we henceforth refer to as a “quantum dot") have demonstrated an ability to reliably generate coalescing Andreev bound states (ABSs) that give rise to zero-bias conductance peaks persisting over large ranges of applied magnetic field strength, consistent with what one might expect to observe in the presence of MBSs.

With the advent of hybrid experimental systems that can be tuned [@Vaitiekenas:2018; @deMoor:2018] to the strong-proximity regime, there has been a recent theoretical emphasis placed on realistic treatments of the proximity effect in this limit while accounting for the small thickness of the superconducting shell. Studies based on an analytical tunneling Hamiltonian approach [@Reeg:2017_3; @Reeg:2018; @Reeg:2018_2] have shown that all material parameters (such as effective mass, $g$-factor, and spin-orbit strength) of the semiconductor get significantly renormalized toward their corresponding values in the superconductor due to the strong proximity coupling (similarly to studies assuming the superconductor to be infinitely large [@Sau:2010prox; @Stanescu:2010; @Potter:2011; @Tkachov:2013; @Zyuzin:2013; @Cole:2015; @vanHeck:2016; @Hell:2017; @Stanescu:2017; @Reeg:2017_2]) and that all subbands within the semiconductor experience very large shifts in their effective chemical potentials that are highly dependent on the geometry of the superconducting shell. The combination of these two effects makes it difficult to realize a topological phase in 