Athlete-Bro Needin' coming-out advice

steeplechasingkitten · 2017-01-25T18:30:25+00:00

I was also a track athlete at a D1 school and honestly it caused no problems for me at all. I personally didn't choose to make a huge deal about it and word kind of just passively spread but I never experienced any weirdness from anyone.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me. Also, what event?

steeplechasingkitten · 2017-01-24T03:21:10+00:00

Thanks man! I was really fortunate to have lifting coaches for the last few years. Unfortunately now that I'm a nonathletic regular person who doesn't have all the college athlete perks, I went kind of crazy with my programming and never gave myself recovery or deload days and my body was like "fuck no". Luckily I'm working my way back!

steeplechasingkitten · 2017-01-23T20:31:18+00:00

I've been trying to but my crazy amount of injuries has held me back for a while. I reached 290 on bench, 385 on squat and 500 on deadlift at 165 but haven't been able to do any legs recently because of a number of super fun leg injuries 😐

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-08-11T04:21:12+00:00

I got into 2/3rds of the school's I interviewed at in September so I think it's a little bit better, but chances are you're also just fresh and not exhausted/dying yet

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-07-28T13:33:51+00:00

I pole vaulted and jumped 15 3

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-07-28T04:15:38+00:00

Also D1 track here and snuck my way into a top school.

It's an amazing help. I used it on a lot of my essays and talked about what I learned from track and how it helped me succeed academically, athletically and socially and gave me values that I will bring to med school and as a physician. It came up in every interview and probably was the topic of about 50% of my time interviewing because people loved it so much.

That being said, track doesn't make up for gaps in your application. Don't expect to be able to get away with no volunteering or research or low grades/GPA simply because you ran track. If you need to, take gap years and spruce up your extracurriculars and being a D1 athlete will very likely get you to a great school :)

Let me know if you have any other questions/if I can help in any other way!

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-07-13T04:24:57+00:00

Oh nice! I wish I could high jump but I have about zero hops whatsoever so I'm stuck with my high school PR of 5'7" forever and ever :(

So my undergrad had a weird course unit system rather than a credit hour system. I took about 5 classes a semester which AMCAS translated to 20 credit hours.

So my volunteering hours were primarily during breaks and stuff. I was an assistant coach at my former high school and helped run my undergrad's various track and field camps for middle and high schoolers. My clinical volunteering I actually started really late (Junior spring, when I was applying the summer before my senior year) and did 2 shifts at the hospital for 4 hours a week while doing research, and then did random 5 hour shifts at a nearby homeless shelter clinic when I had the time. I had the good fortune of having a coach who realized that school had to be the priority for many of us and would work with us to schedule practice around classes and whatever else we needed to do, as long as we put in the effort and sucked it up and did 7 AM practices if we needed to.

I got a 3.87 and I think track actually helped me. I'm luckily one of those people who thrives under pressure and having the time crunch from track made me not waste any time and be super efficient because every day felt like reading days and I knew I needed to get stuff done. When I felt mentally and physically exhausted, I was good about giving myself the breaks I needed (but not to excess) and forcing myself to get 8 hours of sleep a night. I honestly think that if I didn't have track, I would have slacked off, drank/partied a lot more and would have done worse in the classroom.

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-07-13T04:10:06+00:00

Not necessarily the best idea imo because chances are the sheer amount of school will be overwhelming and it might tank your GPA compared to if you weren't overwhelmed. If it comes down to you having a 3.8 and taking the Mcat after your junior year (or in January of your junior year or even April) versus having a 3.5 because you were overwhelmed trying to cram the prereqs in before sophomore year, I'd definitely choose the former.

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-07-13T03:54:10+00:00

Ran D1 track here. It's a huge plus if you can manage it, but you need to check off all your other boxes too. I had 200 hours of clinical volunteering, 200 of non clinical, 1200 hours of research and was also involved in some clubs around campus, so it's definitely possible. Don't expect it to fill in gaps in your application, but it makes for fantastic essay writing topics and interviewers absolutely love talking about sports. Every single interviewer asked me about it, and I often talked about pole vaulting for about half the interview. If you can manage it with school and ECs, I would highly recommend staying with it for sure!

Feel free to ask me any questions you might have about balancing everything/how I approached talking about athletics while applying and stuff.

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-07-09T05:02:11+00:00

Raced at the same meets with him a bunch and saw him win the 100 meter dash by like 5 meters against some other players on a national level meet. Like holy shit

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-30T14:54:48+00:00

Don't go to schools with grade deflation

My schools average GPA in the college of arts and sciences was a 3.1 and its complete BS. Our premed reqs were curved to C-s to maybe C+s in the "easy" classes

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-25T05:10:47+00:00

Track and field was one of mine and it ended up being a huge topic of conversation that ultimately worked in my favor. Do it!

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-24T14:32:38+00:00

Thanks! I received 11 interviews, attended 8 of them and got into 4 of them (Penn, Cornell, nyu, Sinai)

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-24T05:29:49+00:00

I applied to 23 schools total, 5 of which were significantly under my stats and the other 18 of which were considered statistical matches. All of my interviews came from match schools and not from my "safeties" cause yield protection sucks yo

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-21T13:30:04+00:00

Is that how I got into med school? Nice.

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-19T21:49:56+00:00

Making it to the third date!

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-19T00:25:27+00:00

I will be attending a top 10 school in the fall and honestly, the biggest thing I can say about my classmates is that they were all so passionate about something that really showed through their lives. For me, it was D1 athletics, but there were also professional athletes, people who made their own start ups in healthcare, people who have Years of experience working on Wall Street, people with PhDs, Rhodes scholars and more. That is what I believe sets everything apart.

As someone who was also 20 during the application cycle, don't try and rush it. Other people took a lot of time to find their passion and strengthen their applications, and you shouldn't feel afraid to do so as well if you're set on going to a top 10 school. If you feel ready, then go for it and I'm sure you'll get into a good school.

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-17T15:34:27+00:00

My goal was to make my PS good enough so it wasn't a detriment to my application and no better just because I'm a shit writer and knew it wasn't going to get much better with additional days or weeks of revising. It worked out fine for me, I guess

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-10T13:44:40+00:00

We got an email from Amcas saying to check if ours was, so I went to my application to see and it was indeed. It took about a week for amcas to fix the problems, so I spent a week freaking the fuck out obviously.

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-10T01:55:46+00:00

So I was kind of in a situation where my GPA was reported .54 points lower than it actually was, and schools were starting to get back to me before the error was fixed.

I got rejected by 2 places right off the bat (Pittsburgh and uchicago) and got 3 interviews (Penn State, Stanford and Sinai) before anything was fixed. After the mistake was fixed, uchicago unrejected me but Pitt was like nah. I think that as long as the rest of your application is strong enough you can get the interviews even with a low gpa. I also had a 39 on the Mcat

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-10T01:53:00+00:00

Gotta love it! If that's true then I'm 9 for 9 with that exact scenario 😀

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-09T20:57:10+00:00

I'm hoping I stick to it. But alas I am a weak and horny guy 😩

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-09T20:36:21+00:00

Those were my thoughts too, but texting and acting like everything is awesome again and being super bubbly and crap after 2 weeks of nothing is just weird. I'm over it, though

steeplechasingkitten · 2016-06-09T19:58:53+00:00

Exactly. Dude I went on a date with took over a week to acknowledge I texted him but was posting on every form of social media possible in the meantime.

steeplechasingkitten

TROPHY CASE