Application Cycle One: 06/10/2015

• Undergraduate college: UC
• Undergraduate Area of study: Biological/Life Sciences

• Total MCAT SCORE: 522
• MCAT Section Scores: B/B 130, C/P 132, CARS 129   Detailed Breakdown
• Overall GPA: 3.95
• Science GPA: 3.94

Summary of Application Experience

Primary submitted 6/11.
Secondaries submitted late July - early August.
Traditional applicant from a UC school.
Applied to 20 schools, all MD/PhD.

Looking to share my journey, and hopefully some of this will help future applicants!

9/24: Super-excited about all the invitations. Can't wait to visit all these great schools!
10/7: Here we go. Very humbled by the interviews I've gotten. Can't wait to meet lots of new people and discuss some exciting science!
10/15: First interview went moderately well. I guess my application was geared more towards the scientist part, so a lot of my interviewers were well convinced of my scientific promise and went for the "Why medicine?" question instead. Faculty interviews went well too, I think - though surprisingly they seemed more interested in discussing their own research than in questioning me about mine.
10/23: Happy Mole Day! Just got back from a wonderful East Coast trip. Interviews went pretty well, I think. Hard to tell good and bad until some feedback in the form of acceptances and rejections comes through. Loved the autumnal East and thinking it wouldn't be too bad to move away from Cali.
11/25: Very happy at how it has gone for me thus far. No acceptances yet, so I'm still trying to attend as many interviews as fit into school life. One more for this year, a few more next year, and I guess we'll wait and see how it goes.
1/16/16: Since I last posted, I've gotten my first three official pre-interview rejections for completed applications, two of them from top choices. I'm still very happy with my cycle. Coming in, I had 5 top choices and hoped to get 2-3 interviews out of the five and maybe one acceptance. I did indeed get 3 interviews and am waiting to hear back from them. Fingers crossed!
2/18/16: As I'm starting to hear back from more schools post-interview, I feel more able to discern between good and bad interviews. I've had perfect interviews at the ones I've been accepted to, and some uncomfortable ones for the schools I've been waitlisted at. For the interviews I've gone on this year, I feel that can sense right away if it was an "accept" quality interview experience or not, and I've been right so far.
3/08/16: And with the Penn/Yale news, my cycle is over. Now comes the deciding part of it. Overall, I had great luck with getting interviews, with the latter half of my interviews going much better than early ones. Of my five top choices, I got 3 interviews and one acceptance, which is probably where I'll end up. I felt I might have been too nervous with the ones I really cared about, and thus didn't do as well as in the ones where I relaxed and was just myself. Oh well, when the next interview spree comes along, I'll know how to do it better.