First off I would like to say that this site is amazing! I am so glad I found out. I am a 30 year old guy who has always wanted to be a doctor since I was younger. I attended West Virginia University and joined a fraternity which lead to not studying. My mother was also diagnosed with late stage III Ovarian Cancer right when I started undergrad. I am her only son and very close to her so I was responsible for her care. We traveled to many hospitals for her treatments which forced me to either drop courses or do very bad in some. I ended up with 155 credit hours and a GPA of a 2.44. I did great on the LSAT and was accepted into several law schools but never attended. It just didn’t feel like the right path for me. So I decided on Business since a few docs told me that it will be useful to have as doc because it can help you manage your practice or move up to a chair position within your department a little faster. I went on to get a masters degree in business with a 3.25 GPA. WV has 2 Alloepathic Schools and 1 DO school. I am aiming at the WVSOM because I have many friends who attended there and loved it! But I would go ANYWHERE in the U.S. that I am accepted. However, I am not sure if I can fix my past. Below is a breakdown of my academic record.
Undergrad GPA 2.44
52 W’s on my undergraduate transcript (I dropped a lot of classes do to working and taking care of my mother who was ill with cancer)
3.25 from a Masters in Business Administration
I plan on starting in January at a different state university to fulfill the requirements for a 2nd Bachelors degree in Biology. I believe it is an additional 65 credits from what I have now. Even with a 4.0 from these additional 65 credits my GPA will still be horrible. You guys are wonderful and I would love to have some advice from you. Thank you so much!
I don’t feel adequately prepared or seasoned to give you advice. There are others here who have walked, run, and driven down the path we’re choosing at this time.
Just didn’t want you to feel like no one read your post. They do, and they will respond when they’re able.
The thing to do is make sure you are truly prepared to rock those new science courses. Do whatever you need to do to polish your study skills so that you CAN get a 4.0 (or at least a 3.verybig) in those classes. If you can show very solid recent performance, your older grades won’t matter quite as much.
Your GPA in your MBA program isn’t so super. Can you figure out how you could have done better? What got in your way? How can you fix it? Think about that and try to get a solid grip on it before you start further classes. You need to rock the house from here on out.
When I met with my advisor, I come from a Psych background, and told her that I was having a problem in the science courses (this is my first quarter back) I will have a C in physics a B in Chem and an A in Biology, her response was that they want to see improvement, so, as long as I improve from those grades it will be fine. She said they expect grades to be low when you first get back into school. So my advice is to jump right in!
It’s possible to recover from bad grades and we have examples here of folks with much lower grades than yours who are now practicing physicians. You just have to be prepared to work very hard.
Osteopathic medical schools do grade replacement–if you re-take and ace your four science requirements, you will be able to apply with a stellar science GPA, and it will also boost your overall GPA by wiping out all those bad, old grades. It’s not to say osteopathic schools are an easy route to medicine–they’re pretty hard to get into, and the coursework once you’re in is just as hard as any MD school. But they do cut people a little slack for previous mistakes.
When I met with my advisor, I come from a Psych background, and told her that I was having a problem in the science courses (this is my first quarter back) I will have a C in physics a B in Chem and an A in Biology, her response was that they want to see improvement, so, as long as I improve from those grades it will be fine. She said they expect grades to be low when you first get back into school. So my advice is to jump right in!
With all respect to your advisor, I would disagree just a bit. People going BACK to school when they have decided as mature adults upon a particular career path are not going to be cut much slack, or for very long. Maybe the first quarter back.... but that's about it. Eighteen year olds can be forgiven a multitude of sins: first semester of college, partied too much, didn't know how to study, didn't know what they were up against yadda yadda yadda.
A career changer or someone returning to college after life in the real world can't make any of those excuses. And unlike an eighteen year old, who's expected not to have a clear vision of his/her career path, the mature student is presumed to have eyes fixed on the prize. That makes lower grades that much harder to explain.
This is why you'll see us (the "grizzled veterans" of OPM) counsel caution and patience when heading back to school. kortneesmom, you didn't ask for advice but I'm going to give it anyway: you need to resolve to get As from here on out! If you are not 100% sure that you can do this, go a little slower until you are very, very sure that you can. And good luck to you and the others on this thread; I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but just want to be sure that y'all keep it real in this pursuit.