The 4.0 GPA in His Premed Postbac Wasn't Enough | Application Renovation (S1 E6)

Today we're going through another student's full application to medical school to see if we can figure out why he wasn't accepted, even with a 3.87 cumulative GPA and a 509 MCAT score.

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Our student—we'll call him John—applied to med school last year and didn't get any interviews. He thought maybe his lack of research hurt him, but I doubt that was a significant factor. He also worried that his MCAT score might have been too low. He applied early, so that wasn't the problem.

John was a music major in undergrad, did a master's program, and then did a premed postbac a few years later. He got a 4.0 GPA in his postbac, bringing his cumulative undergraduate GPA to 3.87. His first MCAT score was a 500, but he took it again and he got a 509.

So John had a great GPA at 3.87 and a pretty good MCAT score at 509… Why didn't he get accepted to any medical schools?

As we explore in the episode, the biggest answer comes down to a relative lack of clinical experience and, as a side effect of that, a weak personal statement. His clinical experiences seem to just be crammed into the last few months before the application. He also listed some things as clinical experience which included cleaning hospital rooms and other non-clinical work.

For John's Most Meaningful Experiences in his Work & Activities section, he listed an activity that he'd only done for 3 months before the application, which is a little suspicious because how much impact can there be in 3 months? He also listed shadowing as a Most Meaningful Experience, which usually looks suspicious to me.

Shadowing is usually kind of boring for students, so the fact that you're putting 28 hours of shadowing as your Most Meaningful Experience usually means you're trying to fluff up your extracurriculars and/or really emphasize that you want to be a doctor when you don't actually have significant, impactful experiences to list there.

John also included some school stuff in his extracurriculars, too. So overall, it comes across a bit like he was trying to pad his extracurriculars.

After reviewing his Work & Activities section, I feel comfortable saying the number one reason he didn't get an interview is likely that he didn't get enough clinical experience to prove to the reader that he actually wants to be a physician.

But we also cover his personal statement. We discuss how to write the medical school personal statement as a career changer: Don't just focus on why you're NOT pursuing your old career anymore. You need to focus on why you're being pulled toward medicine.

John's personal statement is also focused too much on why he thinks he would be a good doctor. Instead, he needs to focus on WHY he WANTS to be a doctor. Overall, his personal statement really suffered because he didn't have many clinical experiences to draw from. He wasn't able to write honestly and emotionally about why he wanted to be a doctor while citing specific patient experiences.

So John has shown the aptitude to be a doctor with his postbac and MCAT score, but he hasn't proven that he really wants this enough to go through all the training and not give up.

John's school list also isn't helping him because he applied to a lot of public schools as an out-of-state applicant. In regard to his school list, we also talked a little about MD vs DO schools and why nontraditional students sometimes have had better luck at DO schools, but why he should apply to both.

Hopefully, this was a helpful med school application deep dive for you. Again, applying to medical school is not just about stats. You need clinical experience. You need to be able to tell the story of why you want to be a doctor. Medical schools don't want to take a chance on someone who hasn't had enough experiences to really prove to themselves that this is what they want.

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