General Advice

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jamartinez41

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Hi... I am a pre-med student at a university in Texas. I wanted to get some advice on the steps I need to take to apply to medical school. I graduated from an Early College High School in 2012 so a year ago after completing 2 years of community college courses. I am 19 years old and as far as pre-requisites, I have only taken my Biology and General Chemistry courses. I got B's on all four of these which is horrible I know.... :( However, I am a bit confused as to what my application timeline should be since I am currently classified as a junior at my university and I still have not taken my other pre requisite courses and since I need to get these done with before I take the MCAT. When should I take the MCAT and when should I begin applying to schools? My current GPA is a 3.6 and my current major is Microbiology. I have also taken Calculus and English and got A's on both of them.

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When are you expected to graduate? And when are you planning on finishing your pre-requisites? Because it would probably depend on what you feel most comfortable doing. Your grades aren't bad. I think you can overcome your B's. I don't think B's are the end of all things anyway. If you think you can handle it, you could take physics and organic together and take the mcat after that. Then you'll have you're entire senior year to work on other parts of the application/ weaknesses. Or since you got B's in biology and chemistry, you can take physics one year and organic the next, and take a gap year to prepare. You have options since you're so far ahead in credits.

Not sure if this helped or not, but it's not really a race to med school. Plan out when you want to finish your pre-requirements and tentatively plan on taking the mcat soon after. Apply for the subsequent cycle. The only thing about taking your mcat your senior year or later is that you have to be careful about when you'll get your results back and still have time to apply.
 
Hi... I am a pre-med student at a university in Texas. I wanted to get some advice on the steps I need to take to apply to medical school. I graduated from an Early College High School in 2012 so a year ago after completing 2 years of community college courses. I am 19 years old and as far as pre-requisites, I have only taken my Biology and General Chemistry courses. I got B's on all four of these which is horrible I know.... :( However, I am a bit confused as to what my application timeline should be since I am currently classified as a junior at my university and I still have not taken my other pre requisite courses and since I need to get these done with before I take the MCAT. When should I take the MCAT and when should I begin applying to schools? My current GPA is a 3.6 and my current major is Microbiology. I have also taken Calculus and English and got A's on both of them.

You are considered a junior, but the fact is you are more a sophmore since you have not taken organic chemistry and physics as these are usually finished during your second year.
I would have to say you are on a 5-year track to graduation but do not fret! I am also on this track and let me tell, it's heart-breaking to see your friends graduate before you do but you aren't racing them. You are doing something HUGE which is getting into medical school.

I would take the year of physics and Ochem ASAP before even thinking about the MCAT, but maybe perhaps you can study partially for it that way when you are done with those last classes you can take it right away.

This is however, such a small inkling to what you will need to apply to medical school, expect to have community work, clinical work, hobbies, leadership, shadowing to understand the "physician life" to your best extent, research, etc before applying through AMCAS. These are EXTREMELY vital to make you stand out, grades don't do this one bit unless you are in the 99th percentile all the way through which (sorry for being blunt) you and many of us are not.

Best of luck!

emagavin
 
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