Accepted: A non-trad success story

Good morning, premeddit. It's a great day.

Yesterday morning I received the call that I've been waiting 3 years to hear: I was accepted off the waitlist at my top choice MD school.

A little about me:

• Over 30
• 2.5 cGPA undergrad, 3.0 cGPA masters, 4.0 c/sGPA post-bacc, 3.5~ (TBD) SMP GPA.
• 515 MCAT
• 300 non-clinical volunteering hours, 0 clinical volunteering hours
• 80 hours shadowing in one urban hospital and a rural family practice
• 0 research

This was my first AMCAS application cycle, although I had applied DO without success the previous year. I was summarily rejected by ALL but my SMP school (and one DO school didn't even acknowledge that I had applied). It took me 3 years and 4 months to go from deciding to become a doctor to being accepted.

This subreddit is a pretty great place for advice, and on the whole it's very supportive. However, the advice given is generally from and for traditional med school applicants. It's hard to make that apply to someone who's changing careers and may have a lot of achievement otherwise.

Non-trads: You probably have skills that many traditional applicants don't have. Interviewing skills, compelling story, and just general life experience. Building relationships and working hard are absolutely critical. However, if your stats look like mine, it's going to take a lot of time, money, effort, and luck to get there. I'm very lucky to have a very supportive family.

Good luck to anyone still on a waitlist and to everyone applying for 2018!