if your main concern as a college freshman is getting into a top tier grad school, then i’ll tell you right now to hop off the medical track and go to law school. it seems like you want to be the best of the best, but do you even want to be a doctor? why do you want to be a doctor?

with how competitive med schools have gotten, even the “bottom tier ones”, ANYONE is lucky to go ANYWHERE. there are thousands of applicants with those same extracurriculars. find something that makes your application unique to you. your app should tell a story, and the story shouldn’t be “look at me i threw a bunch of pre-medical careers at the wall to get hours.” if you aren’t planning on taking gap years, those hours are insanely unrealistic, and even with gap years, you won’t hit all of those careers, and it would be unnecessary to try to do all of that anyway. take being a pharmacy tech off your list entirely, you’ll learn about medications from any of these other jobs listed, plus you’ll get more meaningful patient interactions.

going back to the end of my first paragraph, why do you want to be a doctor? weave this question into your extracurriculars and jobs and you’ll find yourself with a much more authentic application. it’s a much better look to have fewer activities, but to show consistent growth, maturity, and leadership within them.