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- Thread starter shaienne
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Ok. There are a lot of issues here.
1. Your overall GPA is low for MD/PhD. Did you read the sticky?
2. Your MCAT score is low for MD/PhD. Also covered in the sticky.
3. Your sGPA is a red flag for medical school in general. Getting into med school with an sGPA below 3.0 is difficult. This isn't just some arbitrary cutoff. If you fail out of medical school or fail your boards, you will end up hundreds of thousands in debt with nothing to show for it. Nobody wants that. We believe that those grades in things like chemistry to some degree predict your ability to perform in medical school, hence why those grades matter.
4. Your research sounds mostly clinical in nature. Even if you have done 2 years of bioinformatics and want to go in that direction, basic science departments will be very wary of your low sGPA. Clinical PhDs (i.e. epidemiology) within fully-funded MD/PhD programs are very rare outside of very strong applicants at a very limited number of institutions.
I think your chances for MD/PhD are slim to none. I'm not sure that one or two years are going to fix that without an MCAT retake to around 40 (whatever that is in the new scoring system) and a lot of additional science coursework. I'm not sure that's worth your time and even then would be risky.
My advice is to focus on getting into medical school. For that, retake some science classes you did poorly in and/or some upper level science to raise your GPA and sGPA. If you can bring your sGPA above 3.0, your GPA will likely get to above 3.5, and you should apply MD with DO backup. Retaking courses will help a lot for DO programs. If you are serious about research, you will have opportunities to get involved later in your medical training.
1. Your overall GPA is low for MD/PhD. Did you read the sticky?
2. Your MCAT score is low for MD/PhD. Also covered in the sticky.
3. Your sGPA is a red flag for medical school in general. Getting into med school with an sGPA below 3.0 is difficult. This isn't just some arbitrary cutoff. If you fail out of medical school or fail your boards, you will end up hundreds of thousands in debt with nothing to show for it. Nobody wants that. We believe that those grades in things like chemistry to some degree predict your ability to perform in medical school, hence why those grades matter.
4. Your research sounds mostly clinical in nature. Even if you have done 2 years of bioinformatics and want to go in that direction, basic science departments will be very wary of your low sGPA. Clinical PhDs (i.e. epidemiology) within fully-funded MD/PhD programs are very rare outside of very strong applicants at a very limited number of institutions.
I think your chances for MD/PhD are slim to none. I'm not sure that one or two years are going to fix that without an MCAT retake to around 40 (whatever that is in the new scoring system) and a lot of additional science coursework. I'm not sure that's worth your time and even then would be risky.
My advice is to focus on getting into medical school. For that, retake some science classes you did poorly in and/or some upper level science to raise your GPA and sGPA. If you can bring your sGPA above 3.0, your GPA will likely get to above 3.5, and you should apply MD with DO backup. Retaking courses will help a lot for DO programs. If you are serious about research, you will have opportunities to get involved later in your medical training.
- Joined
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I notice that you have deleted your posts, and I'm unclear why. This is of course your choice, but I think it's wise to seek additional opinions.