“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.