You might want to start your own thread.
Most occupational therapy programs require you to have several hundred hours assisting or working alongside an occupational or physical therapist, plus at least one recommendation from an OT or PT that can attest to your skill and potential in the field. So you definitely need to use volunteer experience to stand out as qualified for the program. If you haven’t already, start volunteering with an OT or PT and you can talk about your experience in a statement of purpose. Research experience can help too, particularly if it’s related - you can talk about how your research experience prepares you to practice evidence-based therapy with patients.
OT is pretty competitive, so I think you should apply to more than 5 schools. Just a guess, but I think 7-10 is probably a good range in a program like OT. Also, I wouldn’t consider a school a safety just because you take the prerequisites there - many of those schools take on far more students than they can actually admit to their OT programs, because they expect most of them to go elsewhere.