I have followed this wonderful site and posted a time or two in the past, but my situation has changed. I ended having to withdraw from all of my courses in the fall due to medical problems. I did very poorly on the August 2006 MCAT and have been rejected by all the schools to which I applied, but that was expected. I am 2 semesters away from completing a BA in Philosophy with Honors, and I don’t want to hastily dive back into the medical school application process. I am 30, and my GPA is currently 3.56. I expect it to be slightly higher at the end of this semester. I firmly believe in not worrying too much about age when considering a career change to medicine, but neither do I discount the fact. I have some ideas about how to proceed, and I wanted to get some input. The college I want to attend has a post-bass program, and it has a very high acceptance rate to medical school upon completion. Would it be worth my time to go the post-bacc route or should I perhaps consider a Kaplan or EK classroom prep course instead? My wife and I are in the process of an international adoption, and we don’t expect to travel overseas until the spring of 2008, so I will not be taking the MCAT again until that is done. In the opinions of those who subscribe to this site, how would the year I have to prepare be best used? I will be conducting honors research in philosophy in the fall and writing a defending my findings in the late spring of 2008. I am comfortable with my academic performance with regards to medical school application, and the MCAT I did so poorly on was my first and only test. With the exception of having to explain my withdrawal from fall 2006 classes, how do my prospects look to you guys? Bear in mind that I am primarily interested in DO school. My beliefs seem to be much more in line with the osteopathic philosophy of medicine, so acceptance to a DO school is my goal. Thanks in advance for any comments and advice.
The best advice you can get would be to have a sit down with the admissions committee. While you can get a ton of advice on what to do from this site, the application process is such a crap shoot that you never know that the adcoms are looking for.
If your grades are good, why do you want to take a post bacc? Did you not have the pre-reqs? If that is the case, then certainly do the post bacc. If you have your pre-reqs and you did well in them, why do the post bacc?
As for the MCAT, if you feel that you did poorly then certainly prepare of them and take as long as you need. I had to relearn all of the material and spent 2 years preparing for the MCAT. I took the kaplan course and it helped me not only relearn the material but also with my test taking skills.
Before you embark on studying for the MCAT try to figure out what went wrong that day. Why do you think you did so poorly. If you do not figure this out then you may find that you will repeat the same score or worse. But if you realize what went wrong you will be in a better position to test better and thus raise your score significantly.
Good luck