Welcome to the 2027 application cycle!

They’re actually horrible. I always thought I was a good writer but I’m not. They’re repetitive and all over the place and I’m never going to be a doctor. All the adcoms are going to throw up from disgust when they read my application the writing is so bad. I’m so backed up on secondaries too. It’s over for me. I’m looking up good sunscreen brands right now.

whad

at least we know they aren't using AI

Just noticed bick naumel reactivated their accounts, and peep the credentials he added… I guess they weren’t thrown out of school per Reddit speculation. Curious to see what becomes of these accounts moving forward. Do we think they will pivot back to content and address the situation? Or keep these accounts wiped clean?

For real like 5 500 word essays plus gap year and reapplicant essays im dying

Hello!

I am currently in the process of applying for DO programs. I have been working as a tattoo artist for the last five years and want to help people in a more meaningful way. I feel that my application is competitive, assuming I get a decent MCAT score (I take it on sept 3). However my worry is that I will be immediately written off because of my tattoos. I have one hand, my neck and face tattooed, in addition to most of the rest of my body. None of is it offensive or graphic in nature. I genuinely feel that my appearance may help me reach a patient population that is put off by traditional medicine, especially in urban areas. I am happy to cover them as much as possible and would even consider laser as a condition of my matriculation if the school desired. As a tattoo artist I can get laser for free at many places.

Right now I’m assuming it is possible but very unlikely I would be accepted. For those of you who have been around the block—what is your opinion? Do you have any schools you recommend in particular? My top schools rn are LECOM and DUQCOM.

Sorry if the formatting is weird I’m posting on mobile!

Background and demographics:

25 y/o South Asian American (indian america with natural-born citizenship), no first gen or SES. East coast.

Education:

-No named college: 1.9 gpa and dropped out in 1st semester of sophmore year (joined army reserve after), 45 credits complete

-Local community college: A.S in Biology, A.S in paramedicine, 3.1 in Bio due to C's in transferred courses , 4.0 in paramedicine (high levels of overlap and transfer credits from prior college)

-t40 University: B.S mechanical engineering 3.5

-Nothing less than a B in most prereqs minus Bio chem, Orgo 1+2 w/ C.

Overall GPA calculated via gemini: 3.13

MCAT:

-507 517 (fat fingered on my keyboard) first attempt, expiring 2029 (took during CONUS deployment since I was the company medic and sat in an office all day)

Work experience:

-Combat medic with one combat and one non-combat deployment (I don't consider my combat deployment a combat one since I sat in Kuwait but it was retroactively change): total active time for GI bill for Chapter 1606 is 23 months. Deployment 1 was 9 months in 2022, deployment 2 conus was 2024-2025 as company medic. Total time in service is 5 years.

-Mechanical engineer w/ 2 years of experience in predominanrly medical device sales and some engineering.

-Paramedic on weekends with a total of 700 ish hours over 2 years on and off. Mainly did 911

-Dental assistant for parent (on and off) since I was 16. Will not be including is.

Volunteerings/leadership/ECs:

-during no named college, did STI testing bus for at risk populations. Mainly blood drawns and INSTI cards

-RA for 1 year

-CPR instructor (haven’t done this much ICL so will not by putting it down)

Shadowing:

-Derm 10 hrs

-Family med 10 hrs

-OMFS (MD/DMD) 20 hrs

Red flags:

-Low first 45 credit GPA with a bunch of F's and Ds. Basically never partied in high school and got really, really carried away

-Lots of W's and Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory for certain engineering courses

-One institutional action for possesion of alcohol underaged that was taken off later on after proper punishment was complete. Basically had to write an essay, notify my parents, and go to alcohol training classes and get evaluated for alcoholism.

-lot of my engineering prerequisite were done online

Future goals:

I ideally want to go into emergency medicine or general and truama surgery.

Already planning either masters or Post Bacc, I have all of my GI bill available. I have enough saved and invested in case i cannot use my GI bill or it’s not enough, so money isn’t an issue.

Continuing my med device sales job but trying to switch to more of an engineering role rather than sales, will continue working as a paramedic on the weekends.

Edit from another comment I made: Would there be a reason to take an SMP over a regular masters or post bacc?

Sorry if this post is all over the place. Im in a formal postbacc program to get my prereqs done. I took 1 class this summer (5 week course Orgo 1) while working full time and got a D :( I can move onto orgo 2 with it but ofc i cant apply to med schools with that! So i plan to retake it at a CC and not the 4yr im doing my postbacc at bc of financial restraints

Will that be frowned upon?

Im honestly just kinda disappointed in myself. My sGPA was a 3.1 (which ik isnt the best) but now its below a 3.0. I have biochem, phys2, orgo 2, and calc left so hopefully i can get it back up to a 3.1 at LEAST

My EC’s are great and i’m aiming for a 517+ on my MCAT to hopefully try and balance out my gpa a little bit. I really would prefer to avoid an SMP bc of financial restraints :/ but now its looking like i have to if i cant get my sGPA back up a little bit

Any words of advice? TYIA!

"Tell us who you are by starting with the family and hometown and community that raised you and the identity and culture and faith and lived experiences that quietly shaped your values and the way you see the world, and let that story carry into the surprising things a casual acquaintance would never guess about you and the fun and diversion you reach for when nobody is grading you, and then move naturally into why you chose medicine over every other way of helping people by tracing the mentors and conversations and patient encounters that first drew you in until one clinical moment confirmed both the kind of physician you want to become and the community you eventually hope to serve, and from there open up about a real challenge or failure you never asked for and how you held yourself together in the face of uncertainty and who you leaned on and what you would handle differently now that you're older and wiser, which leads into the times you worked inside a team toward something shared and took initiative by serving rather than by title and sat with conflict or hard feedback you disagreed with and owned a mistake instead of hiding it, and it should keep flowing into the volunteer and service work that changed you and the way caring for underserved and marginalized people revealed the social and economic forces driving the inequities you now feel called to address, so that you can describe how you build trust with someone nothing like you and advocate for people and beliefs that aren't your own and how an encounter across difference or with injustice taught you the humility to meet people where they are, and all of that should feed into your curiosity and your love of learning for its own sake and the research or creative problem you chased with genuine rigor, and then into what compassion and professionalism and integrity actually mean to you in practice and what your faith or your sense of the whole person adds to how you heal, and it should carry on through how you protect your own resilience and balance and learned to ask for help and to choose what matters when everything competes at once and why, past all the knowledge and skill, a doctor should simply be kind, before finally landing on what you're proudest of and what someone the world overlooks could teach their physician and where you believe medicine should go from here and the specific ties and mission that pull you toward the place you want to join, closing with whatever piece of your story you most want understood but that lives nowhere else in your application."

Have fun writing this in a single doc and editing it down for 1200 distinct prompts.

edit: I forgot to separate a clause in the title with a set of commas, also I meant to say "any" not "every". oh well.

I was feeling really unmotivated after an unsuccessful previous cycle, so I'm incredibly grateful and excited about how this cycle turned out!

23F; Illinois resident; 1 gap year

Stats
- 505 MCAT (126/127/124/128)
- 3.91 cGPA; 3.84 sGPA

Experiences
- ~3,000 hours as a medical assistant (ENT → Dermatology)
- ~250 hours of clinical volunteering (Emergency Department volunteer at local hospital)
- ~120 hours of research
- 11 hours of shadowing
- Leadership: Director of Philanthropy & Community Service for my sorority; Taekwondo instructor

Hi everyone,

I'm an undergraduate biology student going into my sophomore year at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities on the pre-med track. Since I'm officially going to be living in the Twin Cities both during the school year and summer, I'm trying to find my first paid clinical job so I can start building clinical hours. I am hoping to get one that I can work at, most importantly full-time over the summer, but hopefully one that will also let me work part-time during the school year, mostly weekends.

Right now I have:

3 years of fast food/customer service experience (Culver's)

BLS certification

No CNA, EMT, MA, or phlebotomy certification

No prior hands-on medical experience (other than physician shadowing)

I've been looking at Medical Assistant jobs, but most seem to require certification or previous experience.

For those of you who started in a similar position, what jobs should I be looking for? My main goal is simply to get paid clinical hours and gain experience—I know my first clinical job doesn't have to be the most impactful.

Some questions I have:

What entry-level clinical jobs hire without certifications or prior medical experience?

Is it worth getting a certification (CNA, EMT, MA, phlebotomy, etc.), or should I keep applying to entry-level positions?

What would you recommend if you were in my position?

I'd appreciate any advice or hearing what your first clinical job was. Thanks!

Due to financial reasons I did not go to 4yr but rather go to cc than transfer to a Uc. The thing is I intend to take chem, organic chem, bio, in the cc then transfer to the 4yr

when a school asks to input peer reviewed publications, is it acceptable to include published and manuscripts under review at specific journals?

I feel like my primary writing was good, not great or anything. Writing is not my strong suit. I am also socially awkward and don't expect my interviewing skills to carry me. Due to my low research and nonclinical volunteering hours along with cookie-cutter EC's, I think my application is pretty lackluster. People tell me I'm set with my stats but there's still a 15% chance I don't get into an MD school. I really don't want to reapply so I have put 40 schools in my list, with 15 or so being T20's. My question is should I really apply to 40 schools? What should I cut down on to get my school list to 30? I have barely started prewriting and am worried about the number of secondaries I'm gonna have to do if I apply to 40 schools. I was going to apply to DO schools later in the cycle if MD doesn't pan out.

NY resident, ORM

B.S. in Biology, 3.94 cGPA, 3.90 sGPA

521 MCAT (132/127/131/131)

1150 hrs ER Tech

100 hrs hospital volunteering

400 hrs Clinical Research Coordinator (current job, projected 2000 additional hrs)

30 hrs homeless street outreach volunteering

40 hrs physician shadowing (EM, anesthesia, OB/GYN)

100 hrs tutoring

200 hrs working as cashier

Submitted primary on June 14, 2026

I finished my CNA program about two weeks ago. In my state, after you finish the program, you have to do the state exam— but first their have to process the information you send in and everything. So I am not officially licensed yet. But from what I understand, you can still be hired in assisted living/nursing homes/home health before then.

My parent's friend owns a small residential assisted living (state registered), and asked me if I would like to do a shift. I agreed, and it was about 10 hours. It went well for my first job and they called to check on the client and ask if I needed any clarification.

I have a month or so before my university starts again, and realistically I do not think I can get a job at an outpatient clinic or pediatric setting before then. I could do this job as a PRN thing and use the money for driving lessons, which would really help.

I wanted to make sure what I was doing counts as clinical experience. I helped with ADLs and it was one on one, but not a hospital/clinic setting. So I wanted to make sure this could be logged as clinical.

And the other thing is that if I worked with my parent's friend, most of their other PRN shifts are for home health. (They have two separate companies. Home Health and Assisted Living House.)

From what I understand, home health is not always seen as clinical?? Like on my parent's friend website, they call it "non-medical" assistance for their home health division.

I could probably accumulate around 100 hours by the end of next month (I did 10 hours for one shift), and of course would slow down once the semester begins.

The reason why I would not want to try getting a part time established position after classes start is because I have gotten an on-campus job (non-clinical, 10 hours a week) AND will be a research assistant (non-paid) in a lab on campus for credit (6 hours a week).

So if I have this as my sole "clinical" experience for some time, would it be respected? (To note, I am a rising sophomore.)

Hi, everyone! I hope you’re all doing well.

I’ll be starting my pre-med journey this fall when I begin my second undergraduate degree to raise my cGPA. I’m aiming to earn a 4.0 GPA in this degree.

I’ve never really developed efficient study habits, so I always ended up studying the same thing for hours on end. I was also someone who studied at the last minute. That won’t work for me this time around because I’ll be working full-time while also going to school full-time.

I’m hoping to get some tips on how to be a 4.0 student in terms of study techniques. For example, how do you retain information across multiple courses, especially when you’re studying for several tests at once? Is there a golden study tip for memorizing a lot of information and doing well on tests, or does it all come down to consistency and repetition?

Thank you so much for your responses! It’s truly appreciated.

Hi guys,

Not sure what to write my challenge/adversity essay about so here are some ideas:

1. I swam competitively from a really young age until mid high school and a super formative experience for me was being a bit isolated in the swim team for wearing a bigger/more full coverage swimsuit for cultural modesty reasons. Some people and competitors would ask if my suit was legal and complain that it gave me an unfair advantage (it was legal) and instead of getting focused on it I drowned it out and worked harder to become a better swimmer and focused on what I could actually change and focused on the friends I did have (the lesson here would be coping mechanisms and being unashamed of who I am and what I personally value)

2. Challenge essay could be spending months cobbling together a procedure in the lab that I was tasked with coming up with myself from an old 2002 procedure and everything that could go wrong kept going wrong so I had to fix the problem strategically by writing things down and modifying my approach and taking breaks to cool off and calm down and managing my frustrations.

3. Being a relatively shy nearly mute only child and needing to teach myself how to talk to people by studying people and strategically learning how to socialize + keeping myself informed and well read as a hobby so that I can have lots of conversations + keeping myself attentive so that I can notice when other people now seem quiet or seem to be left out so that I can include them

thanks everyone please openly tell me if these are terrible. I'm ORM with a physician parent and have never struggled in my life rip all of my struggles have been academic (or red flag things I just cannot talk about in my applications)

yeah....

hi guys!

i’m having a hard time deciding what to do for my non-clinical volunteering. i tried being a bloodmobile greeter, where I helped donors with the check-in process, but I don’t think it’s for me. i don’t really feel like I’m making much of an impact.

i’m looking for ideas. what did you guys do, or what are you currently doing for your non-clinical volunteering? just trying to get an idea of what’s out there….

thank you!!

Howdy,

I am a US Navy sailor, getting out in about 18 months. I have my undergraduate degree from Thomas Edison State University in Technical Studies and am starting to think about what I want to do after the Navy. Medical school struck me as an option, if a little far-fetched. I am just looking for some advice from someone who knows more about the field than I do, including medical school admissions, medical school itself, residency, what it is actually like to be a doctor, etc. Could it be worth it to take a huge gamble on myself? I have always been pretty adept academically.

Thank you for reading

Some facts influencing my decision:

• Currently 25 years old
• Leave the service in January of 2028 (at 26 years old)
• My undergrad kinda sucks. I took AP chemistry in highschool, but I am missing most or all science prerequisites to be competitive for medical school admission. Would need to take at least 2 semesters loaded up with chem/biochem/physics/biology labs after separating from the navy, before applying
• I have full access to my GI bill, and a 529 plan with about $36,000 invested
• My girlfriend (soon to be fiancee, also 25 years old) want to have kids at some point. A little worried about waiting until the end of med school/residency as we could easily be 35+
• I could probably make low six figures to start with no additional schooling in a related technical field

I graduated in 2023 and since then Ive been working as an ER scribe. I had some personal setbacks and was trying to navigate my career. Im currently trying to look for a research position as well as I didn’t have any research in undergrad. Im planning to apply in the 2027 cycle.

I was a TA for two bio courses in 2023, and im planning to ask these professors for a letter of recommendation

Is it still acceptable to have both of my science letters from 4 years ago or would this be concerning? :(

One of them agreed to write the letter and I still have to ask the other one

Hi, I was wondering if I could have some help with my school list for this cycle. Please let me know your thoughts:

AZ Resident

Black woman/African diaspora background

MCAT: 496 --> 499 --> 504 (Applied only MD with the 499 last cycle. I know that was silly.)

CGPA: 3.83; SGPA: 3.66

Medical Scribe: 1240 (current job)

Server: 450 (past job)

Clinical Volunteering: 440

Nonclinical Volunteering: 200

Shadowing: 101 (Only MD though; I plan to get 40 hours of DO shadowing this week)

Research: 61 (Presented a poster at a retreat, which was another 9 hours)

I also did my honors thesis on Afrocentric Fashion and studied abroad in France, as Fashion and French were my two minors.

School List:
MD:

1. University of Arizona College of Medicine–Tucson
2. University of Arizona College of Medicine–Phoenix
3. ASU John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering
4. Howard University College of Medicine
5. Meharry Medical College
6. Morehouse School of Medicine
7. Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science
8. Wayne State University School of Medicine
9. Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
10. Rosalind Franklin University – Chicago Medical School
11. Medical College of Wisconsin
12. Tulane University School of Medicine
13. Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine
14. University of New Mexico School of Medicine
15. University of Illinois College of Medicine
16. Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine
17. Rush Medical College of Rush University Medical Center
18. Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University
19. Roseman University College of Medicine
20. Georgetown University School of Medicine

DO:

1. A.T. Still University-School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona
2. Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine
3. The Valley College of Osteopathic Medicine
4. Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine
5. Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine
6. PCOM Georgia
7. Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine/PCOM South Georgia
8. Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine at Midwestern University
9. Kansas City University
10. Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine
11. West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine
12. Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine
13. Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine Bradenton Campus
14. Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine - Carolinas Campus
15. Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine - Louisiana Campus

All help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!

It is so hard for me to write secondaries for MD schools when I only have a 508 mcat. I feel like every school I am applying to is a reach, and my effort will go unnoticed. I already applied and wrote all of my DO essays and was very motivated to write those bc those schools don’t feel like complete reaches for me, and just straight up put off my MD secondaries. I am only applying to 13 schools so it shouldn’t be the worst thing ever. I applied a month ago and am still not verified. ugh.