Application Cycle One: 2005

• Undergraduate college: UC Berkeley
• Undergraduate Area of study: Premedical Studies

• Total MCAT SCORE: 507
• MCAT Section Scores: B/B 129, C/P 127, CARS 124   Detailed Breakdown
• Overall GPA: 3.70
• Science GPA: 3.50

Summary of Application Experience

Being from California, even if you have stellar stats and EC's, you gotta apply across the board (30-40 schools).

Secondaries are terribly time consuming, but they get easier once you get more of them done.

Try to group interviews together, and always get the earliest date possible for an interview.

My only acceptance was from my latest interview. I can't believe how fast UIC responded:
11-20 invite
12-7 interview
12-19 accepted.
You really can't beat that. And UIC is a really great school!

Advice:

General
*You will get stressed out when..
-your friend has 12 secondaries, and you only have 6, but it don't matter, everyone gets secondaries to ~90% of the schools they apply to.
-you are between your first and second batch of interviews. But schools will get around to you.
-a school has rendered a decision, and you are guarding the mail box and scaring the neighbors... but that can only really go away once you got an acceptance.

Interview
*Stay active in the healthcare field while applying- adcomms love to hear about up-to-date research.

*Know your application, and your motivations for entering medicine and their particular school.

*Know your healthcare in and out and be familiar with common ethical issues

*The more confident you are during the interview, the better your chances and the easier your interview will go. I think of adcomms as vultures, cuz they only prey on the weak and fraile- go in strong and they will just go with the flow. If you are passive, they will start grilling you on the sh*t you don't want to hear (bad grades/healthcare policy/ethics)