Chance me for T20s/BSMD, KS resident, 34 ACT, 3.88 GPA, published, neuroscience major

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Kansas
  • Type of high school : Public high school, medium-sized
  • Top-ranked public high school district
  • No hooks (I think)

Cost Constraints / Budget
My parents are paying, but they would like to spend as little as possible but still are encouraging me to apply moderately.

Father works three jobs (he is a researcher, but also teaches part-time on the side at two programs), mother just started working, I’d feel terrible if I didn’t accomplish something for them :(( they work too hard for me to be mediocre.

Income was 90k in 2023

Intended Major(s)
Psychology, neuroscience, molecular biology, (basically cookie cutter pre-med majors)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.88 (5 Bs in mathematics, upward trend nearing junior/senior year, I was afraid of asking for help from my parents, mom placed on furlough and my dad’s job was unstable at this time)
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.67 on a 5.0 scale
  • Class Rank: N/A, school doesn’t rank
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 34 ACT, no SAT

HS coursework

FR SO JR SR (Plan)
Math H Geometry H Algebra II H Pre-Calculus and Trig AP Calculus AB
English H English 9 H English 10 AP English Language & Composition AP English Literature & Composition
Science H Biology H Chemistry AP Biology AP Chemistry
Social Studies AP Human Geography AP World History AP Psychology AP American Government
Language H Spanish II H Spanish III H Spanish IV AP Spanish Language & Culture
Elective Drawing Sociology AP US History Certified Nurse Aide Certification (can work towards college coursework)
Elective Software Development and Game Design Design Fundamentals AP Physics I Certified Nurse Aide Certification (can work towards college coursework)

Selected for my district’s first ever certified medical assistant certification class this upcoming semester

Extracurriculars

  1. Colorectal lead cancer research student at nationally recognized cancer center, wet-lab biology (had very high level of autonomy here)
    *Research paper to be published soon, worked here for 2+ years

  2. Vice president of Amnesty International at school (3 years)

  3. Administrator at an after-school tutoring service, assigned students to tutors (4 years, was promoted 2 times)

  4. Healthfair organizer for Afghan refugees in my city, served as an Urdu-English translator (on-and-off, was performed when physicians were available, 1 year)

  5. Research student at a local branch of Veterans Affairs on pancreatic cancer research (3+ years)
    *Published a review paper with professor in peer-reviewed journal with impact factor of 6

  6. Editor at school’s Literary Magazine (2 years)

  7. Media Team Lead at my local mosque, creating high-fidelity education videos (1 year)

  8. Arabic calligrapher, this was really fun, raised around $7500 in charity through an auction with my pieces (2+ years)

  9. Student mentor for 6-12 students in STEM experiments and investigating pulmonary feedback to vape-based nicotine in underserved communities

  10. BPA student mentor

There is plenty more but this is just what I sent to my colleges through the Common App! (ex. volunteering experiences, shadowing, etc)

Awards/Honors

  • Invited to present my research at the 3rd ranked university in India
  • Published paper
  • Student member at one of the leading cancer research organizations in the US, (I’ve also submitted an abstract to their convention for 2024)
  • Top 15 Medical Coding Finalist at BPA Nationals
  • National BPA qualifier for Healthcare Presentation 2x
  • AP Scholar (lol)

Essay Breakdown

  • Personal statement - I made it about gardening, I’m a first-generation immigrant and my grandfathers were subsistence farmers back in my home country. Made some nice connections between gardening and my ECs/passions, tied it back to continuing knowledge. Overall really proud of it, got it read by three teachers, who gave high remarks, plus my peers who were impressed
  • Supplementals were all fine - definitely could’ve done better with Rice, but alas.

Essays/LORs/Other

  • I think all my essays were pretty strong with the exception of Rice, I didn’t send in my teacher evaluations on time :stuck_out_tongue: : I think I’m gonna get rejected from there
  • Worked with my English teachers and Gifted Ed teachers, alongside previous students from the UMKC & Case Western BSMD program for my personal statement
  • LORs were my professor who I conducted my number 1 research with, a director of vascular medicine (who attended Case Western)
  • Teacher eval/letter recs were my psychology and biology teachers, my psychology teacher definitely wrote a better one

Schools (all RD)

  • Reaches:

    • Rice (couldn’t submit my teacher evals on time :sob:
    • WashU
    • Emory
    • Case Western Reserve BSMD
    • UMKC 6-year BSMD
    • U Penn
    • Cornell
    • JHU
    • RPI 7-year physician-scientist program

  • Targets:

    • Case Western Undergraduate

  • Safeties: RPI Undergraduate, KU

  • I would really like to cash in on my high school efforts and get into a BSMD program or one of my reaches :))

  • Would kill to go to Case Western BSMD, Cleveland Clinic right across the street, dream come true.

  • Biggest regret is not filling out Questbridge, I thought I wouldn’t be eligible based on financials. Filled out the FAFSA, looked at my household income, and realized I should’ve just done it lol. :frowning:

Final remarks
I already have so many regrets, I don’t think I’m good enough for anything. So many of my peers are already accepted to amazing places. I’m so happy for them, just wish I could be celebrated like that.

Gosh, I just didn’t know anything about colleges going into this, just thought I was meant to end up at KU for the past 4 years, and never knew I could go anywhere else, it’s too late to lament now. I’m the first to ever apply to college here in the United States, (I’m the trial child)

Any feedback is greatly appreciated, please be brutally honest! Thank you in advance, you amazing people!

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Make sure you show interest to CWRU regular undergrad program. That’s important!

Your reaches…are reaches…but you have two probably sure things. So just wait and see. You have accomplished a lot. Be proud of that.

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Don’t regret. If $90k income, QB unlikely.

I love your list. Your research is a game changer.

KU Honors is very strong !!

RPI is fantastic.

So if these are your only acceptances, it’s a home run.

Good luck.

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Thank you so much! I definitely will sign up for CWRU’s information session

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Thank you! QB just had me thinking, I see ppl become finalists but they go to Cancun every summer… some things don’t add up (I know I shouldn’t judge, I’m truly grateful)!

Edit: just added the parentheses.

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Have you and/or your parents used the net price calculator on the web site of each college of interest in order to get an estimate on affordability?

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Yes, after the price calculator, tuition fluctuated anywhere from 9k to 18k contribution per year for reaches, BSMD programs could reach 30-40k contribution per year.

I’d be paying a low amount for KU with Honors scholarships plus state aid from FAFSA.

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First, it looks like you are doing amazing. I hope you do not truly carry the burdens of others as you have alluded to in your OP. You can only do what you can do and it appears that you are crushing it. For example, you should not minimize getting the AP Scholar designation. That means that you did stretch to some degree as an underclassman and scored at a minimum reasonably well. It counts and is a building block. Is it as impressive as curing cancer or some of your other ECs? Maybe not, but I don’t think you should dismiss it.

Second, I can’t tell from your OP, but if you have not already been accepted to KU, you will be. Congratulations. It really is a very good school to have as a safety and you can accomplish anything that you want to doing your undergrad there.

And, the great thing about having that safety is that it really allows you to shoot for a moon with no pressure.

Finally, I really like your HS class selection. You did a great job in taking a varied, but rigorous schedule. My only concern was a lack of physics but saw that lower in your electives.

So, I would anticipate some positive results come late march, but if not, KU is a wonderful opportunity. Good luck!

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You need to check the programs, but I believe many BS MD programs, once you get to the MD part, you are paying rack rate!

@WayOutWestMom

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@thumper1 is right.

Any FA offered is for undergrad only. Once you start the professional portion of the program, you’re full pay.

At UMKC, that means once you finish your 2nd year. You’ll be paying OOS rates for the med school. (Condition of the program, you can’t switch your state residency once you start.)

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Can you clarify what you mean by this please?

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The glaring void I see in your ECs for BS/MD program is a
lack of community service with disadvantaged groups that is face-to-face and helps to alleviate physical or mental suffering of others.

Organizing and administering is fine for demonstrating leadership, but it’s not community service. (Neither is tutoring since it doesn’t take you outside of the academic realm, nor take you out of the role of expert–which is comfortable and familiar.)

Also I don’t see any explicit physician shadowing or clinical exposure. (Clinical exposure means you’re working directly face-to-face with patients, not research subjects or clients. Exposure through research activities is not clinical exposure. Translation may or may not count depending on when and how your services were utilized. Also be aware that medical translation requires specific training plus national certification so that volunteering as a medical translator may be operating beyond the scope of your training. )

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To me this sounds very interesting and valuable. This looks like something that is likely to help you if you either end up in medicine, or in some form of biomedical research. Even if you end up in some other field or in some other form of research again this will be an experience that will help you get started on a productive path.

If you are premed, or thinking seriously about possibly being premed, then there are at least four things to keep in mind.

One is that medical school is expensive. Picking an affordable university to get your bachelor’s degree is a very good idea for someone who might be doing medical school next.

A second thing to keep in mind is that most students who start off thinking “premed” end up doing something else. Many get to university and find opportunities that are interesting to them that take them on some other path. As one example, my youngest briefly considered being premed, but discovered that she liked research in a medical-related field. After getting her bachelor’s degree in biology she worked in research for about 3 years, and is currently getting a PhD in a related field. Some other students find very different things they like to do. I have heard of students who needed to write some software to support their research project, and then decided that they liked software engineering (and there are many specialized software jobs, for example someone has to write the software for PET scanners, MRI machines, and robot-assisted surgery systems). Similarly there are some patents filed in biomedical related fields, and the lawyers who write these patents will frequently have a bachelor’s degree in biology or a related field. There is a huge range of opportunities that you will discover as you go forward with your education.

A third issue is that premed classes are in general tough. Some might be tougher than others. Your hard work in high school will be helpful in terms of helping you to be ready to do well in tough premed classes. Even with this you should pace yourself in university. For example it is often not a good idea to start with the toughest classes such as organic chemistry, but instead to first make sure that you have a solid preparation (general chemistry can be tough enough to start).

The last issue is that there are a LOT of universities that are very good for premed students. The University of Kansas is one of them. There are lots of others. Premed classes will be academically demanding at any one of at least 200 different colleges and universities (and probably way more than 200). Related to this, if you look at the graduate students in pretty much any very good medical school, or PhD program, or master’s degree program, you will find that the graduate students came from a very wide range of undergraduate programs.

I wondered about this also. MDs can do research, and I did see research on the list. However, this research looked more like something that would be of interest to my daughter who is getting a PhD, rather than something that necessarily points to getting an MD.

Of course for someone who is currently a high school student there is still lots of time to figure out which path would make more sense. Even students who had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree will sometimes work for a few years before they decide which graduate program (if any) makes the most sense.

I think that you are doing well. Best wishes.

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Thank you for noticing! I did submit volunteership hours in these underserved communities to my BS/MDs, I realize that the list of extracurriculars I put for this thread is for the T-20 application I sent to my reaches and targets. I have shadowed three specialists for a considerable amount of hours plus 200+ hours of volunteering at an underserved hospital in the greater KC area.

Thank you! :)) :pray:

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Thank you so much, you have no idea what your words mean to me!

Yes, I have been accepted to KU. Fingers crossed for those “positive results”!

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Sorry, pretty convoluted language on my part.

Parents don’t want me to go all out and apply to 20+ colleges, (logic is that people who know they’re gonna go to KU don’t need to apply elsewhere), harsh.

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Thank you,

I really appreciate your thorough response. Despite my affinity for research and the hard sciences, my father is also a PhD, and despite his amicable nature and expertise, he has yet to be respected as he should despite his 20+ years of experience in wet-lab biology. It is very discouraging for me to pursue something like research now without an MD to get significant funding/financial stability in such a line. (I know I’m not my father, but it still is hard to see him work like this, he should be in a senior position by now considering his work)

I understand that people from anywhere can break into T20 medical schools, I think it’s just my want to make my high school’s efforts mean something by getting into a BSMD, T20 school that’s stressing me out.

Thank you so much for your insight!

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Why do you need to attend a top 20 medical school? Plus this is significantly jumping the gun.

Right now, your goal should be an affordable undergrad with as little debt as possible. A place you like. A place where you feel you can excel. A plac with other options should you change your mind.

If medical school is still in the cards for you, it can happen with a regular bachelors degree and applications to medical schools.

You might get accepted at a BS MD program…so just wait and see. If not, all is not lost.

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Well, its a little late now, as I suspect that most if not all of your apps are in.

But, with a school like KU as a given / your baseline, you are playing with house money as you have a solid college option in which you can still readily accomplish all of your goals.

Then, I would suggest that your odds of “improving” on your KU admission (improvement is subjective I will add) decrease with every additional app that you submit (at least over a certain few). I feel that the more apps attempted, the less thought and nuance is given to each. Whereas those that only apply to a handful of schools, but are more thoughtful about who they are applying to, why and how their background applies to the particular school, and what specifically they bring to the school, the more success the applicant is likely to have.

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Any US medical school admission should be considered to be elite. Most premeds who apply get 0 admissions, and most who get admitted get 1 admission, out of dozens of applications.

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