Community College

I’ve read that you should not go to a communtiy college unless you have to,because it is not competitive enough. Im currently attending a community collge and will be going to a 4 year in Sept to get my BS in biology. Will that hurt my chances of getting into Med. School? THANKS

Definitely do a search of “community college”. There are some great threads out there and links. The answer really is “depends”. Depends on the Medical School you want to go to. Contact them directly. The SOM I want to attend says that as long as your upper level courses at a University are good, they will in essence consider your community college grades as accurate of your ability.


However, other medical schools aren’t going to be familiar with your CC and may choose to throw it out. I find it all very strange as the MCAT is the great equalizer and those of us that have to go to CC due to financial, distance et cetera should not be penalized. We should be given equal opportunity. I came to the conclusion that a school that will not look at my application due to my CC is probably not a school that I would jive with. (Just trying to make myself feel better, right? LOL)Okay, get off of my soap box now. Best wishes.



Thanks Kimberly for your response, I agree college is college and no matter if it’s a CC we all are trying our best. lol thanks again.

Like Kimberly said, it “depends.” Since you are planning to transfer to the four year and take plenty of upper level sciences there, it probably won’t matter that much. For someone like me, doing a post-bac, it matters more because I wouldn’t have the University courses afterward. It also depends on which schools you are trying to enter. For state allopathic schools it is probably more critical since they are more competitive. UF in Gainesville basically told a post-bac friend that he was wasting his time and would not be competitive if he didn’t do his post-bac at a University. For private and DO schools it probably matters slightly less. These are only rough generalities.


Until this semester I always thought there was no real difference between CC and University. Now I’m not so sure. I finished Chem 1 with 102 average at my CC last spring and am now struggling to hang onto my A- in Chem 2 at the University. I’m not sure if it’s really harder or if it’s just the fact that the pedagogic paradigm for this professor is completely different (long story).


Best of luck.

I attended community college in California prior to transferring to UCLA and was able to get into UCSD School of Medicine. I think it did not hurt me.


That said, I was able to do extremely well at UCLA and on my MCAT exam. My perception is that your MCAT scores are the lens through which just about everything academic is evaluated. Your GPA, undergraduate institution, etc… all get “normalized” when you take the standardized test because your scores are directly comparable to everyone else regardless of background.


Do extremely well on the MCAT. Pre-reqs are necessary checkboxes in my opinion, based admittedly on only one meaningful experience. I imagine the details of your pre-reqs will only be scrutinized very closely if your MCAT is weak.