Ask Dr. Gray Premed Q&A: What Can I Do to Boost My Apps During the Application Cycle?

Session 70

Our caller is a working dad with a DIY postbac and tons of shadowing and bench work experience. What else can he do to elevate his application?

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[00:27] Question from Our Student Today

“I’m 27. I have three kids. I’m a nontraditional student. I spent two years doing a postbac kind of do it yourself thing to bring up my GPA. Retook the MCAT and did pretty good. I got a 507.

My question is I’ve done a lot of shadowing. I worked as an ER tech for two years as an ER scribe. I actually now work in pathology as a PA.

So my question is what are things that I can be doing on top of my already busy schedule right now while I’m in the middle of application season that can potentially help me?

And whether that’s with an additional submission later on, like an update throughout the summer. Just anything that I can be doing now while I’m in application season to boost my application status.”

[00:29] More Specifics

Sp this student did a couple of years retaking science courses that went okay. It went great. He had a 2.99. He did great his junior and senior year and got married his junior year.

His grades really shut up starting off when he started working in the ER. He had a good upward trend but scored a 25 on the old MCAT.

When his son was about to be born, he felt like he just was not qualified and that he needed some money. He left the job and started working in pathology to make some more money. Then he met a professor when his new job wanted him to take anatomy and physiology.

The professor happened to be a practicing internal medicine doctor. He challenged him that if he really wanted to do something like this, if he had the passion for medicine, then he’d do it.

So he spent the two years taking those courses and still continuing to shadow and do other stuff like volunteering.

“It doesn't really matter what you did, you know the mistakes that you made. It's up to you to kind of get out there and do it.”Click To Tweet

[02:40] Is Pathologist PA a Clinical Experience?

“A PA for pathology is not really clinical because you're mostly working with slides and doing more bench work.”Click To Tweet

This is where the student got confused because most of the stuff they do is surgical and anatomical. So he’s actually dealing with parts of patients. For instance, when somebody gets their leg chopped off, he dissects it and finds what’s wrong..

He also takes some time during the day and goes down to the doctors that do procedures. He follows them and watches the procedures being done. So basically, he has two years of being an ER tech, six months of being an ER scribe, and then other shadowing hours, like probably totalling it at least 500 hours.

So it’s great clinical experience previously and then he stopped and he has an awesome job now.

It’s a great experience in a hospital, but it’s not clinical.

There’s possibly going to be this red flag of like, why aren’t you putting yourself around patients? Yes. You’re dealing with pieces of the patient, but you’re actually not interacting with that patient anymore. You’re acting with the rest of the healthcare team.

It sounds like, however, that he’s getting some shadowing in during his working hours, which is awesome. So I would count those as shadowing hours.

One question that may be raised is consistent clinical experience. He had a ton of it previously and then stopped for his job. From an admissions committee standpoint, they might question whether he continued to show that he likes being around patients.

[06:15] Should You Get Clinical Experience?

Again, this might come up in his interview so this is just something the student should be aware of. It’s really good to get that clinical experience. But it sounds like he’s got his hands full already working full-time, with three kids at home.

Obviously, going through the application process, writing secondary is doing all that stuff. I would probably say at this point, because we’re at the end of May as we’re recording this, it’s probably not worth it to try to go and jam it into his application right this minute.

But once applications slow down, once you get that first wave of secondaries out and things start to slow down, this is something this student should look into.

“Just in case that this becomes an issue with this application, then you have jumped the gun and you're going to get that experience now as soon as you're ready.”Click To Tweet

So I wouldn’t do it at a detriment to your current application, but I would do it after all the secondaries are done and you prepare for potentially the next application if that is going to be needed.

All those being said, it sounds like this student is doing well from a GPA and MCAT standpoint and from everything else.

Lastly, check with each individual school. Do the schools allow, does that school allow updates? Some schools allow updates, some schools don’t. Are you taking any classes now or no, you’re done with that?

[07:24] Updating Your Application

You don’t need to update schools on any courses unless you have something major coming up.

Unless you have some huge extracurriculars where you really need to update the schools then there’s probably not a lot of updating that you’re going to need to do with the schools.

[08:01] Number of Schools to Apply To

The student’s mentor is recommending at least 20 MD schools, at least 10 DO schools to apply to. Personally, it’s a little more than I recommend and I’m more along the lines of 15 and 10, which is the average.

Roughly 14 and nine is the average. So it’s a little bit more than average. It’s not crazy. But it’s a lot. It’s a lot of secondaries.

“After the first handful of secondaries, it gets pretty easy because you start to repeat and recycle a lot of your answers.”Click To Tweet

[08:44] Can You Turn Down Interviews?

Because this student is working a full-time job and if he was going to apply to all those schools, he was concerned about turning down interviews.

At some point, you can start turning down interviews.

But you can do this simple exercise in picking up schools. Close your eyes and visualize those schools getting that email from the school or calling you to say they’re inviting you for an interview.

“Don't even waste your time.”Click To Tweet

So this is the little visualization game of putting yourself two months in the future. When you get that interview invite, are you going to be excited for it? Are you going to be that call? Another one for this one? It’s just not worth it.

Pick the ones that you’re excited to go to and if that means there’s only 15 instead of 20 or 20 instead of 30, whatever that is.