Lost High School Senior

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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First off, I hope to not annoy anyone with my post. If so, I am sincerely sorry. So anyways, I am about to graduate high school and attend Baylor University. I hope to major in bio/chem/math (some combination or none). One of my goals is to get accepted to John Hopkins Medical school (but continue my education at Baylor Medical school). What can I start doing now to get accepted and stand out? My town does not have many volunteer opportunities and I know once at Baylor I can have many opportunities. Also, I am applying for the research-based biology courses for freshmen and plan to apply or participate in all the research opportunities.
I plan to start studying for the MCAT this summer and I am a diligent worker. Can I start shadowing doctors now? Any tips?
So basically, what can I do now to start prepping and really stand out? How can I be in contact with John Hopkins medical students (because I couldn’t find it here on CC)

Furthermore, I love helping people and the whole field of medicine. I have wanted to be a doctor and/or surgeon since middle school, and this past semester I took 21 credit hrs plus doing all my extra curriculars (band, orchestra, church, etc) and not to mention I practically help my whole family with their own college level homework, so the amount of stress that is to come won’t be new. I am ready for a challenge and hope to be rewarded by children being healthy and able to enjoy smoother lives by my help.

Okay, and one other note – Baylor admissions say the price I am paying is not bad to attend their school and they have awesome rates for getting into medical school. However, I am worried that the amount of debt I will have (costs nearly $16K this year, but they say more [big] scholarships come when you are an actual Baylor student) will prevent me from going into Baylor medical school. Although, I think many Baylor U alumni attend the Baylor med school and have no problem.

Please don’t say I’m dumb or have not thought this out, or anything of the sort. I have been in contact with banks, the admissions office, and medical schools seeing if they would accept my dual credit (to save money at Baylor). I am just looking for advice.

Thanks

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“What can I start doing now to get accepted and stand out? My town does not have many volunteer opportunities and I know once at Baylor I can have many opportunities.”

  • If you want to attend Med. School in a future, your priority on day 1 at college is your GPA. It is easier to control it by adjusting to higher academic standards at college (vs. HS) then later try to improve. Set yourself goal of having an A in every class and do whatever is needed in this class to achieve it. It may not happen, but setting a lower goal is not a good idea. When you get “settled” and get going academically and know your free hours a bit better, start looking for volunteering opportunities and later on for job / intern opportunities at college. My D. was in the same situation, our town does not have much of anything, no jobs, not volunteering places with most of them having a long waitlists. She was able to get into all medical ECs that she wanted and had a great campus job during school year at her college. But she got job and medical research intern position in her second year. At this point she got very high academic stand and it was definitely considered, so both jobs and internship were very easy to obtain.

    You do not need to “stand out”. This is a bit overblown. If you have high GPA, decent MCAT score, good amount of medical ECs and relatively social personality, it is sufficient to get accepted at several Med. School.

    On the financial side, the best is to attend the cheapest UG (tuition free or close), but you already have made a choice, so stick to it. Do not have a goal of getting accepted to a certain Med. School. When time to apply, apply to a wide range. It is good to dream about one place, but be open to attend any.

    "One of my goals is to get accepted to John Hopkins Medical school (but continue my education at Baylor Medical school). " - what do you mean by that? I do not understand at all what are you saying here.
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Congratulations on your acceptance to Baylor.

Now some advice from the mom of 2 med students (One of whom will graduate in 2 weeks!)

  1. While it’s great to have a goal, the goal should be to get into any US med school, not a specific one. (JHU admits fewer than 4% of all applicants!) All US med schools offer pretty much the same education, teach the same standardized curriculum, and all US med student take the same national, standardized exams. How well you do in med school and your exam scores are much more important than what med school you go to.

  2. You don’t really get a choice about where you end up for residency (I know you’d like to go back to Baylor, but you really have no idea what your specialty will be or whether Baylor’s program in that field is a top one.) While you get some input, your actual place of residency is decided by a computer program.

  3. The amount of your debt is worrisome. $16 x 4 years mean you’ll end up with at least $64K in loans—before any interest or fees. These loans will continue to accrue interest while you’re med school and residency and can easily double or even triple before you can start paying them off. Because the training of physician takes so long, it will be 12 or more years before you can start to pay off your loans.

Medical schools generally do not care where you go undergrad. Baylor is a fine school, but it will not give you a boost in your chance for admission to med school. If Baylor doesn’t come thru with additional scholarships and grants, you may want to consider a transfer to a less expensive school.

  1. “Standing out” is tough because you will be competing against older, and much, much more accomplished individuals when your time to apply to med school comes. Your goal should be to become the best applicant you can with the resources available to you.

This should be your game plan going forward

–grades are your top priority. Take challenging coursework and earn As. Admissions officers want to see that you can handle challenging coursework because med school is tough.

—get involved in community service. (Your choice of project). Adcomms prefer to see to long term, deep involvement with one or two activities over lots of superficial involvement in a lots of activities.

—start volunteering in clinical settings. Not necessarily a hospital, it could be a nursing home, public clinic, rehab center, group home for the mentally or physically disabled, outreach program for the mentally ill, hospice, cancer treatment center. Again, long-term consistent volunteering is best.

—leadership positions. Take on responsibilities for leading/guiding others. This can be thru becoming a officer in activity or fraternity/sorority/church group. There are many, many ways to demonstrate leadership that don’t involve being elected to an official office. (NOTE: teaching, TAing, tutoring are not leadership positions. Coaching may or may not be depending on the circumstances.)

–physician shadowing. Try to observe physicians in a variety of fields, esp primary care. Observing surgery or in the ER is cool and exciting, but it’s not really a great snapshot of the day-today life of a physician.
—research is important if you’re gunning for top research-oriented med schools (like JHU). Again long term involvement is important, esp if you are in a position to run your own project (senior research thesis) or are in position of authority and have a real say in the success or failure of the project.

NOTE: great research will not make up for a lack of volunteering, shadowing, clinical experiences or leadership. You need to have everything to be the strongest possible candidate.

Your application portfolio should tell a story about you and who you are. Don’t just pick activities because you think they’ll “look good” to adcomms. Pick them because they mean something to you and tell an observer soemthing about the kind of person you are.


BTW, Baylor Med school is on probation with AAMC right now for a serious violation--and that's not a good thing.

To answer your questions:

You can start shadowing any time. Shadow a variety of doctors in a variety of different practice settings. Start by asking any family members or family friends who are physicians. Ask your own personal healthcare provider. It’s hard to get physicians you don’t know to allow to shadow them. You may need to wait until you’ve been a volunteer to a clinical site and can make contacts that way.

I’d advise against trying to contact one unless you already know them. Med students are incredibly busy and won’t even look at a FB post or email from an eager undergrad they don’t know.

If you want to see what kid of student JHU accepts, here’s the class profile for Class of 2018

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/admissions/md/students/class_statistics.html

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If you really, desperately want to hear from JHU med students you can post something on http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ but get ready to experience the collective catharsis of thousands of overstressed pre-med and medical students displacing their negative emotions onto you.

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I just cannot imagine you are zoomed in with JHU only. Any reason you want to do that? Do you have 4.0 unweighted Hs gpa and plan to keep that way in Baylor?

IMO you are too early to zoom in just for one school just yet. You need to focus your study at Baylor and in two years, if you do well there then you can attempt a good med school.

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Reread wowmom’s post above and let it sink in. And it’s Johns Hopkins U, not John Hopkins U

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^ If and when you apply to Hopkins Med School, if nothing else, remember this, haha

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Thank you everyone for the advice and help!! @OnMyWay2013 what do you mean?

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@courtneukur

He means you need to spell the name of the school correctly—> Johns Hopkins.

JHU admissions people (and everyone else who works there) get peeved when they’re referred to as John Hopkins