Hey Ryan (respectfully…know you don’t care for “Dr. Gray”)
I’ve been out of undergrad for about 3 years now and graduated with a 3.03 overall GPA and a 2.504 science GPA and had taken the MCAT once and made a 499. I applied to a handful of MD schools during my senior year of undergrad and got one interview but was ultimately not accepted. I then began working in a pediatric hospital surgical department as a PCT (transport mainly, running labs, etc) and took the summer to study for the MCAT with a formal, professional study course (K****n) and my score actually dropped to a 496. I then re-took biochem (which I had made a D+ in in undergrad), took Biology 2 (which my undergrad institution did not offer), and several other 300-400 level biology courses totaling 27 hours in 4 semesters. My GPA was a 3.74 for those courses (so now we are looking at a 3.16 overall and a 2.97 science GPA). I worked full time, volunteered at a local health clinic about 4 hours a week, and shadowed in the spare moments that I had. After a year of limited patient contact in the surgical department, I was hired as a clinical assistant/ortho tech in a private orthopedic practice where I have extensive patient contact. I then studied on my own for the MCAT for about 4 months and brought my score up to a 500. I finally felt prepared to apply and spent months fine-tuning my personal statement and EC essays and applied to about 13 MD schools and 9 DO schools. I only got ONE interview to a DO school. I guess my question is what the heck am I doing wrong? I have a strong upward trend (which I thought was a good thing), my MCAT score isn’t great but it isn’t bad, and I have leadership experience, good rec letters, and what I thought was a good personal statement. Any insight would be appreciated because I’m at the point where, if I don’t get accepted to this one school, I’m looking at going back to school full time (most likely in the form of a biomedical sciences masters program, which I guess is a post-bac and not an SMP because it doesn’t have application/MCAT help) which is very difficult to swallow because I’m married and my wife’s income is not enough to sustain us by itself, so I am worried about accruing more debt. Appreciate your help.