Hello, my name is Matthew Fowler. my College GPA was 2.07 cumulative, this is at Kennesaw. In recent months, i enrolled at Clayton University near my job at the crime lab to take Biochemistry. After actually studying, wich was something i didnt do in college, im going to come away with an A in the class ( i barely passed my organic and gen chem classes and they are prerequisites). To build a foundation to medical school, what advice, recommendations, or ideas would someone of you have. Ideally, i would probably be looking at having to get another undergraduate degree and retake my premed classes (45/60 post bacch). Any help, direction, or advice would be greatly appreciated
MATTHEW
Hi Mathew and Welcome. For starters, you are not alone in having a past GPA.
You may want to look at a post-bac program and re-take the pre-reqs. My advise is to take your time and do not get caught up in trying to set a date. When you are done, you are done. When you apply, you apply. This is not a race.
Study hard and schools will see the upward trend. Of course, since I am now applying this is from what I have been told on this board.
good luck and ask any questions you have. Everyone is happy to answer. You may want to think about coming to the convention in June.
Welcome to OPM! Use our “Search” function to find lots and lots of stories about ways people have overcome bad grades. There are a LOT of different approaches. I suspect that if you put “bad GPA” as your search term you’ll find dozens if not hundreds of posts.
Good luck!
Mary
I am the poster child for $hitty grades and I am about to complete my PGY2 year in a top anesthesiology program. Yes, it can be done, but it will not be easy. You must be 200% committed…or close to being committed 
…and be willing to do the work & make the sacrifices that will be demanded of you.
Best of luck & success to you. Feel free to tell us more of your tale & to ask tons of questions. This is one of the most commonly explored scenarios in these fora (is that really a word?). I am confident that you will receive much valuable input from the membership.
Welcome to OPM!
Thank you for your inputs, so far the plan that i have set forth is to work full time at the crime lab, soon im hoping to be promoted to Forensic Biologist, now that Biochem is out of the way. The plan that i have devised is to retake all necessary pre-med requisites that I made less than a B in, and Human Anatomy and Physiology, and begin work on another bachelor degree, something i can get A’s in. Does anyone have advice on how many Post Bach hours to pursue. I talked to the desk clerk at Mercer School of Medicine in Macon, GA. I asked her about an academic forgiveness policy, she said she would look into it, supprisingly 2 days later, she called back and said work experience and my RECENT course work would be most highly evaluated. I found this encouraging.
Hey Welcome and good luck. It looks like you are off to a good start. From what I’ve read here and over the net is that you have to build a contrast to grades now to before and good MCAT scores as well as a good “Package” for Admin Committees. Look at time for volunteering if you haven’t ( Hospices are always looking for volunteers)
Talked to Registration at my old school and found out that i had a decent chance of having two F’s taken off my record because of a family death. I appealed the F’s in school, but they told me that i failed to supply suffient documentation. That would bump me up to a 2.2 GPA. Guess every little bit helps. What is the Lowest accepted GPA anyone has heard of to get into a Med School ???
Hi there,
You have to get the mentality of “Lowest GPA accepted” out of your vocabularity. Your goal is to master the material that will shore up your deficiencies and to get the best grades that you can in order to gain acceptance into medical school. Most medical schools will take into consideration that you were young and un-focused but now you do not have that luxury. You HAVE to focus on what you need to make sure that you have a solid knowledge base to excell on the MCAT and excell in your classes.
As many have stated above, past low grades can be overcome but you cannot afford to focus on your grades alone. You have to focus on what you need to excell so that once you get to medical school, you can stay there. This means good study habits and a very strong foundation in addition to good grades.
There are tons of anecdotal evidence out there of one GPA or the next getting into medical school or not getting in but you need to take the steps that will get YOU in and not rely on the past. If your goal is medical school, take some step every day, that will get you closer to your goal. What has happened in the past is not a predictor of the future. You can decide right now, to do everything that you can to maximize every learning opportunity and knowledge opportunity. You can start this very minute to organize your studies and keep your eyes clearly focused on YOUR goal no matter what. You have evidence that one can overcome past low GPAs and get into medical school, so what are you going to do right now and tomorrow to get to your goal?
Good luck
Natalie 
My question about the lowest GPA was asked because since my GPA is so low, is it even reboundable? The info that i am getting is to do a Master’s and retake the premed courses that I didnt do so hot in. Should i worry about classes that I got B’s in. Thanks Yall.
You should NOT worry about the classes you got a B in, unless they were so long ago you can’t remember anything whatsoever about them. People have recovered from grades as bad as yours. A special masters’ sounds like a good path to take.
Retake the good grades (B’s) only if they are prereqs for Med school that will expire soon. Look at other posts or someone may post here how many years the grades are good. Focus on the here and now as much as possible, Having old bad grades exponged is good though and worth it. The death in the family, the person in your family who took care of the estate should have a copy of death cert and or you could provide some other form of proof. Keep focused and good luck
Hey yall, I talked to a academic counselor at PCOM (Philadelphia School of Medicine), which is a DO school. She recommended that I pursue a solid year of upperlevel science courses (making A’s of course) or a solid year of graduate courses, take the MCAT and then apply. Any thoughts on this??? Anyone like/dislike the use of the word YALL
Which is why I pursued a Master’s degree. Although I must warn you that I have seen many schools state, that if you are in a Masters program, you MUST finish it before matriculation.
They will not allow you to take some Masters courses for a degree and then drop it to go to medical school.
Gabe
HI there,
I will put my 2 cents in on this one. First check the schools and see if they have an “expiration date” on pre reqs. For example, Duke University says after 8 years you need to retake. With that said, I also had a under 3.0 AMCAS cummulitave GPA, even with the recent coursework of 3.7. The recent coursework was mostly retaking the pre reqs, while I worked. I retook the first year of chem and the year of 0-Chem, plus a genetics course and few others. I applied to 41 schools and recieved 1 interview. 28q on mcat. I contacted many of the schools that rejected my application. the most commmon comment I got on my app was the undergrad gpa AND that they noticed the upward trend fromt he last few years, BUT that they also noticed the fact that 5 out of the 8 classes I took were retakes. They wanted to see me do upper level (graduate school) work, full time, and do well. therefore I am about to quit the job, etc and do a one years master program this fall and then reapply. Here is the actual quote from one of my emails (Medical College of Wisconsin):
It appears that your subjective information (personal statement, experiences and letters) is supportive. That leaves your academic credentials. I find your MCAT scores to be in a fairly solid competitive range and would not have driven the decision. I believe the issue is that while the committee acknowledged the improved performance in your post baccalaureate work, the amount of work is not enough to offset the undergraduate GPA which is quite depressed. I believe you need to continue to do a significant amount of very good advanced work, thereby distancing yourself from the undergraduate GPA.
Remember, the Post bacc work he was referring to was the 8 classes I took over 3 semesters while working full time.
I am not sure how similar your situation is to mine, but I thought since I have just gone through this that I would share my experience.
So I guess what my advice would be is to retake any pre reqs that you have a C or less in, but then make sure you either take new courses at an upper level or get into a Special masters program. You can see a pretty decent list at: http://services.aamc.org/postbac/
Or you may want to check the schools around you to see if they offer a Masters of Physiology or something you could take. For example, North Carolina State Univ. has a Masters of Physiology …but I didn’t hear about in time to take the GRE’s and apply unless I want to put off my application for a year. I am currently accepted to the UMDNJ- graduate school of biomedical sciences, so I am off to New Jersey for next year. I hope all this rambling helps!
Are you coming to the DC conference? If so, we can chat more there.
Marcia
Marciah, thanks for sharing your experiences on the application cycle. I am also recovering from a depressed GPA (less than 3.0) from undergraduate. I am doing a combiniation of what you suggested to the OP and that is repeating some of the C or less courses and taking some additional upper level science courses as well. I am near completion of a Masters in Health Administration degree as well. I plan to attend the OPM Conference this coming weekend and I look forward to meeting you.
Monica
If you are thinking about applying to DO schools, you need to know that the GPA is calculated differently… the DO schools, while they see all of your grades, they only “count” the most recent one in your GPA… this can have a huge effect on the final outcome.
At one point I had under a 2.0 GPA and was on academic probation… this was in 1991… in 2004 I graduated cum laude with a BS in Biology and Life Sciences… the GPA can be overcome… I interviewed at 4 schools (3 osteopathic and 1 allopathic) and recieved 2 acceptances (osteopathic), 1 waitlist (osteopathic), and 1 rejection (allopathic)…
Remember also, as others have said, that it’s not JUST your GPA that medical schools are considering… it’s the “whole package” your life experience, your grades, your interests, your volunteering etc…it all factors in…
retake very old classes… I’d suggest any pre-requisites for the MCAT (although they probably won’t help as the MCAT is not really knowledge based) and any upper level courses that will prove that you have a grasp of the materials… embryology, physiology, anatomy are a few that came to mind here briefly…
good luck… see you this weekend.
Andrea
You can try checking to see if your old school has an academic forgiveness policy. My first school (where I started way back in 1976 gave me that in I think 1987 and it wiped two years of less than stellar grades that NO ONE cared about anymore right off my transcript) I’d been pushed ahead a total of 3 years and was simply not mature enough to be in college at a younger age. If that doesn’t work, then just stick with the plan they suggested and you’ll get there. By the time I was done with my BA in 1999 and going on for a master’s degree in something else, people were so not interested in what I’d done (or had not done honestly) in 1976.
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You can try checking to see if your old school has an academic forgiveness policy. My first school (where I started way back in 1976 gave me that in I think 1987 and it wiped two years of less than stellar grades that NO ONE cared about anymore right off my transcript) I’d been pushed ahead a total of 3 years and was simply not mature enough to be in college at a younger age. If that doesn’t work, then just stick with the plan they suggested and you’ll get there. By the time I was done with my BA in 1999 and going on for a master’s degree in something else, people were so not interested in what I’d done (or had not done honestly) in 1976.
Just keep in mind, that for AMCAS applications you MUST declare all grades earned, regardless of whether they appear on transcripts or not, so those grades will be factored into your GPA as figured and reported by AMCAS to potential medical schools.
On the up side, as so many have already written, many people have overcome poor past GPA’s and gotten accepted to medical school. The only thing you have direct control over right now is the present, so focus on that!
Larry
Hi Larry
Thanks for the input on the GPA from eons ago. Ironically and luckily for me, I didn’t take much math or science so my math and science GPA are pretty good. Plus I do have 18 months of prior grad school (24 units completed of grad level work with a 3.58 which definitely pulls up the overall picture. It was in Computer Information Systems though…will they still factor it in? )
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Hi Larry
Thanks for the input on the GPA from eons ago. Ironically and luckily for me, I didn’t take much math or science so my math and science GPA are pretty good. Plus I do have 18 months of prior grad school (24 units completed of grad level work with a 3.58 which definitely pulls up the overall picture. It was in Computer Information Systems though…will they still factor it in? )
As long as it was from a post-secondary institution it will be included. Congrats on that 3.58!
Larry