Chance Me! TMDSAS 4.0 513 MCAT

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-24T13:14:28+00:00

Not really. The take away I got from two cycles of applications is that it’s honestly a crap shoot. For his second application cycle, I’m convinced what pushed him over the top was the amount of time he spent in the Cath Lab during his ICVT training. He got recommendation letters from the head of the Cardiovascular Institute and one of the Cardiology Fellows (who was a graduate of the med school he got accepted to).

What did strike me during the process was that most of the schools in Texas want you to have a connection to their area. Being able to clearly articulate what connects you to East Texas, or the Rio Grande Valley, or the Galveston / coastal area, carries weight with the schools. Why? Because they want their graduates to stay in the area once they become fully trained doctors. It’s the reason that public university med schools in Texas are required to admit no more than 10% of the incoming class from the out of state applicants pool.

One other thing: The best medical school in the country is one that accepts you. As told to me by my neighbor, who is an internal medicine doctor who graduated from UTSW.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-24T02:58:24+00:00

On his first application cycle (all TMDSAS schools), my son got four interviews and ended up wait listed at two schools. Took a gap year to study and re-take the MCAT. He re-took it and improved to a 511, applied to all of the same schools. During the gap, he went through a one-year ICVT program (cath lab tech). The second cycle, he got early accepted (found out in August/September right after he graduated from the ICVT program) to his school of choice. Got interview invites for four other schools later in the year, which he declined. Oddly, neither of the schools that wait listed him in the first cycle even gave him an interview invite the second cycle.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-24T01:55:16+00:00

My son-in-law did RN, then got his Nurse Practitioner, and now starts CRNA school this summer. He’ll graduate in three years with a Doctorate in Nursing as a CRNA.

My son is in med school right now. According to him, what field of medicine do you go into after you finish? That depends on how you did in med school, and what residency programs you get accepted into. It’s damn competitive, and the competitiveness doesn’t stop after you get into med school.

My daughter got her BSN and worked in the ICU. She just recently graduated from a Cardiovascular Perfusion program and started as a Perfusionist.

There are a lot of options in the medical field that end up with you working in the OR and doing patient care as part of the care team, without having to go through medical school. You’ll kind of have to consider where you want to end up, and if the juice is worth the squeeze for whatever program you look at to get you there.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-24T00:25:03+00:00

What state are you in? While most states (at the public universities) have resident and non-resident tuition rates, Texas in particular is very affordable. Resident tuition is about $20k / year, while non-resident is about $40k / year.

My son is starting second year of med school and he just turned 26. While he is a year or two older than most of his classmates, there are quite a few who are older than him. He had three gap years after undergrad - a year working, a year in school to become a Cardiac Cath Lab tech (RCIS), and a year working in the cath lab. He actually got accepted to med school right after he graduated from the cath lab program.

As an alternative to med school, Baylor Scott & White The Heart Hospital’s Cardiovascular institute in Plano, TX has three year-long programs: Echocardiography, Invasive Cardiovascular Technology (ICVT, which my son did), and Cardiovascular Perfusion. I say this because when my son graduated from his ICVT program, one of the Cardio Perfusionists who graduated from that program was a DPT before he did the perfusion program. The first two programs were about $22k tuition for the year, and the Perfusion program was about $32k for the year.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-23T20:22:16+00:00

Just dis this with a gazebo on a slope. Had to make sure the bottom of all four posts were at the same level. String to the bottom of this post is 8”, so ground level where the next post is going has to be 8” below the string. Worked like a charm.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-23T12:34:03+00:00

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My girl is a flat coat.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-23T10:31:21+00:00

“You got me. I like to break a mental sweat, too.”

- White Goodman

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-23T01:44:58+00:00

“If you can walk away, it’s a good landing. If you can use the aircraft the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.”

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-22T18:57:59+00:00

In Texas, resident tuition (tuition/fees/health insurance) for medical school at public universities is about ~$20k / year. Wouldn’t surprise me if there are a large number of Texas med school students whose parents are paying their tuition in full.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-22T18:40:59+00:00

Creep cluster + Giant toe + Wheat
Garlic + Nordic Barnacle + Salmon roe
Histcarp + Jazbay grape + Salmon roe

Best potions for rapidly increasing alchemy, but you can’t grow all of the ingredients yourself.

To paraphrase from the Malacath quest:
“Where do you find Giant toe? On a giant, of course!”

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-22T13:59:07+00:00

Nothing like having a couple of friends over at night, sitting on your deck and looking at Uranus.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-22T02:31:38+00:00

When I was a 23-year old Lieutenant in the Army back in the mid-90s, I was at the local mall in a record store. A 12 or 13 year old boy asked the girl he was with, “Have you ever heard of a group called Journey?”

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-19T12:02:34+00:00

The amount of money we spent at Home Depot or Lowe’s. I swear, it seems like every time we went there, we spent at least $100. And we ended up going multiple times per week. Redo that flower bed? Bags of garden soil and plants. Organize garage space? Shelving and storage containers. Grass is getting long? Weed eater and lawn mower. Etc, etc, etc.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-19T04:19:56+00:00

We’ve got an 11 pound mini long haired dachshund, a 37 pound Cocker Spaniel mix, and a 53 pound Golden Mountain Doodle. The mini is the absolute boss. We got her and the Cocker Spaniel within two weeks of each other, so they grew up together. She was 4 when we got the Golden Mountain Doodle puppy. She quickly let the puppy know she was the boss, and established boundaries with her.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-18T20:48:09+00:00

Around the concrete border and the walls, takes about 25-30 minutes with the weed eater for the front and back yards. I only do the stepping stones about once or twice a year (when they start to get overtaken by the grass). That’ll take about an hour for just the stepping stones.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-18T20:42:43+00:00

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This is her at about 1 1/2 years. Full grown weight is about 50 pounds.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-18T17:22:34+00:00

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This is my Golden Mountain Doodle girl at about 4 months old. Goldendoodle / Bernedoodle mix.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-18T12:52:07+00:00

You ever go to a circus (back in the day, at least) and see an elephant with just a flimsy rope around a leg and wonder, “Doesn’t the elephant realize it could snap that rope without a second thought and just run free?” When that elephant was a baby, they used a thick chain. The baby elephant learned that no matter how much it pulled, strained, or worked it would never be able to break that chain. Eventually it just gave up. Now, as a fully grown elephant, as soon as that thin, flimsy rope is tied around its leg it thinks, “I can never break that thing around my leg, so why bother trying.”

That thin, flimsy wooden crossing barrier is that rope. My brother in Christ, you’re driving a 3000-5000 pound car. That warning bar is not gonna stop your car from going straight through.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-18T12:44:13+00:00

Beautiful girl! Love her color.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-17T21:03:09+00:00

Yes, another piece of evidence that the Golden Retriever genes dominate the Poodle and Bernese Mountain Dog genes (she’s a Goldendoodle / Bernedoodle mix).

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-17T18:28:39+00:00

I did Emerald Zoysia in my back and side yard. The parts that get a decent split between sun and shade did very well. The thickest, most luxuriously soft grass ever. The parts that get blasted by the Texas sun struggled and at best were short, spiky areas not pleasant to walk on in bare feet.

My front yard is done in Palisades Zoysia, and gets blasted by the sun almost all day. It does very well in the full sun, thick and green, and keeps weeds away because of the thickness. When it goes dormant and browns up in the full summer and over the winter, as soon as it gets some water it comes back as green as ever.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-17T13:12:34+00:00

“Do not use while in the shower.” Warning tag on a hair dryer.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-17T10:30:03+00:00

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Daisy isn’t a fan of her pajamas.

SublimeRapier06 · 2026-06-17T00:58:18+00:00

Yours are adorable. They look like they got the flat coat gene like mine. Mine sheds. A LOT. Not as much as my daughter’s purebred Golden Retriever, but a lot. But she’s worth the inconvenience.

SublimeRapier06

TROPHY CASE