Brief Profile:
Worked full-time for 4 years at a county health department to provide health services for the local Latino population.
Spent 5 summers living and working in Latin America with a public health non-profit organization called Amigos de las Americas. Served as project director the last 2 summers.
Trained as a doula (birth assistant), volunteered in labor and delivery department of local hospital.
Note re: BCPM GPA: I first took these classes as an undergrad 10 years ago, was not a science major and earned a BCPM GPA of 2.7. So the last couple of years I re-took BCPM classes to prepare for MCAT and earn solid grades in the courses (4.0) -so my overall cumul. BCPM GPA is actually 3.3
// Applications //
Application Cycle One: 2005
Undergraduate college: Drake University
Undergraduate Area of study: Foreign Language/International Studies
Total MCAT SCORE: 502
MCAT Section Scores:
B/B 124,
C/P 124,
CARS 129
Overall GPA: 3.40
Science GPA: 4.00
Summary of Application Experience
If you are not applying right out of undergrad, I highly recommend finding a premd college advisor to give you a head's up about the details within the process. I contacted some 'volunteers' listed on the AMCAS site who serve as pre-med advisors at various schools around the country and they were super helpful.
Various friends and family, including a couple who had gone through med school, reviewed and critiqued my essays.
I applied to too many schools initially, which I did not think would be a problem once I saw how centralized the AMCAS application process is. Yet once I realized how involved secondary apps were, I wished I had applied to maybe 10 instead of 15.
Signed up for the KAPLAN online service for my second MCAT attempt in Aug., and should have done so with more time in advance, recommend taking at least 4 months to really cover all of the prep material.
BEST WISHES! It's a grueling process. www.amsa.org has a great timeline of recommendations for when to get things taken care of as you apply.
