Bad grades, lots of community college, non-traditional student... options?

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Chelicerata

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Hello,

I transferred to UC Davis from community college. I will be 27 when I graduate from UC Davis. I have not always wanted to go to medical school or be in the medical field, but I have a strong interest in it now. I have not taken the MCAT, but I am very strong in the sciences and reading / writing. I have two years of undergrad research experience and some volunteering. However, I have a lengthy and severely flawed transcript.

First Question: I attended community college off and on for 9 years, age 16 to 25. I have A LOT of community college units. Are all units averaged together for the med school application or clumped together and weighted by Freshman/Sophomore/Junior/Senior standing? I downloaded an AMCAS GPA calculator for Excel, which seems to just take the average of everything. The problem with this is that I have so many community college units as compared to my two years of university units that my university grades are not having that much of an impact on my overall GPA. Is this really how my med school app GPA will be calculated?

Second Question: If my GPA is calculated as I stated before, my BCPM GPA is an abysmal 3.10. However, my GPA for my junior and senior years when I finish will be near a 4.0. I'm assuming it is not worth it to apply to medical school with a 3.10 BCPM GPA, and I am a science major, so I'm not sure a Post-Bacc is a viable option. I'm looking in to doing Master's programs for alternative health-related careers, but is there a possible route to med school available to me?

Third Question: I took General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, three semesters of Bio, up to Calc II, and one semester of Physics at CC. I have taken / am taking remaining Physics, Calc III, Linear Algebra, additional Biology, Biochem, Genetics, Anatomy, Physiology, Immunology, Microbiology, Virology, and a couple others at university. I know most of the classes I took at CC are the basic med school prereqs, so will those classes be more important even if I took more advanced course work at UC?

Additional Information: I did not graduate from high school. I dropped out and received an equivalency degree. I did not have a stable income or living situation for most of the time that I was in community college, so I have three semesters of W's because I dropped all my classes and relocated on three different occasions. I have quite a few F's from when I was 16-17 because I was not attending college of my own free will, but rather because my mother said I had to in order to keep my health insurance. I filed for academic renewal at this school years later, so none of those grades affected me much until now. I also have several repeated math courses (3 or 4) and C's in an introductory Chemistry course, General Chemistry, and one semester of Bio, which accounts for my low BCPM GPA. I started taking these classes with exactly zero knowledge in the area of mathematics and chemistry at age 20. I have no C's or failing grades for my last three semesters of CC.

If you read this whole thing, thanks. Haha.

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Yes. You can't wish away the bad grades. But for DO programs, repeats with higher grades count only the higher grades.


First Question: The problem with this is that I have so many community college units as compared to my two years of university units that my university grades are not having that much of an impact on my overall GPA. Is this really how my med school app GPA will be calculated?

You are correct. Your GPA is not competetive for any MD program. There post-bacs out there, and you can DIY too. See #1 for the DO route, for which you're probably in a better position.

Second Question: If my GPA is calculated as I stated before, my BCPM GPA is an abysmal 3.10. However, my GPA for my junior and senior years when I finish will be near a 4.0. I'm assuming it is not worth it to apply to medical school with a 3.10 BCPM GPA, and I am a science major, so I'm not sure a Post-Bacc is a viable option. I'm looking in to doing Master's programs for alternative health-related careers, but is there a possible route to med school available to me?


Third Question: I took General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, three semesters of Bio, up to Calc II, and one semester of Physics at CC. I have taken / am taking remaining Physics, Calc III, Linear Algebra, additional Biology, Biochem, Genetics, Anatomy, Physiology, Immunology, Microbiology, Virology, and a couple others at university. I know most of the classes I took at CC are the basic med school prereqs, so will those classes be more important even if I took more advanced course work at UC?

Additional Information: I did not graduate from high school. I dropped out and received an equivalency degree. I did not have a stable income or living situation for most of the time that I was in community college, so I have three semesters of W's because I dropped all my classes and relocated on three different occasions. I have quite a few F's from when I was 16-17 because I was not attending college of my own free will, but rather because my mother said I had to in order to keep my health insurance. I filed for academic renewal at this school years later, so none of those grades affected me much until now. I also have several repeated math courses (3 or 4) and C's in an introductory Chemistry course, General Chemistry, and one semester of Bio, which accounts for my low BCPM GPA. I started taking these classes with exactly zero knowledge in the area of mathematics and chemistry at age 20. I have no C's or failing grades for my last three semesters of CC.

If you read this whole thing, thanks. Haha.[/QUOTE]
 
If I applied to DO schools, these would probably be the only ones I applied to:

Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Western University of Health Sciences
New York Institute of Technology
Midwestern University

Is this a decent selection? I am somewhat limited to urban areas because of my fiance's profession, and I don't think we would fit in in most midwestern-type areas anyway.

I know little to nothing about these schools except for their location. A friend of mine just graduated from Western University of Health Sciences... but as a veterinarian, so I'm not sure she could give me any insight.

Once I take into account the math grades I have already repeated, it gives me a cGPA of 3.29 and a sGPA of 3.44. Is this good enough to apply straight to DO school? I have not and will not be retaking the F grades from a decade ago that I received academic renewal for because they are in silly classes like photography, acting, and film studies--things I was interested in when I was 16. Will this hurt my application?

I wish I could change the heading of this post to DO now, but I can't edit it anymore. :(
 
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There are some schools that like non-traditional applicants with strong turnaround stories, which is what you've got. ADCOMs also reportedly pay much more attention to recent academic performance than to ancient history.

Your mission is to find those schools. Maybe the Non-Trad forum here can help?

Without an MCAT score, it's hard to chance you, but if your GPA is over 3.0, I think it's too soon to give up.
 
If you have taken or are repeating these classes at your current university and do well, then it shows us that you can handle more rigouous clases, which is what we want to see.





Third Question: I took General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, three semesters of Bio, up to Calc II, and one semester of Physics at CC. I have taken / am taking remaining Physics, Calc III, Linear Algebra, additional Biology, Biochem, Genetics, Anatomy, Physiology, Immunology, Microbiology, Virology, and a couple others at university. I know most of the classes I took at CC are the basic med school prereqs, so will those classes be more important even if I took more advanced course work at UC?
 
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