27, white, female, military spouse, mother of 1 (due with my second on 3/5/20).
A few questions:
- I have my #1 goal school based on location. Anywhere else will make it way more difficult but I’ll be applying to 3 other schools in my state. If one of the biggest reasons I want to go into medicine is my kids, should I reveal this to my goal school? I’ve heard “if they don’t accept you because of it, why would you want to be there anyway?” And I understand that… but I really want to go into this specific school. I’m just afraid something will be missing from my story if I don’t reveal that… but I don’t want them to think I won’t be able to handle the load.
- I’m really nervous about my GPA. It’s not up to med school standards. The median for my goal school is 3.6-3.7 so I’m below that. I know a strong MCAT won’t necessarily make up for it. I detailed my background below. Any suggestions on how to be a stronger applicant aside from filling in the obvious gaps (where I mention 0 hours below) and getting a strong MCAT?
- I took two courses toward my MBA (4.0) a year ago because my company paid for it. I decided no, I don’t want to continue down my current path, so I’m not going to continue this program. I’m going to work toward medicine. Does this look as bad as I think it does? Like I have no idea what I want to do? (Even though that’s not the case)
Background:
*3.39 cGPA / ~3.0 sGPA from bachelor’s in forensic science 2014.
*3.81 cGPA / ~ 3.5 sGPA just excluding grades (As) for research from master’s in chemistry 2016 (master’s of philosophy because I left after becoming a PhD candidate when I finally knew I didn’t want to go into research or industry and I didn’t write a thesis… not smart, I know).
*Upward trend (Cs in entry level bio/chem courses up to A- in UG physical chemistry, A in graduate pchem, B+ graduate bioorganic chemistry, As in spectroscopy courses, etc).
*Worked full time through undergrad (not sure if this makes a difference), did computational physical chem research for two semesters (2 local poster presentations), competed on a national mock trial team for Jr & Sr year.
*Teaching assistant for physical chemistry lab, gen chem lab x2, and forensic chemistry lab while in grad school.
*I’ve been working in pharmaceutical sales for 3 years since graduating.
Med school wasn’t on my radar during school. It wasn’t until I began working in Pharma sales and meeting lots of physicians that I realized wow, I want to be a physician. I hear from physicians almost daily about the good, bad, and ugly, and I want part of every bit of it. Of course there’s much more to my WHY than this, but this was my AH HA moment.
As of now:
*Shadowing 0 hours (working on this… can’t shadow doctors I know through my job so looking outside a large geographical area)
*Clinical 0 hours (took EMT exam yesterday so pending results, I’ll get my hours through this)
*Volunteer 10 hours (in training for multiple other opportunities so I’ll have at the very least 400 hours by the time I apply in June 2021… 3 different nonprofits for over a year each)
*Research a few thousand hours
MCAT test date ~ Jan 2021
Applying June 2021 for 2022 admission
Sorry this was so long… I wanted to make sure I gave a full picture in case any questions came up. Thank you!!