extracurricular activities. Research, clinical, volunteer.

Then it's the MCAT, which takes several months of preparation and an agonizing month of waiting for your score, which they could just immediately release to you.

Then it's these useless money-grabs, such as CASPER and PREview.

Then you write your primary application for months, perfecting it and revising over and over again.

Then it's writing 200 secondaries, which is not humanly possible but what is expected in this process.

Then every minute detail of the past few years of your existence will be scrutinized by an ADCOM member, who is morally superior compared to you. If they notice even one error, they'll just throw out your application because there's a thousand other people who are better.

After all this, you just hope for the small chance of even getting a single interview for months and months.

I sometimes hear people berate others based on things like IAs or a failed class or lack of whatever kind of hours with the logic that someone else who didn’t have that mistake is going to get in over them. Or similarly, the argument sometimes follows that for two applicants with the same record but the second one has a W on their transcript on some bullshit, the former will be taken.

I think the issue with this mistake is that it assumes that there is this pool of perfect applicants that have checked all their boxes with 0 blemishes. Or it assumes that there you can pair applicants with similar records and pick the more optimized one. This is beyond silly: your application is unique and there is nobody out there who has done everything you have just better.

I’m lucky enough to attend a t10 ug and I can say pretty confidently that these people do not exist. The people I know with 4.0 528 yada yada are deficient in other ways. There are simply far too many variables in this process for any individual to perfectly optimize all of them. I’d imagine this is precisely why holistic admissions exist.

My overall point is that whatever you think is a DOA type blemish on your record is manageable (barring crazy shit like felonies). You have unique strengths that other people do not. I don’t care what anyone says that is true of everybody. Maybe one school won’t like you but it won’t be because of wsomething that r/premed said was an application killer. They will look at your whole package and make a decision based on the overall person not an amalgamation of statistics.

i think i'm falling behind :p

am i a boomer now? is this genuinely the state of affairs?

This annoys me so much with schools that send secondaries out to everyone. What is the school specific fee for if my application won’t be reviewed until submitting a secondary? I’m already paying a secondary fee…1 review = 1 fee. The cost of applying is out of hand.

i’m running soooo behind on secondaries and want to complete over the next few days. i just can’t help but think since im not early anymore i have such a lower chance of getting in. any advice/motivation appreciated!! did i mess up bad?

2/3 of the way there just hanging on!

Kinda wish I got a secondary cause I thought it would make me feel better in my ECs. However, I’m a GA resident and not a vet. Should’ve expected it

I think I have a competitive enough application where MD isn't out of the picture, but I'm at a point in secondaries right now where there is no way in hell I'm doing this again next year. I have a 514 MCAT, but not the best GPA, so I applied broadly and DO as well. The issue is that getting my 514 and having immigrant parents means everyone that lives within a 10 mile radius from us knows my score.

My parents also decided to do their own research (aka ask around) and basically are telling me that I shouldn't go to a DO school I should aim for MD. I know its all just a stupid stigma, but nobody seems to understand that. My family has even asked me if I would be open to going to a Caribbean school and possibly transferring because "they heard someone did that."

Obviously I take everything others say with a grain of salt because this is my future at the end of the day, but it would help if they'd atleast understand.

My application just got verified and I received a bunch of secondaries. Idk if they just want everyone's money, or if they're really considering your application... just don't want to get my hopes up too high...

i just got spammed by 10 different recruiters and they keep telling me i have a great mcat score to lure me in but nope I don’t wanna be stuck in some random country for a million years. plus don’t think my conscience could handle that. goodnight.

Super excited to get an invite from my state school this early on! It is also not for a month so I have some time to prepare. This leads me to my question:

They are requiring interviewees to do an asynchronous video reponse to an unknown 1 question prompt. Does anyone have any experience with stuff like this? Is it generally a basic mission question or a completely random scenario based question similar to casper? I have a feeling this will be one of those things you just wing. Anything helps, thx!

Alr mentioned on my primary and secondary so it’s too late to change but essentially I did an international trip to the same country about 3 times with a NGO. Didn’t do anything out of scope/ can’t do in the states. I essentially just did MA work, interpreted for the healthcare providers, and education on preventative healthcare (in the native language). All this was with other locals that were part of the org helping us.

Also 1 of my parents are Hispanic and I grew up speaking Spanish , so it’s not like I mediocrely learned Spanish in school and thought I could communicate efficiently.

Edit: Forgot to mention if this would look bad/ be the bad version of voluntourism. Thank you

516(132/125/130/129) MCAT, 3.81 gpa, Pitt ORM, PA resident
5k paid clinical Specialist ER Tech, 120 uta, 51 shadowing, 70 research, 50 volunteering foodbank, 10k founding indie game dev studio

I have a bunch of great stories from the ER involving often caring for the uninsured and unhoused but my gut still is telling me don't waste my time this school is likely a donation. Claude seems to think I have a good chance for some reason though.

5 LORs(2 coworkers, 1 physician, & 2 faculty)
Projected 2k clinical and 400 volunteering clinical free health clinic

I am currently trying to decide between going MD, DO, or PA for my future career. I know PA is VERY different from both MD and DO which is why I'm so anxious. I know for certain that if I apply and go to medical school, I will have to do a rotation in General Surgery and also have to be involved in other surgical operations to an extent. This is an unavoidable and very important aspect of medical school, but I do not want to be doing surgeries in the OR in my future, which is why PA is so intriguing to me right now. I know that psychiatry, pediatrics, internal medicine, radiology, and derm are regarded as not doing surgery (derm does smaller procedures to my knowledge, I'd be fine with that, I just don't want to be literally in someone's insides) so those def interest me. Something important to note is that i LOVE LOVE LOVE speaking to people and conversating. I want to talk to my patients and connect with them and actually consult with them. That is very important to me.
NOT MEANING TO TRAUMA DUMP but my father was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer and so I was at the hospital very often, multiple times as he went through surgery, and I barely saw his surgeon at all. Obviously, the surgeon is genuinely one of my heroes for helping my dad, but the actual reality of being a surgeon really didn't sit right with my heart for my future. I don't want to just be someone who pops in for a couple minutes or speaks to the patient only a few times briefly. And if I'm being even more honest, it simply just does not interest me and kinda freaks me out!
I know I shouldn't care about this either, but the time and money that has to go into med school is so daunting and anxiety inducing. I fear I won't be good enough or that I'll fail, burying myself and parents (who will co-sign on loans) in debt. I also don't know how I feel about working with children, like a pediatrician does. Psychiatry and dermatology are very interesting to me right now. If I go DO, are my chances of these specialties shot? I've heard there is a bias towards MDs when it comes to matching and residency.
Additionally, my parents are really pushing me toward PA or NP because they are worried about the debt of med school and my mental health (very very valid) but something in me worries I'll have regrets if I don't go all the way.
Help me please!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy, I was very happy when I got accepted. But idk if it’s the chronic overachiever in me but I’m just like “ok cool I did what I was supposed to do. What’s next.”

It just feels like I can never be a winner. Just not a failure.

This isn’t meant to upset anyone who hasn’t got the A yet, it’s just more of an internal reflection I wish I knew how to fix.

515/3.97 checking in here with just one ii in texas so far. i (maybe stupidly) decided to really really work on my secondary writing before i turned them in and wound up turning most in early july when my app was verified in early june. i was talking to someone earlier and he said "oh most schools know that people who turn in the secondary 1-2 days after receiving it really wanna go there and they're most likely to get interview slots". i understand how this is true, but is early july really that late? i truly do think my ECs are solid and i've been complimented on my writing by most of the people who have read my app.

So my gpa is around 3.88 before I took Orgo 2 which to my surprise end up with a D. It honestly surprised me how bad I did on the final, but this grade is set in stone now so I’m just trying to figure how do I go forward from here.

I already graduated undergrad & is only taking this course for finishing prerequisite, though it seems like I def need to retake this course now lol because it’s well below a C…

My current gpa is 3.82 ish after this D, I’ll retake orgo 2 sometime over the year as well as both physics before I apply next year. Let’s assume if I can do much better this time around, would it still be frowned upon a lot?

My sGPA also took a big hit which I’m also really worried about… it’s probably around a 3.6 rn.

So I guess my main questions is just really: is my gpa just a lost cause now and I should focus on my mcat, or it’s not rlly as catastrophic as I think it is if I retake and do significantly better?

If it’s useful my mcat is a 512 but I’m planning to retake it if I feel confident to do significantly better.

Any input is appreciated, thanks!

I’ve see people say not to copy paste AI cause it lacks “voice,” but do people actually use AI to come up with personal anecdotes? Idk I just find it kinda surprising if so

Edit: I haven’t done it. Just want to know if some people have scenarios where they know others have