u/Derpizzle12345

Stats: 3.96 GPA, 523 MCAT

Hair Color: Black

Height: 5' 8"

Background: First person in the family to graduate high school, first person in the family to go to college (despite having older sisters). URM (Mexican) and my entire app revolved around helping Latino/Hispanic Communities

Pretty low income for most of my life (well, up until about a year ago). I would say I grew up pretty poor from ages 4 to 21 due to the 2008 recession, then things slowly got better. SLOWLY 

I went to my state school for undergrad, and switched majors 5 times. I didn’t want to do psychology at first because I thought it was too common of a degree but frankly, psychology is the one thing that has been able to capture the attention of my ADHD-riddled brain, so I said screw it and switched to it. I am leaning into psychiatry though.

Activities: 

Around 2300 Clinical volunteering hours (all my clinical experience was volunteering), including interpreting for Spanish speakers, helping with disability evaluations for the social security administration, and work with the homeless.

Around 800 “non-clinical” volunteering - I counted my hospital volunteering as non clinical since my main job was talking to people. I also volunteered in the office of my school's free clinic coordinating appointments and Uber Health rides. Also did some work for a local weatherization organization that helped fix up people’s homes. So yeah, even some of my non clinical was sort of clinical

Around 900 Hours of instruction and education: Was a TA for chemistry and biochemistry for 4 and 2 semesters respectively, also held a supplemental instruction role (essentially hosted a bonus lecture per week. Also helped start and expand a class that taught English to Spanish speakers (and eventually speakers of other languages).

Around 7000 hours of paid employment: By the time I applied, I had had a job at Publix since I was about 14 (and I am 24 now). The hours I worked varied wildly and that was my bosses were always super understanding and flexible. However, I did quit this job once I was 23 since I had some savings made from cryptocurrency (not a ton, but enough to get by if I budgeted well).

1100 ish hours of research across 2 labs. One publication in a conference specific journal soo ehhh I dont really count it, a couple regional posters.

Notes and Other Stuff:

A couple of flags on my application: My research was already sort of lacking for powerhouse schools, but my PI in my basic sciences lab did not write me a letter of recommendation and we didn't get along. However my social sciences PI was awesome and his letter got brought up as being really good, a few times.

I had 3 withdrawals across 2 semesters. I had a semester where I got hit by a car, broke my hand, got rear ended by a drunk driver, and had eye surgery, and ended up barely passing for Orgo 1. Had two retroactively withdraw and retake it to preserve my scholarship and was asked about this many times.

I accidentally pasted my job description entry under my hobbies. So on my primary I just had my job, then the description. Then my hobbies, and that had the same description as my job. So, a bit of a blunder but it worked out.

I skipped a lot of class and had a horrible sleep schedule, hence my hours are a bit high. I was basically always busy but also I liked volunteering and it was the only thing that ever made me feel happy or fulfilled.

I had strong rec letters, according to my interviewers. My letter writers were professors I had known for years, who I had TA’d for and talked to all the time.

I had a couple leadership positions like lead supplemental instruction instructor, fundraising president, clinic coordinator for 2 clinics I volunteered at.

The one thing that I got asked about a lot was me describing how developing face blindness and a head injury made me a better listener, and also my custom lego minifigure side projects (using my organic chemistry skills to dissolve inks and get blank parts).

I submitted my secondary applications in late august or early september for most schools. Northwestern, Vanderbilt and WashU I submitted in October (Maybe November? Cannot Remember).

Weaknesses were my own writing, I had a lot of help in polishing my essays and figuring out what schools wanted to hear. I think my strengths were my interview skills. I made basically every interviewer laugh, I was able to speak with passion and recover if I fumbled.

But yeah, there it is. Happy to answer any questions and stuff although if you DM me I may take a while to respond because I’m very lazy.

My main takeaway from all this is to stay humble. Getting into med school is not a solo endeavor. It's the cumulative effort of every single person you have ever helped or that has helped you. Every patient, every mentor, every friend, every letter writer, every enemy that inspired you to work harder (well maybe lol) - they are part of the reason for your success, and that is not something you should take for granted. Also, if anyone here is a super talented graphic designer, 3D modeler or Pad Printer please HMU