u/kissmeurbeautiful

I decided to apply DO and she sent me the AMCAS letter to revise for DO and her entire letter was about MD/PhD programs. This is my most important letter, am I cooked? 😭

I completed undergrad in 2022 and have been working in psychiatry for the last 4 years. I spent time as a technician in an inpatient drug rehab, worked with MAT patients at an FQHC, and spent 2 years doing psych clinical research.

My family background is closely tied to addiction med, both of my parents and countless friends/family members had SUDs. And before I get too many gunner accusations lmao, my heart is set on psychiatry. It’s genuinely my passion and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

I’m applying to medical schools currently and just started working at a psych private practice. It’s relatively new (~2 years) and it’s just me, another tech, and the psychiatrist.

I already have a lot of clinical experience as far as admissions go and have no real concern about acceptance. My real question is what can I gain from private practice that I won’t get anywhere else? How can I use this opportunity to learn more about the business side of medicine? If you previously worked in a hospital and started your own practice, what do you wish you would’ve learned beforehand?

I’m just trying to prepare myself for a future beyond clinical goals and the patient side of things. This is such a great opportunity to see essentially the start up phase of a private practice and I wanna gain as much as I can from this

TLDR: I’m a MO resident and for personal reasons, I’m geographically bound here for the foreseeable future.

Some background: I graduated in 2022 and this is my first time applying. I’m ORM and a Missouri resident. I’m socioeconomically disadvantaged in every sense. I grew up on a five person household income of $1200 per month. Both of my parents had substance use disorders, neither finished 8th grade. I was in and out of foster care through my childhood before my dad got custody of me and my two siblings. We were homeless a good amount of my childhood because my dad drank so heavily and couldn’t hold down a job. We lived in campers with no electricity, wore the same clothes to school every day, had to dumpster dive for food, etc. Countless friends and family members with SUDs and overdoses.This all continued until I was 18 and left for college.

Most of my clinical work and all of the research I’ve done has been about addiction and working with underserved populations.

**I’m absolutely committed to rural family medicine or psychiatry.

Stats:

GPA/MCAT: 4.0/515 (just tested ~2 mo ago)

Clinical:
-750 hours as behavioral health tech in inpatient adolescent drug rehab
-1,900 hours as medication care coordinator for opioid use disorder at local FCHQ (def my most formative experience)
-1,200 hours doing at-home TBI testing
*currently working at TMS clinic but it’s not on my primary

Research:
-4100 hours on addiction clinical research study (have LOR from PI)
-No publications, no posters, nothing lol

Volunteering:
~100 hours at sober living houses in hometown (semi ongoing)

No leadership roles or shadowing. I pretty much didn’t start doing anything until after I graduated lol

School list:

-Mizzou
-UMKC
-SLU
-WashU*

*I know some people would say I’m well below the median MCAT for WashU and it may be out of my league, but I have heavyyyy ties there and did research there full time for 2 years.

I know this isn’t a massive school list and I’m really limited on options here 😅 I just wanted to hear people’s thoughts. Am I shooting myself in the foot by keeping my options so narrow? Any suggestions? What are my chances at these schools or at WashU?

These people have invested so much time and energy into helping me through this process, so I am gonna keep grinding through these secondaries because these people need to know their investment was well placed. 🥲

For example, for WashU I chose to write about how my undergrad had no premed track and how my mother’s death led to 4 gap years since I was grieving and didn’t have any direction on applying/MCAT. It’s 3,000 characters

Do people use this space for that sort of thing? What else could I even put there? I have a SLU secondary asking the same thing but I can’t condense it to 1,000 characters without it losing its weight.

What did you put in those prompts and if you left it blank, why?

One of the schools I’m applying to has different letter requirements for trad vs nontrad applicants. For nontrad, it says “the applicant has completed an undergraduate degree before September 2024, please have three letters of evaluation sent from individuals who are familiar with the applicant's recent scientific work, study experience, or professional experience.”

Am I overthinking this or am I cooked if one of my letters is from an undergrad professor in 2022, my last year in school? She’s very familiar with my most recent clinical and research experience though and I sent her my CV. 😅

I see so many posts of people saying to skip content review, which is fine and dandy if you’re actively in school and have prereqs completed. If you’re a nontrad, you absolutely need to do a content review phase. If it’s been 5+ years since you’ve done gen chem, you NEED to properly review it. Disregard all the posts saying you’ll be fine without it because there will be so much you’ve forgotten.

A lot might come back quickly, but a lot won’t. You need a dedicated study phase for making yourself familiar with the content again. It’s nonnegotiable for nontrad applicants.

Just curious to see what the distribution is!

I have FAP and I’m trying to finalize a school list since I only have ~10 and can apply to 20 for free. 4.0/515 with 5500 clinical hours in addiction medicine, 4400 hours in clinical research on addiction, and PS revolves around experience growing up very poor and surrounded by SUD, with both parents affected by it. I’m from a rural town of 5,000 people and all my work has been done in small towns.

I helped out a ton (~1000 hours) at a nonprofit sober living house that my brother started in our hometown.

Any t20 or specific school that have a strong mission statement related to rural communities?

Full of terrible takes and awful, antisocial behavior 😭

I would not have gotten through the exam without them I stg. I couldn’t simulate reading conditions because my mouth got so dry but these work wonders.

This is the absolute worst time to realize I’m gonna be fired 😭 but ngl if it was gonna happen, I wish it happened earlier so I’d have more time to lock in on studying 😩

I’ll start, fluids LOL I loved physics in undergrad but can’t apply it to any MCAT content. I test in two weeks and have kinda just accepted it. 🙃

I’m curious what nags tf out of everyone else haha