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Engineering courses and/or research experience in a BME lab might help..
Messed up in SMP...questions.
- Thread starter EventualMD
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First, I'm incredibly sorry about your loss. It's never easy to deal with things like that. Second, I don't think you're SOL for medical school. If you were to ever give it another chance I think schools could understand the poor performance in the SMP was due to other extenuating circumstances. I have seen several posters on SDN post that they got into DO schools even after poor performance in an SMP. Actually there's one poster who I'm thinking of that actually ended up getting into an MD school despite below average performance in an SMP (got into 1 MD school, 2-3 DO schools). There will be schools that will not be able to resist that MCAT score. The chances of you getting into an MD school are probably very low unless you go back and retake those classes and ace them. However I do think DO is more likely even with your current situation. There are probably many schools that would love that MCAT. Goro's school isn't one of them but that doesn't mean other schools wouldn't be willing to take a chance on you.
If you're interested I would be happy to PM you the information of these posters. Others may not recommend this but if that MCAT expires this year, why not give DO schools a chance this cycle? What do you have to lose? If you're truly not interested in medicine anymore then I wish you the best of luck with whatever you choose. But I hope you're not writing medicine off because you think you won't get in. I'm hopeful about your chances of getting into at least a DO school because I've seen other posters post that they've gotten in with much worse stats than yours.
If you're interested I would be happy to PM you the information of these posters. Others may not recommend this but if that MCAT expires this year, why not give DO schools a chance this cycle? What do you have to lose? If you're truly not interested in medicine anymore then I wish you the best of luck with whatever you choose. But I hope you're not writing medicine off because you think you won't get in. I'm hopeful about your chances of getting into at least a DO school because I've seen other posters post that they've gotten in with much worse stats than yours.
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@starspells It sounds like he or she is not interested in pursuing medicine anymore. This next part is not directed at your post but just in general (just fyi). I don't think we should be trying to convince @EventualMD to continue and try to pursue medicine. Yes, a 39 MCAT is very impressive but just because you did well on the MCAT doesn't mean you should be a doctor. In undergrad I had a classmate who got 40+ (can't remember what score exactly but it was like 42 or something) on the MCAT after only studying for two weeks, I kid you not. He didn't end up going in to medicine but pursued something in engineering (he was a biomed engineering major if I recall correctly) and is now the Co-Founder of one company and Founder of another out in silicon valley. Anyway, point being, medicine may not be for you. It sounds like you have accepted this and are choosing to move on in life. I did see your query about dentistry though. I wouldn't pursue it unless you'd find it a rewarding career, not because you still feel this strange obligation to go into a medical field because of your family/personal background.
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I think you have a good plan going forward. You cannot take care of others if you do not take care of yourself first. I hope you get the help you need to succeed in life and whatever field you choose to pursue.
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Good luck OP. You are making a good decision to take care of yourself. Your life will be so much better if you can find out what makes you tick.
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Sent from my iPad using SDN mobile app
An SMP has medical school courses. SMPs are supposed to allow students to prove that they could handle med school. If they don't do well, then obviously they won't do well in med school (also they are not worth the risk).
The good thing about US MD schools is that they don't accept people they believe won't go on to match. It's too risky to accept someone who already proved themselves to not be able to handle med school
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What happens if one does bad due to unfortunate circumstances or maybe pure laziness? Would it help if they successfully re-do another one?
No idea if re-doing would help; I've never done a SMP. But the pure laziness would not fly- especially cause you gotta be crazy to waste $60K+ on being lazy. I sometimes get trapped in cycles of laziness, but you just log on to Great Lakes (loan servicer) and then you snap right back to it, hahaha. You would need a real explanation.
It may be possible to climb out of that hole. But the amount of time and resources would be incredible - so much so that I don't see how it would be worth it to try to remediate a poor SMP performance.
Not doing well in an SMP is not always tantamount to being lazy. SMP's are very rigorous, and some students, who try very hard, just have a difficult time for whatever reason.
Yeah, but the guy asked, "What happens if one does bad due to unfortunate circumstances or maybe pure laziness?"
Ah - my bad, I missed the context of your comment.
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I was depressed. Not lazy. I couldn't remember things. Bad combo of stress of moving, being in the program, and having family members drop like flies. Might've not been cut out for medicine but I'm not doing it anymore. Taking pre-reqs for grad school. I'm actually wholly glad I've not progressed in the med path now that I've made plans for the future. And after being on antidepressants for the first time and having a dramatic recovery, I think I have found a pretty powerful antidote to my tendency to become depressed which I think will serve me well in the future.
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I think this is great. Your mental health is important.
From a medical school's perspective, though, they don't see depression in your application; they see the gpa and mcat that brought you to the smp, and then they see your smp grades. Maybe you wrote about depression in your personal statement and explicitly talked about your smp performance. Great.
The problem, though, is that everyone has an excuse for why they didn't do well, and for every person who didn't do well with an excuse, there's usually a person who doesn't need one because, well, they did well. It's not necessarily a matter of being unsympathetic but a matter of having someone else who they might see as more fit to take your place.
Large dogs
