Discouraged Psych student with so-so application

[hanet]

I consider myself to be a non-trad applicant (although I think many people do take “my route”) and I need some help/advice/encouragement. I’m just going to lay it all on the table:

 

I’m a 24 year old female who has been applying to medical school for 4 cycles already. I was really only interested in going to UofC because my husband and I own a house here in Calgary. However, I think I may need to broaden my scope.

 

My undergrad is a BSc Psychology with an honours thesis. My average GPA in each year is as follows: (first year): 3.48, (second year): 3.61, (third year): 3.47, (fourth year): 3.76, and I did a part-time fifth year to complete my thesis, which was 3.78, but is not included in Calgary’s GPA calculation. Overall, my GPA is about 3.6 applying with UofC’s drop-a-year rule, closer to 3.7 with the two-best-years approach.

 

In my view this is not bad, but not really that competitive. The only disappointing thing is that I look back over my transcript and I know I could have done better. I worked part-time through my third, fourth, and fifth years, meaning looong days (I worked the closing shift at a store on campus, so often I was as school for 14-15 hour days), plus I was starting a relationship that took a lot of my focus

 

My first MCAT was embarrassing for me. I scored a 24S: 8PS, 9VR, & 7BS. This was in 2008 and I really should have re-written right away. But as a non-science student, I hated studying for the MCAT and I put it off. This past summer, I thought I was going to make a serious run at this med thing, and I re-wrote, with lukewarm results. My current MCAT score is a 29Q (disappointed at the drop in writing score): 8PS, 11VR, & 10BS. I consider this score to be a better reflection of my abilities, but I think I could do better. I am thinking about studying again and giving it one more shot this summer, considering there’s nothing I can do about my GPA, and my MCAT score isn’t doing me any favours (although I love that U of C considers VR the most important section).

 

My extra-curriculars include: 4 summers of volunteering at Bible camp (in high school – I’ve had to work full-time during my summers during undergrad), 2 years volunteering at a kids’ club (once again, in high school – I cite working the late shift at the university), heavily involved in a pre-med club for three years during undergrad (exec positions and then president) , a smattering of jobs and one-off volunteering stints (e.g., a shift or two every year for Operation Christmas Child in the shoebox warehouse), participating in a novel-writing group, and of course, my thesis (which was about schizophrenia, in a very hands-off, non-clinical, undergradish type of way). I see most of my volunteer hours as “stale” – mostly dating back to high school.

 

Again, my overall impression of my ECs is “not bad, but nothing special”.

As for my letters of reference: I have one “friend of the family”/landlady/professor – a person I have known for 10 years, who knows me as the best friend of her daughter, as a person who rented a room to me when I first started University, and as a professor for one course (during which we had a blast and she gave me a deserved A). I also have my boss, whom I have been working for since third year (4 years in September) and who likes and respects me. Lastly, I have my thesis supervisor, who was a newly appointed professor and didn’t have any undergrad students before me. I think she can comment well on my ability to work independently and take initiative, but I don’t really know that her reference would be as “glowing” as I would like (she’s written two for me already – I’m not sure how thrilled she’ll be when I ask her again!).

 

Currently, I am working as a nanny for two families, and I am loving it. I’m also volunteering at the library, because my passion is reading and writing. I think this will reflect well in my application, but it's not about that, really. I'm just doing what I love – working with books and kids.

 

Looking at my options for next year:

 

- I can apply for admissions to a Master’s in Counseling program that would be the next best thing to med for me, but is ultimately a degree I don’t want and consumes funds I don’t have.

- I can keep doing what I’m doing and apply next cycle, possibly using one of my nanny families as a reference instead of my supervisor, and possibly re-writing the MCAT

- Apply more broadly – but the main problem I have with this is that I don’t have 2nd O-chem or B-chem courses, because I didn’t need them at U of C and I had other courses on the docket for my Psyc degree; also, if I’m not competitive in my home province where I have an advantage, am I really going to be competitive at out-of-province schools?

 

This cycle has made me more certain that I want to be a doctor. But it is very frustrating to me to not make it to interview each year, because I feel communication and critical thinking are my strongest assets, and I feel very good about the MMI format. So I have to ask myself – what do I need to do to get there? I think/hope my MMI score will make up for any shortcomings my pre-interview application has.

 

I’m still young, but my husband is 32 and we’d like to have kids before he’s 40ish. I think this is a reasonable expectation, but we’d like to get a move on!

 

Any advice?

[Real Beef]

Hey Hanet,

 

Sorry to hear about your challenges. What is clear however are a few things.

 

1) If you havent got an interview after four cycles you are going to have to do something BIG to improve you application. A change in reference letter or an additional EC is probably NOT going to be the tipping point. Continued improvement of you MCAT score is a good thing of course if you can bump it up by another 2-3 pts.

 

2) You should initiate a back up plan to medicine. If you had of started a back up plan 3 admission cycles ago you could have already been working at your second career ... so waste no more time. You can always concurrently pursue medicine while you do this.

 

3) A thesis is not considered an extracurricular .... it is school.

 

I personally like the idea of a Masters in Counselling idea for a back up plan. We have a masters prepared psychologist working with us. He worked in Calgary where they can use the title 'Psychologist' so he was able to transfer this title to Ontario. Otherwise in Ontario you can call yourself a psychological associate with a masters degree. Although I am unsure the exact salary I suspect $60-70k-ish. If you do private counselling for Health Canada/First Nation Inuit Health Branch you can make a killing. I have a friend who is a masters prepared social worker and claims he makes $120/hr after 4-6 years of doing this type of work, having started at $90/hr. I understand that money isnt everything but once you start a family, want to do house renos and start to enjoy costly things in life money is useful.

 

I understand that you would rather not spend the money on a MA in counselling just like I rather would not have went through a second undergrad and a MPH degree and would rather have gone into an MD program right away but for me that was all necessary to set up a back up career incase medicine never pans out because there are alot of people that want to get in and sadly some of us will never get in no matter how hard we try or it will take so long before we get in that you will have wasted, yes wasted, many productive years of contributing to society and people's wellness/health.

 

Hopefully some one will chime in with a more thorough assessment of your situation as well as more specific information pertaining to your chances of admission to U of C.

 

Beef

[MaeFleur]

I agree with what the others have said, and like Real Beef think you need to make a BIG step one way or the other.

 

If you're set on medicine I think a non-degree year of classes (as CaptainCrunchMan suggested) is a really smart move. I unfortunately don't know what Calgary's MCAT cut offs are so I can't speak to that, but I think you need to beef up your ECs significantly. I know most schools don't consider activities from high school, so yours seem quite lacking, especially in the medically-related category.

 

If you spent a year really working at upping your application it might pay off, but keeping your options open while you do this is a smart idea.

 

You said you don't have the funds for a master of counselling, but that has to be cheaper than getting your MD! And if working with books and kids is something you love, then maybe it is a good fit for you. It's at least a good place to get more ECs!

[towel]

Have you ever thought about law school, hanet? If your passion is reading and writing, and if you want a career that helps others, you may want to consider it as an alternative! There is an absolute ton of reading and writing in law.

[simpy]

 

This cycle has made me more certain that I want to be a doctor.

 

Any advice?

 

I have to be honest, Hanet - I don't get a huge sense of hunger from your post. Medicine as a career is going to require a lot of sacrifices - you may have to go somewhere else for residency, you are going to want to consider delaying having children, and you are going to have a difficult balance between your career and raising a family.

 

Over the past couple years you've had the opportunity to make sacrifices. You could have worked harder during your third and fourth years (in spite of your relationship). If you are so interested in medicine, you could have picked up medically-related extracurriculars. You put off writing the MCAT. You didn't apply broadly, just applying to the same school repeatedly.

 

I'm not trying to be insulting here, just pointing out the things you've said in your post. You explicitly say that you want medicine, but many things in your post imply that you don't really want it that badly.

 

So to echo what posters above have said, you're going to need to make a decision I think to totally pursue medicine or to consider other options. You really can't keep running a middle ground, and doing one extra year, or a master's degree, or improving your ECs a little are unlikely to help.

 

Someone above suggested law as an option, which isn't bad - but if you love kids and books, why not consider teaching? You clearly have a lot of strengths, and there are many careers in which you could use your strengths to make a big difference in the world.

 

If you are set on medicine, then here's my advice:

(1) rewrite the MCAT, taking it very seriously. Aim for very high scores to make yourself eligible for Queen's/Western and help you at Alberta/Calgary

(2) do a second undergrad degree - I would suggest a minimum of 3 years. This will improve your chances at both Alberta and Calgary while also opening up Queen's, Western and Ottawa

(3) you need to seriously improve your ECs. Look at the categories that Calgary scores ECs on and work towards those.

 

Anyway, you've done pretty well in the past and I'm sure that you could get into medicine if you seriously put yourself into it. I think the question you need to ask yourself if it's what you REALLY want, and how much are you willing to sacrifice for it?

[hanet]

Thank you for your responses, everyone.

 

I would agree that I need to step it up. Some suggestions have been really helpful. I have always intended Counselling as my "back-up" plan, and I'm applying to programs now to follow through on that plan. I do love psychology and mental health, so that career would be a great fit for me if medicine doesn't work out (or simply takes a while!). Now that I've finished my degree, I think I split my focus too much between my two "plans", and I wish I had focused more on Medicine (and less on my social life!). While I would enjoy counselling, I really want medicine.

 

I'm happy to report I have booked a new MCAT in the summer, right after a long stretch I have available where I can really knuckle down and study hard.

 

I'm going to take a hard look at my ECs and try to work in some medically-related volunteering, as I think that is the key component that's missing.

 

And Simpy -- Thank you for pointing out that I can't just feel a passion for medicine, I need to go all out with it.

 

This exercise has been as helpful as I could have hoped. Thank you!