To transfer undergraduate schools or not?

[sanjalebi]

Hi everyone.

I'm writing this post on behalf of a friend who I went to undergrad with. He recently realized he wants to pursue medicine and is currently a computer science major at a large state school, where he has a GPA of around 2.6. He has around three semesters of college left and is trying to decide whether to stay at his state school or to transfer to a smaller (and cheaper) local school near his family.

Our big state school has a great computer science program but the classes are harder than the school near his family. He does think he can turn his grades around at his current institution (state school) though. Since the smaller local school is in Silicon Valley, he thinks the immediate job prospects might be better if he graduates from there.

Although he is years (and likely a postbacc) away from applying to medical school, his main question is whether it would look better to have a dramatic upward GPA trend from his current state school (with a low overall GPA), or to get a second GPA on his record by transferring. Any guidance is appreciated!

He is open to DO schools but posted this in allopathic since I'm more familiar with the allopathic process. Thanks in advance!

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[Domepiece]

As someone who transferred, go wherever success and a high GPA will be most assured. Do really well in prerequisite classes as those will be the benchmark with which your friend is compared against others, GPA wise, since I imagine computer science major classes don't fall in BCPM. This advice sounds simple, but consistent high performance is much rarer than you would think.

As an aside, majoring in computer science is a phenomenal move as it lends a solid plan B if the medical school thing doesn't work out. You cannot get your undergraduate years back, so make sure you milk them for all the life experience you can; do not spend them miserable by changing schools for an insignificant application benefit between schools.

 

[sanjalebi]

Thanks for the insight @Domepiece ! This is pretty much what I told him but I hadn't thought about the BCPM GPA bit which is an important piece of information. I checked and computer science classes indeed do not fall into BCPM.

Any other advice would be appreciated as he makes his decision today. Thanks!