Help with US school list (unbalanced MCAT)!

[Nugget4life]

Hi friends! I post this on **DELETED** but didn't get much response so thought I'd try my luck here. My stats are not good enough for Canadian schools so pretty much already given up on that. But still gonna try my luck with u of t, queens and ottawa. So anyway my cGPA is 3.69, my strongest years are first year 3.71 and last year 3.91. I just got my MCAT scores back 2 days ago, 131/125/129/130, overall 92%. Tbh I am really sad about the CARS score (another reason I'll likely kiss Canadian schools goodbye).

I am a non-trad and I have already completed a MSc, currently working FT in cancer research for a year and half now (~4000 hrs by this time next year). I'd say I have lots of research experience, my job allows me to work directly with some of the most famous oncologists in Canada. However, I have 0 patient contact thus far, and it's difficult to have shadowing experience in Canada. But I am planning to volunteer at a hospital soon so maybe I can talk about that during interviews? I've got 2 pub, 1 first author, and several other manuscripts under review. I have 7 poster presentations at 4 different international conferences, 3 of which are the biggest ones in the field of oncology. Other ECs I have 150 hrs working with a refugee family, 200 hrs working at womens' centre at school, 500 hrs other types of volunteer, 350 hr TA, 1 year FT at a pharma company.

So I have made a primary list according to MSAR for Canadian friendly schools. Another hurdle is that I don't have any organic, biochemistry, physics or English course. I will take these before next summer but really do not wanna take English unless absolutely necessary. So the top of my list are schools that do not have any pre-req.

3 cali schools, but according to premed its a waste of money.

Keck

UCSD

UCLA

Penn state

Sidney Kimmel

George Washington

Tulane

Central Michigan

Vanderbilt

University of Virginia

Pritzker

Stanford (lol)

Perelman (lol)

Duke (lol)

East Tennessee (probably gonna cross this out coz their website emphasize strong ties)

Tufts (apparently low yield for int students)

Geisel

Connecticut

Hawaii (did they ever accept Canadian?)

Georgetown

West Virginia

Howard

Mayo (its a dream)

Meharry

Michigan state

Louisiana state

 

Sorry for the long post. Trying to trim my list to under 25 schools. Any suggestions about schools I should add or delete? Thanksss!

[Medase]

I would say remove those reach/low yield schools, Mayo, Stanford, Duke, Perelman, UCLA, Penn State, Hawaii, unfortunately the low GPA will hurt you terribly when considered as an international student. Add in Wayne State and check out some other posts on the forum to see other good MD schools to apply if you want, those are helpful. Maybe add in 2-3 DO schools just for backup

[Nugget4life]

@Medase

Thanks for the suggestion! I will remove any reach school and just keep my list to mid/low tier. I have been browsing here intensively for the past couple days and from what I've seen it's really discouraging. Aside from my GPA, I am worried that a lack of clinical volunteer exp would kill my app. I plan to volunteer at a hospital this summer tho.