NEW Post-Bacc Student HELP!!

[aharr157]

Hi Everyone,
I'm fairly new to SDN but I check the forums looking for others in my situation, and I haven't found any solid advice about my particular dilemma.

I recently graduated as a biology/psychology double major. I did poorly in my biology classes so my sGPA is a 1.92 and my cUGPA is a 2.713. Unfortunately I have a taken all of my pre-reqs for Med school, so there are very little new classes for me to enroll in to increase my science GPA.

I am not sure whether I should start all over and retake all of my sciences...financial aid at my school won't cover repeats, but I know that I need to repeat the classes that I made a C or less in.

To be honest, I feel very stuck in my situation. I basically graduated with a subpar GPA and a degree that doesn't offer very many job options. Since I was a little child, I've always wanted to work in medicine and excelled in my science courses until undergrad. I would say the downward trend wasn't due to my ability to perform well, but my lack of effort and lack of confidence in science courses at my school.

Being an OB/GYN has always been my goal and still is I'm willing to take the time to increase my grade work, but I'm just lost and confused about how to proceed...

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[Hippogriff]

First, are you confident that you can now ace those repeats? Have you worked out your "lack of effort and lack of confidence" issues? If not, then don't waste the money and time.

Second, are you open to DO schools? There are many DO OB/GYNs. Retaking your classes with C's or less would dramatically increase your GPA in a shorter period of time than going for MD. Many med schools accept community college credits too. So retaking at a CC or a cheaper university would help you save a lot of money.

While retaking, I suggest working on building up the rest of your application. Finding a clinical job, volunteering, shadowing, research, etc are some good options. There are schools that reward reinvention if you put the work and time into it. Good luck OP!

 

[DrMidlife]

I check the forums looking for others in my situation

search on "low GPA".

 

[mavric1298]

What do you find unique about your dilemma, we would be glad to help, but from what you posted your situation is a run of the mill low GPA that gets covered like

 

[aharr157]

The problem that I'm facing is that because I was a science major, I technically have taken all the prerequisites and now I'm attempting to do a DIY post back, but I'm unsure how to start recovering my GPA. I know that I am going to retake all my science courses I performed poorly in, but even then I don't think it will do much to raise my science GPA if I wanted to apply to allopathic schools. I know that DO schools have a grade replacement policy, but I didn't want to give up on applying to MD schools as well.

 

[mavric1298]

Use one of the gpa calculators, mess around with some what-if situations, and see if you can get to over a 3.0/what it would take

Really, all you can do it retake the classes and get A's in everyone one. There isn't much input for us to give other then that...you know the MD vs DO grade replacement, you know you need to retake classes, and it's a pure number game. Do you have any specific questions? The only thing that is going to affect your GPA is more credits, and you will have to figure out how many you'd need to get to somewhere with both GPA's around/over 3.0

Any reason why you aren't going to just go for DO? A 1.92 is not going to be that tenable to come back from - it's doable - but is the extra time/effort/money worth it for whatever reason of not doing DO?

 

[MrSamrtGuy]

The problem that I'm facing is that because I was a science major, I technically have taken all the prerequisites and now I'm attempting to do a DIY post back, but I'm unsure how to start recovering my GPA. I know that I am going to retake all my science courses I performed poorly in, but even then I don't think it will do much to raise my science GPA if I wanted to apply to allopathic schools. I know that DO schools have a grade replacement policy, but I didn't want to give up on applying to MD schools as well.

It's not a question of "giving up," it's a question of how much time/money you are willing to spend chasing it. I was under the impression (could be wrong, you need to look into it for yourself) that OB/GYN is not a very competitive specialty. When you are interested in a specialty that is fairly easy for DOs to match into, chasing MD seems like vanity. But then there are people on here who will remind you that your interests can and will change.

It's going to take a lot longer to bring your GPA up under a system that averages all your courses versus a system that replaces old grades. That's not exactly rocket science, so why did I point out the obvious? Because I think people seriously underestimate how many credits it will take to significantly up their GPAs when everything is averaged. I suggest you crunch the numbers and calculate how long it would take you to get your science GPA and overall GPA up to the MD average: how many credits of what grades. I looked at my numbers and calculated how many credit hours of sustaining a 4.0 it would take to make my GPA competitive. And then, being more realistic, how many credit hours it would then take at 3.8. And 3.7. And 3.6. It's more than you think.

Whereas if I retook all my science courses and got a 4.0, that's my AACOMAS science GPA (assuming I met their rules for retakes), and my overall GPA goes up a bit too.

For me it will all come down to my postbacc performance. Looked at the numbers and realized that if I could swing a 3.6/3.7 postbacc GPA, I'd be in a good position for DO and yet still be below average for MD. And at that rate I would have, realistically, two more years to go to be competitive. Is that really worth it? Not for me. That's a little too quixotic.

The only way I would consider taking extra time to shoot for MD is if I could sustain a 4.0, or bare minimum 3.9 through 2 years of postbacc. Two years of that would put me within striking distance of competitiveness for MD, and it would tell me I was academically inclined enough to push myself over the top and that an extra year would be worth it.

 

[mavric1298]

Speaking from someone who literally only had 1 term I didn't drop classes and got f's for it, you'll basically never get to 3.7. Ever.

 

[Goro]

Best to work for a few years, save up some money, and then do all the retakes. You don't have to do it at the same school, use a CC to save money. You WILL need to ace things, though.
Your fastest path to being a doctor will be via DO schools, which use grade replacement and does wonders for the GPA.


I am not sure whether I should start all over and retake all of my sciences...financial aid at my school won't cover repeats, but I know that I need to repeat the classes that I made a C or less in.


You also need to fix whatever deficits made you do so poorly.
I would say the downward trend wasn't due to my ability to perform well, but my lack of effort and lack of confidence in science courses at my school.

 

[MrSamrtGuy]

Speaking from someone who literally only had 1 term I didn't drop classes and got f's for it, you'll basically never get to 3.7. Ever.

You mean 3.7 overall? Yeah, I'd basically have to take another 120 credits. What killed me in college was complacency. I messed up first semester, and then until my junior year was happy just sliding by with Bs. In high school I would've worked my ass off to turn that into an A, but in college I was happy to take the B and spend time drinking instead.

 

[MrSamrtGuy]

Best to work for a few years, save up some money, and then do all the retakes. You don't have to do it at the same school, use a CC to save money. You WILL need to ace things, though.
Your fastest path to being a doctor will be via DO schools, which use grade replacement and does wonders for the GPA.


I am not sure whether I should start all over and retake all of my sciences...financial aid at my school won't cover repeats, but I know that I need to repeat the classes that I made a C or less in.


You also need to fix whatever deficits made you do so poorly.
I would say the downward trend wasn't due to my ability to perform well, but my lack of effort and lack of confidence in science courses at my school.

Goro-I know someone has asked you this before, but I can't find it right now. How many credits is too few credits in a postbacc? I was thinking of only taking 4-8 credits in the Fall to ease myself back into school, and then going to full time. Would this be bad?

 

[Goro]

That's OK. We get leery if it's just one-two courses per year.

Goro-I know someone has asked you this before, but I can't find it right now. How many credits is too few credits in a postbacc? I was thinking of only taking 4-8 credits in the Fall to ease myself back into school, and then going to full time. Would this be bad?

 

[mavric1298]

Assuming you have 120 sem. credits to start and the 2.713 GPA, here is what it would take to get to a 3.5, using each "class" as 3 credits and getting 12 quality points

 

[MrSamrtGuy]

Assuming you have 120 sem. credits to start and the 2.713 GPA, here is what it would take to get to a 3.5, using each "class" as 3 credits and getting 12 quality points

View attachment 193690

I'm not OP, but this is definitely info he should keep in mind.

The best you can probably hope for is nailing classes for 2-3 years in a postbacc or SMP. The conventional wisdom on SDN seems to be that upward trends don't trump overall GPA, but I don't know how much of that is gut feeling/SDN echo chamber regurgitation of what everyone else says versus actually true.

 

[mavric1298]

5 years of full time, 12 credits a semester, 4.0 grades to get to a 3.5.

 

[MrSamrtGuy]

5 years of full time, 12 credits a semester, 4.0 grades to get to a 3.5.

Depending on the workload OP can handle. If OP can handle 15 credits, he gets there in 4 years. If you're really crazy, you can do 18 credits and with some summer classes get there in 3 years.

A scenario like this really highlights the DO/MD retake differences. If OP could do all his retakes in 2 years with a 4.0, assuming he didn't do poorly in any of his nonscience classes, he'd be in a great position for DO, and possibly only halfway or less than halfway on his MD grade repair journey. Which is what I alluded to earlier. If I find myself within striking distance of MD competitiveness, I might take an extra year to go for it. But if I found myself in a DO competitive position and needed realistically 2-3 more years of GPA repair for MD...that's a little too Captain Ahab, even for me.

Also, just thinking about 120 credits of purely science classes...you'd have to be damn near running out of undergrad science courses (as defined by AMCAS or AACOMAS) at that point if you hadn't already at least in Bio and Chemistry.

 

[mavric1298]

It also is worth saying that you do still have a chance if you make it to the 3.0 bar, as illustrated by the post on this forum. 2 years of straight A's and a good MCAT and holistic app will go a long way at a lot of places.

 

[MrSamrtGuy]

It also is worth saying that you do still have a chance if you make it to the 3.0 bar, as illustrated by the post on this forum. 2 years of straight A's and a good MCAT and holistic app will go a long way at a lot of places.

Yeah, that's one of the things I've wondered. Seems like it's hard to quantify what an upward trend does for you, whereas you can just easily point to GPA percentiles and say that an upward trend is meaningless if your GPA is still average or below average. The numbers are the numbers, you can say, but unless you are autoscreened you can't say with certainty how an adcom may balance that against a strong upward trend. I'm not trying to delude myself, but at some point we have to accept that admissions is a black box.

 

[jl lin]

All this SDN angst. All you can do is the absolute best you can do, make your best application, and go from there. Sure be determined and committed and be able to show that to schools, but at the end of the day, the world won't change that much one way or another if you make it into a MD program, a DO program, or neither.

You could make projected calculations until the cows come home; it's still going to involve individual analysis. Sure auto-reject is certainly a possibility; but again, all you can do is to have a strong sense of what your absolute best is, and then go for it. There is a certain level of neurosis when it comes to pre-meds and SDN--no offense to anyone; I am just saying. . . Do the best you can and don't produce unnecessary anxiety over it.

 

[mavric1298]

Right, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be analytical about the path you chose or not. The MD vs DO should be a thoroughly thought out decision, based on factual assessments. Having a smart plan and knowing what you are getting in to isn't neurosis...it's being smart.

 

[jl lin]

Right, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be analytical about the path you chose or not. The MD vs DO should be a thoroughly thought out decision, based on factual assessments. Having a smart plan and knowing what you are getting in to isn't neurosis...it's being smart.

No one says don't have a smart plan; but there are variables that one may not be able to control, even after they have done all that they can do. It is a common form of neurosis at SDN to get stuck in what is said on these forums. The advice can be good; but not necessarily applicable to a number folks in a number of situations. It could be easy for just about anyone to become neurotic-ish from all the angst on SDN.