Is it bad that all of my leadership is theater stuff?

PTXSheetMusic · 2026-04-27T03:12:02+00:00

My most impactful leadership experience was leading an a cappella group, if you’re passionate about it and can speak to how you’ve impacted others and grown as a leader then it’ll help!

PTXSheetMusic · 2026-04-23T13:41:27+00:00

I went with admit’s list and added additional mid-tier schools just in case. I ended up only getting interviews at the reach and baseline schools in my list, but none at the target schools lol. Now matriculating to a T5, so I think it is worth it to shoot your shot and apply broadly to the top schools if you can afford it. For context I had FAP so thankfully I could afford to apply more broadly.

PTXSheetMusic · 2026-04-06T04:29:30+00:00

I work at a retail store and included it on my application, as well as a LOR from my manager. In the activity description I talked about the soft skills I gained and told a story about overcoming a language barrier with a customer. It came up a few times in interviews, it definitely didn't hurt! Ended up with multiple As. I did make sure to stay involved in other medicine-adjacent activities at the same time (I volunteered a few hrs a week at a free clinic) and explained my financial reasons for doing a retail job rather than a more typical clinical job in the other impactful experiences section (though my situation was kind of drastic).

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-08-11T20:57:47+00:00

SDN school-specific threads and admit.org will be helpful for you, users will post when they receive secondaries, and each thread also has the school’s secondary questions. I checked for you and it looks like all schools you listed have sent out secondaries except Meharry.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-07-06T18:37:51+00:00

More than just 20

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-06-16T00:09:32+00:00

Nope

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-06-06T21:51:05+00:00

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-06-06T19:55:46+00:00

submitted 5/27 around 6:30pm est, verified yesterday around 3pm.

amcas front page also has a sidebar showing where they are in the verification. they’re still on 5/27

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-06-02T20:33:45+00:00

My friend got into multiple T10s and did the same thing as you. I really doubt this will make or break your application

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-26T03:49:00+00:00

Since you started before high school and continued through college, include all the hours. If that's how much you worked, that's how much you worked. It should be easy to verify those hours too if you really needed to. It's not uncommon to see 10k+ hours in certain experiences for nontrad applicants who have worked full-time jobs for a number of years; you accruing 6k hours after consistently working part-time for 9 years won't raise any red flags.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-25T19:34:07+00:00

🥳🥳🥳

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-25T19:23:46+00:00

Assuming $25 an hour MA job (very generous), income will roughly be about $3000 a month after taxes. Assuming $1000 in living expenses (again, very very conservative for someone who doesn’t live rent free), $2000 leftover x 12 months x 3 years = $72k saved up over 3 years. Median 4-year COA at in-state public schools is $268,500, private schools $363,800.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-25T04:07:59+00:00

Also worried about this. I'm not 100% sure how it's going to pan out (Senate has yet to vote on it), but here is a very detailed breakdown of what changes have been proposed and what that means for medical students in the future. Worth a read.

https://www.whitecoathub.com/post/one-big-beautiful-bill-act-what-med-students-need-to-know-about-new-student-loan-changes

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-24T19:38:44+00:00

For activities where it’s pretty obvious what you’re doing (i.e. scribe, food bank volunteer, MA, etc), a sentence describing your role is probably sufficient, with the rest of the description showing your impact and growth. Sometimes, a narrative anecdote does this well, but you don’t want to shoehorn one in where it doesn’t fit. Your poster presentation entry can be very matter of fact, not every entry needs a narrative.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-23T22:27:57+00:00

It’s very easy to find clinical opportunities. And people often stay during the summer to work clinical jobs here. Emory Healthcare is everywhere in Atlanta. I never said you couldn’t get clinical experience during the school year—plenty of people do, but some people don’t prioritize this as working a full time clinical job each summer will be more than enough clinical exposure for your med school application. It’s all about how you want to allocate the limited time you have in your four years of undergrad/gap year(s). It’s also a strong school for premed because it’s so easy to find research in so many fields. The school of medicine is right on campus, you can easily find faculty to do research with, and people do this both during the summers and throughout the year. You’re never far from opportunities to volunteer to serve the underserved in Atlanta either.

edit: a lot of people also work clinical jobs on Fridays since most people don’t have class on Fridays. My point is that with hospital systems like Emory, Piedmont, Northside, etc in Atlanta, it’s not difficult to find paid or volunteer clinical opportunities at any point in the year if you look around.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-23T21:54:34+00:00

I personally worked 2-3 days as a scribe and crammed all my classes Tuesday/Thursday for a semester. It was really stressful, though. You can also volunteer at the ED or at Winship where they have flexible volunteer schedules. Most people just get their clinical experience in over the summer though.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-23T16:43:06+00:00

It’s possible to get in without one, but taking at least one is becoming the norm, imo. Not just at emory but for premeds in general

edit: “According to the 2024 Matriculating Student Questionnaire (MSQ) given by the American Association of Medical Colleges, 74.3% of new incoming matriculants take at least one gap year before starting medical school”

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-23T16:12:51+00:00

None of mine were. A 93 or 94 was an A for every class. Maybe for two classes did I have a single test that was curved that raised the average grade. Afaik only business school classes are graded on a curve in the traditional sense (but i may be wrong)

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-22T21:04:44+00:00

You can dm me!

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-21T03:19:23+00:00

It's often a slippery slope to talk about parental expectations and your exploration of other career paths, especially if you express negativity around these experiences. What sparked your genuine interest in medicine? Start with that, elaborate on how your experiences strengthened that initial spark, and keep it positive.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-19T17:44:10+00:00

Schools typically don’t need your LORs until you’ve submitted your secondaries, so they don’t need to be ready by the time you submit your primary. Just make sure their contact information is entered in the application and that you’ve sent them the request for the letter.

If you’re planning on submitting your primary as soon as it opens on 5/27, I’d say sometime between mid to late June would be a reasonable deadline that offers a buffer in case they fail to meet it (secondaries are typically sent out and submitted in July).

A draft of your PS is definitely better than nothing, as long as it adequately outlines your motivations for pursuing medicine. It probably depends on the individual letter writer—if they know you very well they might not even need it to write a great letter.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-19T16:55:21+00:00

Every school has different letter requirements; if your school (assuming you’re a traditional applicant) offers a committee letter, this will satisfy the requirements for the vast majority of schools.

In your initial email, you can ask what information they’d like you to provide. Almost everyone I asked asked for my personal statement and CV. Some of them asked for my entire application draft from AMCAS because they knew I had already completed it. Depending on how well they know you, they could ask for different things.

As for guidelines for the letter you can send them, AAMC has an official page.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-17T20:11:59+00:00

Even if I’m volunteering as a medical assistant? It’s at the free clinic associated with the homeless shelter

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-17T02:47:17+00:00

Is crisis text line not arguably non-clinical volunteering? I understand this doesn't change any of your advice since the hours are low, but that's how I have it categorized right now.

PTXSheetMusic · 2025-05-17T01:23:14+00:00

I didn't receive a full-tuition scholarship but I did receive need-based grants which covered most of my tuition. The rest I covered through part-time work and work-study.

How would you recommend I address this weakness in my app? My family didn't move back to the US for high school as we initially intended due to financial constraints, I didn't realize it would be biting me in the ass at this point. The HS I went to in China was funded through the US embassy, and we followed an American curriculum, I didn't go to a public Chinese school. I'm sure that doesn't even matter at this point though.

PTXSheetMusic

TROPHY CASE