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First Time Us School Applicant. Please Help Me Revise My List :)


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Hey guys,
Canadian pharmacist here applying to the states for the first time.
Would greatly appreciate some feedback on the list of schools I have narrowed down to after a lot of searching on Premed101 and SDN. Also, I read schools that rank students, give letter grades, or percentages are not as desirable because everyone's competing against each other. Can anyone comment how "bad" these schools are?

Stats:
Full IB program grad
cGPA: 82-83%; aGPA: 84-85%?; Prereq: 83%
(Basically 3.7-3.8)
MCAT: 28 first, 34 the second (11VR/12PS/11BS)
Nonacademics: Graduated from a pharmacy program this year, 3 years in community pharmacy as an assistant, 1 month rotation in hospital under a pharmacist, 4 years volunteering at hospital, 3 years cadets (think 1 step below military reserves, and for teens. Similar idea as scouts but military based) -- co-led squadron band, playing in church band, martial arts for 11 years, president for a club x 2 years, vice president for student society. Toastmasters x 3 months. Duke of Edinburgh Award level gold, recognized provincially at a poster competition in senior year of high school.

Publications (new this year): 2 as second author
Volunteering at a crisis line (new this year)
One award (new this year)

How I chose schools:
1. Found a list of schools accepting Canadians on Premed101 (http://forums.premed101.com/index.php?/topic/19041-list-of-us-schools-accepting-canadians/)
2. Got MSAR, and calculated # of international students/total class size for each school, compared my stats to matriculating class of 2016's
3. Applied to all the schools with international acceptance rates >2.5% or higher

Applying to (not sure if this is too few..):
1. Boston
2. Dartmouth
3. Central Michigan
4. Howard (must confirm whether IB transfer credits will be accepted for humanities)
5. Kimmel
6. Stony Brook
7. Case Western

Schools I am considering, if I'm gonna apply to any more (any thoughts on learning environment? Match rates? Livability?)
1. Tulane
2. SUNY
3. Wayne State
4. Loyola

Not eligible for (due to prereq requirements)
1. UCLA (Do not accept IB bio)
2. Utah (no IB humanities credits accepted)
3. George Washington (it's not RECOMMENDED to have IB bio as bio credits.. they told me I could apply technically as these are all recommendations, but may not be considered competitive... thoughts?)

Ruled out (due to the fact that they rank students, give letter grades, or percentages -- I presume the program will be super competitive from what I read on SDN)
1. Emory
2. Virginia
3. Maryland
4. Kentucky
5. Oakland
6. Rosalind Franklin

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Stats wise, you are average for the Canadian matriculation (ie you stand average to good shots of getting in if you apply broadly)

 

So I would apply to 15-20 schools if you want a realistic shot of getting in .

 

As for your list, of the 7, I would take out Boston (don't know they accepted any Canadians, if they do it's very few or they have dual citizenship) and stony brook (same). If you are not African American/Canadian descent or demonstrated a lot of experience in inner city/African American service, I would take out Howard.

 

For the considering, I would add Wayne State and SUNY since they are the two most Canadian friendly schools stat wise (though SUNY is less so in recent years). I recall Loyola didn't take Canadians

 

With your stats I would apply to GW. Since you did pharmacy I'm sure you can BS one of your biochem or pharmacology courses as "bio". That would meet recommendations.

 

In the ruled out list, I would add Rosalin Franklin, Oakland and Kentucky, all known to take Canadians in moderate numbers in the past. As for the competitiveness. Don't kid yourself. Every school is competitive. Even though our school is Honors/Pass/fail they still kept tabs of how many Honors we had and geared our dean's letter in turn. Having % or letter system just makes it more obvious. But the US system is very ocmpetitive with USMLE being king and GPA somewhat important but not very once you reach clerkship.

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Just my personal 2 cents, not best answer.

 

Replace Boston and Howard with Wayne State, SUNY-upstate, the best Canadian friendly USMD schools in my experience.

If you do this, you will have around 50% get interview for your top 7 schools that will generate 3~4 interviews and hope for 1~2 acceptances.

 

Get interview first, acceptance will come. if you have multiple acceptances, then choose one to go next year.

Even you have 4.0 perfect GPA and 40+ MCAT, none of any USMD will guarantee you an interview.

Hey guys,
Canadian pharmacist here applying to the states for the first time.
Would greatly appreciate some feedback on the list of schools I have narrowed down to after a lot of searching on Premed101 and SDN. Also, I read schools that rank students, give letter grades, or percentages are not as desirable because everyone's competing against each other. Can anyone comment how "bad" these schools are?

Stats:
Full IB program grad
cGPA: 82-83%; aGPA: 84-85%?; Prereq: 83%
(Basically 3.7-3.8)
MCAT: 28 first, 34 the second (11VR/12PS/11BS)
Nonacademics: Graduated from a pharmacy program this year, 3 years in community pharmacy as an assistant, 1 month rotation in hospital under a pharmacist, 4 years volunteering at hospital, 3 years cadets (think 1 step below military reserves, and for teens. Similar idea as scouts but military based) -- co-led squadron band, playing in church band, martial arts for 11 years, president for a club x 2 years, vice president for student society. Toastmasters x 3 months. Duke of Edinburgh Award level gold, recognized provincially at a poster competition in senior year of high school.

Publications (new this year): 2 as second author
Volunteering at a crisis line (new this year)
One award (new this year)

How I chose schools:
1. Found a list of schools accepting Canadians on Premed101 (http://forums.premed101.com/index.php?/topic/19041-list-of-us-schools-accepting-canadians/)
2. Got MSAR, and calculated # of international students/total class size for each school, compared my stats to matriculating class of 2016's
3. Applied to all the schools with international acceptance rates >2.5% or higher

Applying to (not sure if this is too few..):
1. Boston
2. Dartmouth
3. Central Michigan
4. Howard (must confirm whether IB transfer credits will be accepted for humanities)
5. Kimmel
6. Stony Brook
7. Case Western

Schools I am considering, if I'm gonna apply to any more (any thoughts on learning environment? Match rates? Livability?)
1. Tulane
2. SUNY
3. Wayne State
4. Loyola

Not eligible for (due to prereq requirements)
1. UCLA (Do not accept IB bio)
2. Utah (no IB humanities credits accepted)
3. George Washington (it's not RECOMMENDED to have IB bio as bio credits.. they told me I could apply technically as these are all recommendations, but may not be considered competitive... thoughts?)

Ruled out (due to the fact that they rank students, give letter grades, or percentages -- I presume the program will be super competitive from what I read on SDN)
1. Emory
2. Virginia
3. Maryland
4. Kentucky
5. Oakland
6. Rosalind Franklin

Thanks for reading clear.png

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Just to say Boston does accept Canadians. Last I counted in our 2020 class, we had about 10 people in the Facebook group and many more M1s and M2s. In fact, our interview package included four current Canadian students we can contact. They also give out merit scholarships to Canadians.

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Hey guys,

Thanks for your reply :)

I applied to UBC only (IP) x last 3 years and been rejected x 2 and on WL x 1 this year. I plan to apply to literally all the schools in Canada this year. 

Can you elaborate on your last category? What do you mean by "ranking students etc"?

From what I read on SDN, I heard some schools rank students and give this info out to residencies/clerkships. So you're fighting tooth and nail to be one rank higher than your classmate, which fosters ridiculous competition (from my understanding of how the ranking system works anyways).

 

 

Stats wise, you are average for the Canadian matriculation (ie you stand average to good shots of getting in if you apply broadly)

So I would apply to 15-20 schools if you want a realistic shot of getting in .

As for your list, of the 7, I would take out Boston (don't know they accepted any Canadians, if they do it's very few or they have dual citizenship) and stony brook (same). If you are not African American/Canadian descent or demonstrated a lot of experience in inner city/African American service, I would take out Howard.

For the considering, I would add Wayne State and SUNY since they are the two most Canadian friendly schools stat wise (though SUNY is less so in recent years). I recall Loyola didn't take Canadians

With your stats I would apply to GW. Since you did pharmacy I'm sure you can BS one of your biochem or pharmacology courses as "bio". That would meet recommendations.

In the ruled out list, I would add Rosalin Franklin, Oakland and Kentucky, all known to take Canadians in moderate numbers in the past. As for the competitiveness. Don't kid yourself. Every school is competitive. Even though our school is Honors/Pass/fail they still kept tabs of how many Honors we had and geared our dean's letter in turn. Having % or letter system just makes it more obvious. But the US system is very ocmpetitive with USMLE being king and GPA somewhat important but not very once you reach clerkship.

 

As for the competition in general, yeah I get that med schools are competitive. But it's how they grade their students. If you have H/HP/P/F, you're essentially divided into quartiles. But if you're getting ranked from #1 to #144 (or however big the class size is), getting percentages, or getting letter grades A to F, you're gonna be pretty focused on getting the last 1% of your grade to beat out the person sitting next to you. 

 

Can you guys comment on living in Detroit for Wayne State? Things I've hear about Detroit weren't too positive tbh (high crime rates, bankrupt city etc).

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I visited. It's not the greatest but not the worst. The area around the school reminded me of downtown Toronto (shady parts close but area is ok). I met so many Canadians there and they are well-known in Canada for graduating great students. Also, they have 10 hospital affiliations and the Henry ford system is well-respected. Anywhere you go is gonna have drawbacks.

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