Application Cycle One: 2007

• Undergraduate college: University of Texas at Austin
• Undergraduate Area of study: Biological/Life Sciences

• Institution: Top Public Health Graduate School
• Area of Study: Computing and Information Science
• Degree Obtained: Epi

• Total MCAT SCORE: 519
• MCAT Section Scores: B/B 130, C/P 128, CARS 132   Detailed Breakdown
• Overall GPA: 3.53
• Science GPA: 3.49

Summary of Application Experience

I'm a non-traditional reapplicant but I think I noticed a bunch of things that might help:

1. Please turn in all your stuff, including secondaries, as EARLY as you can. I think I could have gotten maybe a few more interviews had I gotten my stuff more organized. I think my AMCAS was verified in late September and I was turning in secondaries to the AMCAS schools in October, November, and even one in December. I got everything done for TMDSAS (Texas) & Baylor about late September (including recs).

2. Another reason to get your stuff in on time: I got very late interviews at UMich, Duke, UTSW, Baylor, and Hopkins. Now granted, I only got into UTSW out of that list for a lot of reasons..the late interviewing certainly didn't help.

3. EVERYTHING in your application has the potential to help you. You CAN get interviews at awesome schools with a weak link (my subpar GPA). But everything else has to be pretty strong and you have to work really hard on those apps. I worked as hard as I could on my essay, making sure I got good rec letters, geniunely doing the secondaries (which is partly why they took so long for me), etc. I am pretty sure from my interview experiences that my essays (primary + secondary) helped me get interviews at Harvard, Duke, Baylor, and probably UMich.

4. On the other hand, all my waitlists and rejections exemplify how much GPA matters for ultimate acceptance. I think I had great extracurriculars, masters degree coursework in public health, and a good MCAT score but that GPA sticks with you. If you want to get into the top schools, EVERYTHING kind of matters.

5. Around late Nov. (maybe really early December), I called UT Southwestern and Texas Tech because I knew they were both going to stop interviewing soon so I figured I had nothing to lose by calling. I pleaded how badly I wanted to interview at both schools and would they please review my application again. It might be argued that I might not be at UT Southwestern today if it were not for that phone call. I actually bugged Texas Tech with a few more phone calls (again, thinking that I had nothing to lose this late into the process) and they gave me an interview too. Unfortunately I tried the same thing with Columbia University in mid-Jan and they sent me a rejection letter like 24 hours later (haha). Looking back, I should have called more schools that had not interviewed me yet near the end of the interview season because I had nothing to lose at that point. I did not do this with schools that had waitlisted me.

6. To the reapplicants: never give up hope. If you want this, you can have it. I improved my MCAT and kept on trying to figure out what I could do to keep getting better. I didn't let my subpar GPA do me in. I know you can do it because I did.

Conclusion: I think the process was very fair to me. I learned a great deal from it. Think I got lucky with UTSW. Good luck to all who have read this.