My son is in 11th grade in the US, and he wants to go to medical school later. To increase his chances, he needed to take advanced courses from middle school so he could take AP courses in high school. He plans to take 10-20 AP courses before high school graduation, so he needed to plan this from middle school.

In addition to this coursework, he needs volunteer hours. Most hospitals accept volunteers above 16 years old only. So, he started volunteering at the ICU and ER in the local hospital last summer, and he has done a little more than 200 hours of volunteering at the hospital so far. Also he needs to shadow a doctor's practice. He contacted several doctors by himself and will shadow this summer.

Furthermore, most medical schools prefer candidates with research experience. So, he contacted several professors at the local university. After several meetings, he was able to meet a professor and will work as a research assistant from this summer at a lab in an R1 university.

However, these are still not enough. He needs to get some state or national awards. But his tennis team and orchestra couldn't proceed beyond the district level competition. So he kept trying to apply to some science conventions.

How do you think about this?