Advice for Two Future Applicants

[Aabs9295]

Hello,

I am making this post on behalf of two people close to me.

Friend 1: does this person still have a shot at med school?
One friend of mine got their MCAT score back today, and it was not exactly what they had hoped for. 29 MCAT, with a 3.45 GPA.

Their EC: 3 years- serving underprivileged youth at summer camp
4 years- bringing supplies to orphanage in Mexico.
2 research labs
Shadowed a MD for 4 summers.
They are a California resident, but are ok with going out of state.
Should they retake the MCAT? Or should they just go for it with their current stats? They would be applying next year.

Friend 2- current sophomore in college, has a 3.0 GPA as of right now. Their freshman year, they suffered from a skin disease that affected their whole body, and for half of the year looked like their face had been burned. That really screwed with their brain and it made it hard for them to focus on school. Will med schools be lenient based off of this situation for the freshman year grades? Or will they say "tough". They are getting their stuff together now, but freshman year was just not good for them.

Thanks in advance!

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[Catalystik]

Hello,

I am making this post on behalf of two people close to me.

Friend 1: does this person still have a shot at med school?
One friend of mine got their MCAT score back today, and it was not exactly what they had hoped for. 29 MCAT, with a 3.45 GPA.

Their EC: 3 years- serving underprivileged youth at summer camp
4 years- bringing supplies to orphanage in Mexico.
2 research labs
Shadowed a MD for 4 summers.
They are a California resident, but are ok with going out of state.
Should they retake the MCAT? Or should they just go for it with their current stats? They would be applying next year.

Friend 2- current sophomore in college, has a 3.0 GPA as of right now. Their freshman year, they suffered from a skin disease that affected their whole body, and for half of the year looked like their face had been burned. That really screwed with their brain and it made it hard for them to focus on school. Will med schools be lenient based off of this situation for the freshman year grades? Or will they say "tough". They are getting their stuff together now, but freshman year was just not good for them.

Thanks in advance!

If the sGPA is decent, Friend 1 might be a decent candidate for DO med schools, as they stand, assuming the acquisition of active clinical experience interacting with patients (the passive clinical experience of shadowing that has already been acquired is more than adequate). MD candidacy is iffy and depends on more factors than you've presented here.

Friend 2: Lower grades during freshman year are common and generally understood, but that doesn't mean they don't need to be redeemed with higher grades from this point forward.

I encourage you to invite both candidates to create accounts and post for themselves for more individual advice.

 

[zzxxzz]

Friend 2- current sophomore in college, has a 3.0 GPA as of right now. Their freshman year, they suffered from a skin disease that affected their whole body, and for half of the year looked like their face had been burned. That really screwed with their brain and it made it hard for them to focus on school. Will med schools be lenient based off of this situation for the freshman year grades? Or will they say "tough".

I've told this story before, but I have a friend whose (relatively young) grandmother (who lived with his family) and mother both died suddenly within a month of each other during first semester jr. year. Friend was crushed and had a pretty bad semester. He recovered, applied during his sr. year, and wrote about how the (medically preventable) deaths of his family members had affected him and ultimately strengthened his resolve to be a physician in his PS.

He applied very broadly, but was rejected everywhere. He got one II at a low-tier med program, where the interviewer told him something to the effect of "having struggled through adversity doesn't make you a better med school applicant than someone who hasn't."

He was ultimately accepted after acing an SMP, but the moral of the story is that you don't necessarily get a pass for something bad happening. You can recover from bad grades, but they'll stick with you.