My advice:
1. People say apply early for a reason. It's true. Take the earliest MCAT that you will do well on, and factor in some time for pushing it back - trust me, it happens to most folks. You want to have your MCAT test date no later than July if possible, and really in May or June. Finish your secondary applications for your STATE schools first, then move on to those out of state private and public schools you are interested in.
2. For non-traditional applicants such as myself, just being one or two years out of school does not make you 'non-traditional.' I worked in the White House and had real world work experience under my belt. These mattered very little at my interviews - most interviewers focused on community service work and clinical experience. Now, it is true that schools want academic diversity and they specifically seek out student who are not the traditional science-focused applicant. That being said, the great majority of applicants and accepted applicants are still the science folks. If you are thinking about a postbac program, you need to still focus on that standard vanilla shadowing and hospital experiences. There isn't much difference between the applicant who has some clinical experience and the one who has a lot of clinical experience, but there is a significant different between the one who has some and the one who has none. Think of it as a check mark, something that admissions committees want to see that you need to do to show them that you have thought this decision through, even if you have thought the decision through extensively. I did not adopt that philosophy and only involved myself with activities that interested me. This may have hurt me.
3. Research is good, especially if you are interested in a major research school. That was not my deal, so I was not surprised from the rejections from research heavy schools, even if my MCAT/GPA was at par for their students. Clinical experience is more important if you could only choose one, however. But I mean real clinical experience with 'human contact' being the key word.
I had some early successes, with 4 interviews coming in the fall term. I thought that this would continue in the spring term - it didn't. While I was OK with that due to my early acceptance at the University of Miami, I found it strange. What would I be doing if it wasn't for that acceptance? I'd be frantically writing letters to the 3 other schools that I was waitlisted at... point is, this is a very odd process and I consider myself lucky. Miami is the perfect place for me and perhaps they realized this too. Regardless, with a 34 on my MCAT, a 4.0 in my postbac classwork, good undergrad grades and some interesting past career experience, I thought I would have more options to choose from this spring. I can live with that. Good luck everyone.
