Although I've never posted before, I've been using this forum for support for years. I have found others' experiences very uplifting during times of doubt and wanted to share my story in hopes that someone might find it helpful. I'm 33 years old and was recently was accepted into UNM SOM where I will be starting my first year in July. Originally from the Seattle area, I moved down to Albuquerque having come to the conclusion that it would be too difficult to get into my state's only medical school - UW. I had graduated in Molecular Biology with a 2.89 GPA and struggled with what to do next.
I choose New Mexico for three reasons: 1) I had a few family members in Albuquerque. 2) I thought that UNM was a more reasonable possibility given its GPA admission stats. 3) It was away from home where I had become stagnant both professionally and personally.
Having worked at a few clinical laboratories near Seattle, I accepted a job as a medical technologist at a hospital lab in Albuquerque in May 2009. A year later, I became the supervisor of the lab with 12 med tech staff. A year after that I started to get encouraged by my boss to apply to medical school.
Reading about my chances on SDN and the AMCAS charts with my GPA, I realized my chances were slim without some serious redemption. In 2012, I enrolled in the masters of clinical laboratory science program at UNM and began studying for the MCAT while continuing to work full time managing the hospital lab. It's amazing what you can squeeze into a day if you just decide that you're going to make it work. I was lucky to have the support of my company and boss which paid for the masters program and allowed me a flexible schedule.
After attempting to take a Kaplan class (I paid $1500 and only went to class twice) and rescheduling the test five times - I took the last administration in 2013 and scored a 33 on the MCAT. My study was entirely self directed and consisted of mostly practice tests with follow up in the weakest areas.
About halfway through my masters program and with the 33, I first applied to UNM in the 2014 application cycle and received my rejection letter about ~three weeks after my interview. (UNM interviews everyone who is a NM resident and meets their 3.0/22 GPA/MCAT minimum requirement)
At my post rejection interview, I was told that my application was premature without some physician shadowing.
During 2014, I squeezed in about 80 hours of ER physician shadowing in addition to full time work and masters program.
I graduated in July 2014 after nearly getting all A's (I got one B in cellular biology). Not sure if this is common knowledge or not but before the masters program I did not know that professors basically give you an A or B in (non-SMP) graduate school (meaning that you essential only have to be in the top half of the class to get an A).
After rewriting everything and applying a couple months earlier this time (in September) I once again applied to only UNM for the 2015 cycle.
Interviews went a little better the second time and I got on the waiting list before being rejected again.
Although their was no post rejection interview this time, I did get hints from my interviewers that the ADCOM liked seeing primary care shadowing.
It was a bit of a struggle finding a primary care doc to shadow, but a friend of a friend came though one day and I was able to turn my post-masters time into about 40 hours of primary care shadowing along with continued ER doc shadowing (now around 120 hours). For an additional app improvement, I submitted a couple research abstracts to national pathology conferences after completing two pathology research studies and present a poster at ASCP in Long Beach, CA. (This sounds kinda impressive but was probably one of the easier app improvements compared with MCAT studying, a masters degree and clinician shadowing)
This time I didn't rewrite much as I was happy with most of my AMCAS and secondary essays. I did however apply to three more schools for the first time including GW, Tulane, and Virginia tech in addition to UNM again.
Everyone was telling me to apply to DO schools during this three year process and I never did for a few reasons. 1) I didn't think I'd be able to go to the speciality of my choice with a DO (I've have since found that this is almost completely unfounded) 2) expensive compared with UNM's $16,500/year tuition. 3) I was lazy and didn't want to go through the AACOM app.
I was rejected from GW, Tulane and Virginia tech fairly quickly with no interviews (I had selected these schools based on a variety of stats including out of state acceptances, % of students accepted with grad degree, GPA, etc).
I received my acceptance letter on 12/15/15 from UNM. Finally getting in was truly surreal. My whole identify for the last five years has been getting into med school and it somehow feels odd moving on to a new self. That being said I am thrilled and cannot wait to start. I've learned quite a bit along the way so feel free to ask questions if you'd like. I wanted to post in this forum to let everyone know that it is possible - It just takes a ton of work and a little longer for those of us that were a bit unfocused in undergrad
Thank you for posting this! TBH, I regularly check this site just to see what others who are in my scenario (under a 3.0 undergrad) did and how they overcame things. I know that it's not always a happy story and I know that I should expect rejection my first go round, maybe even my second, but I think with persistence and and a drive to ultimately get to where I want to be--whether it takes 2 years or 10 it will not matter.
! I mean that's still certainly not enough to make adcoms even blink in my direction, and I probably shouldn't be celebrating because it hasn't happened/isn't guaranteed to happen lol, but hey at least now there's hope I won't be auto-screened out at some schools.
