I’m 3 classes away from a BS in Finance, with what will probably be about a 2.6 GPA by the time I’m done. I’m 28 now an the majority of my poor grades were when I was 18-23. Bottom line is that I was foolish. I was going into a family business, just in school to please my parents, and just wanting to get by and get it over with. That’s the whole that I’m in.
I took a few years off and now I’m extremely motivated and hardworking, and much more mature. I’m sure from here out I can keep above a 3.6 in my classes. What I’m thinking about doing since I have all of the General Ed classes done, is also getting a BS in Biology. If I can keep above a 3.6 in my Biology degree and can score well on the MCAT, what would be my chances then of getting into a med school, or a DO school? Would schools look at the time difference and see that my recent degree with all science courses was competitive with other applicants, even though my courses from 4 or 5 years ago (which will be 6 or 7 years ago by then) were poor?
Also, by then I’ll have a few hundred volunteer hours with a hospital and a few hundred volunteer hours with a charity (unrelated to medicine).
Do you think I’ll have a chance at being accepted? Thanks for your opinions and advice!
Of course. It won’t help you to have a bad overall GPA bringing you down, but you have a few things working for you…one, you’ll be able to show a very steep upward trend on your GPA, which will show that you mean business. Two, if you can chalk it up to being young and immature, and show that you’ve changed, then I would imagine most med schools would be somewhat understanding of that. More importantly, you said your degree is going to be in finance, which gives me the impression that you probably haven’t really taken any of the pre-med reqs such as general chem, organic chem, etc…which is great, because that means if you take all those classes and do well, you’ll still have an extremely good science GPA to help counteract a mediocre overall GPA.
I would say take a few of the pre-med reqs such as general chemistry and biology, and see how you do, then go from there.
yes you do have a chance. That is what this site is all about. There are those of us, myself included, who have not done well in college and are either in medical school or have completed medical school.
what you need to do is ensure that you do not repeat any mistakes from the past and realize that you are running a marathon and not a sprint. It will take time and you need to be patient.
Welcome to OPM, you are among kindred spirits and any questions that you have do not hesitate to ask them.
Gabe
Well, i believe my circumstances are a little different, yet I am wondering if its fixable. I am a 28 year old in undergrad. I have a family, and a part-time job at an Optometry office. Unfortunately, I have gone 4 semesters trying to work, take care of home, and study all alone. In turn, my GPA has suffered tremendously. Right now I sit a a whopping 2.0, and yet my desire to become a doctor is stronger than ever. I have not spoken with an advisor seriously yet because of the sheer fact when I say medical school, and 2.0 in the same sentence they do not consider it. Therefore, I decided to add a Minor in Women Studies to my current B.S. in Biology. Do you think doing this will allow me to boost my GPA? Confused, Am I doing enough? I need to know what I can do to turn this around.
Hmm…
First of all, don’t try to do all the working, full time school, etc. all at once. Cut back on something and figure out why you’re not doing well and make sure you fix it. If you can get great grades from here on out, and do well in the advanced sciences, you can pull things up a bit. Do that first and see where you are and how you can do on the MCAT. You may need to take additional sciences electives to pull things up.
Adding a non-science major just to get more credits to pull up your grades is probably not the best thing. You want a high overall GPA, sure, but you want a high Sciences GPA, too.
Now, if you LOVE Women’s Studies and it’s a passion and you’ll do well in it because of that, that can be another story. But the bigger issue is to figure out what’s keeping you from performing super-well and fixing that first.
HUM,
Yes, you DO have a priority problem…
You might check “Richard’s rules”:
http://www.oldpremeds.org/fusionbb/showtopic.php?f…
Richard
Thank You for your advice.
THANKS!! I’ll check it out.
Humble,
You can’t afford any more poor semesters. If necessary, consider taking a semester or two off. During that time off, critically evaluate what has gone wrong for you so far and formulate a strategy to fix them in the future. Is time management the issue or something else?
And no, the women’s studies thing isn’t going to help you much. Only add it as a minor if it’s something you are truly interested in. If not, then you are better off taking more science courses and doing well in order to raise your science GPA. With four semesters already under your belt and a cum of 2.0, it may be very difficult to raise your GPA to a competitive level (depending on how many math/science courses you have already taken), so you will need to show a recent trend of lots of excellent science grades in order to show adcoms that you can handle a science load.
Good luck.
So…Emergency,
Does Medical school admissions consider both GPA’s, or is it required that you have a specific cum. GPA before they even review your application. At this point I have not taken Organic (I or II), or Physics (I or II). I still have about 4 (300 level) science courses to take before I graduate. Therefore, do you think that I have a good chance of increasing my chances. I just finished exams yesterday, and I have decided to quit my part-time job so that I can focus more on school. My genetics professor offered me a small 5-10hr paid position working in the lab during the spring semester. I thought that the lab opportunity would give me more lab experience, and expose me to a stimulating environment where I can apply what I have learned so far. I am really narrowing down my decisions.
- RBinLouisville Said:
I took a few years off and now I'm extremely motivated and hardworking,
OK I have to tell you a couple of things:
All college work counts so the overall GPA is everything you have ever done averaged together, this includes retakes at college that even if the college "Replaced the grade" if the failed course grade still shows up on the transcript then AMCAS counts it.
So get a copy of all your past work in college to see what is on it.
Now years later you go back, all undergrad work is averaged into the old undergrad work as I said above, so you will need to get the average up to about at least 3.4 so you make it past the cutoffs in the screening. They will see the new work you can tell them in the personal statement that you have grown, but bottom line here, they turn down 60% of all that apply so you need to make a case for yourself, of why they should accept you when there are so many qualified.
This is not for the weak of heart, you have to "Burn to do this"
You can do it if you Burn for this.
Good Luck
Replying to a couple of different posts here:
- Quote:
I have to disagree slightly with Bill here. My experience has been that MOST (not all) schools at least claim that they will evaluate your entire application before sending it to the reject pile and not just reject based on GPA or MCAT scores. I had an undergrad cum GPA of 2.76, was only able to bring it up to a 3.1 with my postbacc work and got interviews at all of the schools I applied to. When I was applying, I talked to several admissions offices and they all said that they would take recent, strong coursework into consideration and that my overall GPA wouldn't necessarily get me immediately rejected.
Now, that being said, you do want to get your GPA as high as possible and your recent GPA to be outstanding. Some schools will automatically reject based on GPA or MCAT, especially your higher tier schools. You can always call and ask them if they will review your file and recent coursework and reconsider. This has worked successfully for some people.
- Quote:
I kind of answered that above. The application breaks down your grades by year (freshman, sophomore, etc) and also has a category for post-bacc. They also break down a BCPM (biology, chemistry, physics, and math) GPA and a "all other GPA. They will calculate a GPA for each of those categories as well as a cumulative GPA.
- Quote:
Good luck. In order to have a chance you REALLY need to do well from here on out.
- DRFP Said:
All college work counts so the overall GPA is everything you have ever done averaged together, this includes retakes at college that even if the college "Replaced the grade" if the failed course grade still shows up on the transcript then AMCAS counts it.
So get a copy of all your past work in college to see what is on it.
Now years later you go back, all undergrad work is averaged into the old undergrad work as I said above, so you will need to get the average up to about at least 3.4 so you make it past the cutoffs in the screening. They will see the new work you can tell them in the personal statement that you have grown, but bottom line here, they turn down 60% of all that apply so you need to make a case for yourself, of why they should accept you when there are so many qualified.
Random comments:
Each medical school evaluates the gpas in their own way, and they don't usually broadcast which they place the most importance on. Some schools think the science gpa is more important, others think the cumulative is more indicative.
With luck, they will notice a trend line upward. Or, you may have to help them see this by virtue of a letter of explanation.
The average gpa *range* for matriculating med students is 3.2-4.0. The midpoint is 3.6 (in all three gpa categories...science, non-science, cum).
All green-card holders are considered in the same way as U.S. citizens.
It's unlikely that doing a Women's Studies minor will do anything to help you get into med school. But if this is a subject you like very much, by all means delve deeply into it. Don't worry about having a "minor" on your transcript.
ALL grades ever(!) taken in/at college level must be reported on your AMCAS application. (AACOMAS has somewhat different requirements in this area.) For AMCAS, even if the original grade of a repeated course has been dropped from your transcript, you still MUST report what the replaced grade was.
Cheers,
Judy