Unfavorable Situation: Premed Needs Advice

[mrlucky0]

In short, here is my situation/profile:

I am 2 semesters away from graduation ( about 25 more credits to take ).

Cumulative GPA: 3.25

EC's: 1/2 Year Volunteer + Paid Internship Research , Currently starting a 1 year (commitment) internship at a hospital Neurological Research Lab

I'm currently taking the Princeton Review (TPR) so I'm supposed to take the MCAT in August.

I am a Arizona resident and my #1 priority is to be accepted to University of Arizona Phoenix/Tuscon.

Now I certainly know, that my accomplishments isn't going to get me anywhere at this point, which is why I am seriously considering applying to a 2 year graduate M.S. program at my school. Based on this curriculum, I am confident, and I foresee that I will be able to maintain a ~3.80 graduate GPA.

Regarding the 1 year internship commitment, my academic adviser's words were "not to spread myself too thinly." - exactly what I thought about before I committed. This is a great opportunity cost for me in terms of seeking out other internships.

When I mentioned to her that there would be a possibility of publication, she immediately changed her mind, "if you get a paper published, you should apply...." Assuming that my research does culminate in a publication I seriously have my doubts though. Why do you guys think? Could I have done better?

Another dilemma: I take the MCAT in August following TPR and then enroll in the M.S. program, which takes 2 years to complete. After 2 years, I have about 1 year to be accepted to med school before my MCAT score expires. Is this sufficient time to does whatever else I need to do (more EC's, more courses) to better my profile?

Should I just take the MCAT at a later date and treat the TPR as a prep course? I could always self-study again right?

I am unsure how to proceed at this point so I appreciate any advice offered. I must say though I dislike it when advisers or anyone tries to candy-coat things to make matters more favorable for me than it really is.

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[franniemeow07]

I would not take the TPR course without taking the MCAT right after you finish it. I think it really defeats the purpose of taking the prep course in the first place, which is to have the knowledge and strategies fresh in your mind right before you take the test. I have friends who have done what you propose (i.e. self-study after a long period after the TPR course ended), and it's a HUGE pain in the butt to deal with, especially if you have other things going on.

That said, unless you are riding on the coattails of an extremely successful postdoc in your lab, it is extremely unlikely that you will get published in only 1 year at a lab. Productive bench science takes a huge freaking long time, not to mention that you will be facing a large learning curve, if this is your first time in a lab in that area.

To the best of my knowledge, your graduate GPA remains independent of your undergraduate GPA, so trying to improve your undergrad GPA with a masters won't help your undergrad GPA at all. However, that isn't to say that the good graduate GPA is totally useless. Is this your only motivation for pursuing a Masters? If it is, I would not advise doing it, especially because a Masters is something you pay a significant amount of tuition for, and depending on the area of your masters, the knowledge may or may not be valuable.

The half year volunteering isn't enough. Is this something that you are doing now? I would suggest you continue with that during your internship. If it isn't something you are doing now, then I'm sure there is a hospital nearby with a volunteer program in place. You need to show adcoms that you have at least some experience being exposed to the health care field.

 

[chad5871]

This thread is better suited for the "What Are My Chances?" subforum that we've created. I am going to move it there now.

 

[mrlucky0]

I would not take the TPR course without taking the MCAT right after you finish it. I think it really defeats the purpose of taking the prep course in the first place, which is to have the knowledge and strategies fresh in your mind right before you take the test. I have friends who have done what you propose (i.e. self-study after a long period after the TPR course ended), and it's a HUGE pain in the butt to deal with, especially if you have other things going on.

That said, unless you are riding on the coattails of an extremely successful postdoc in your lab, it is extremely unlikely that you will get published in only 1 year at a lab. Productive bench science takes a huge freaking long time, not to mention that you will be facing a large learning curve, if this is your first time in a lab in that area.

To the best of my knowledge, your graduate GPA remains independent of your undergraduate GPA, so trying to improve your undergrad GPA with a masters won't help your undergrad GPA at all. However, that isn't to say that the good graduate GPA is totally useless. Is this your only motivation for pursuing a Masters? If it is, I would not advise doing it, especially because a Masters is something you pay a significant amount of tuition for, and depending on the area of your masters, the knowledge may or may not be valuable.

The half year volunteering isn't enough. Is this something that you are doing now? I would suggest you continue with that during your internship. If it isn't something you are doing now, then I'm sure there is a hospital nearby with a volunteer program in place. You need to show adcoms that you have at least some experience being exposed to the health care field.

Thanks for the advice you introduced some good points there. To your first question, yes, I realize that the graduate GPA is independent of the undergraduate. I failed to mentioned this. In fact, this is exactlymy motivation for completing the 2 year M.S. I am banking on this opportunity because I realize that it's impossible for me to raise me current undergraduate GPA. Hence, I want to show med schools that I am quite capable for performing well. Tuition is a non-issue for me.

I'd like to ask you about the volunteering situation: my current position at the neurological cancer research is actually unpaid, so that would qualify it as volunteer right? Alternatively, did you mean charitable volunteer work? My own thought is that regardless of being paid or not, I ought to be involved with activities both research oriented and charity oriented. What do you think?

 

[franniemeow07]

Your opportunity to show med schools that you can perform well in med school is to absolutely kill the MCAT. If you can do this, then the 2 year M.S. is really unnecessary for strictly this purpose. With the time that you would be spending doing the M.S., you could be conducting full-time research for pay (either basic sciences OR clinical), or work at a hospital-affiliated job such as patient advocate, etc. Look around to see what kind of jobs interest you, and that would give you something really interesting to talk about in your personal statement or your interviews. Think about it--if you were in your interviewer's shoes, would you be more interested in a.) a m.s. student who goes to class all day and just tries to get good grades or b.) someone who is doing really awesome full time work in community service or research?

I suppose technically you could list your unpaid research as volunteering, but I would suggest you listing your neurological research simply as Research/Lab, ESPECIALLY if you don't have any other experiences you could list as "Research/Lab". Earlier, when I said "volunteering", I meant what I guess you called "charity oriented". Yes, I 100% agree with you that it would be great to have both research and volunteering experience. Keep in mind that the 2 things are not usually mutually exclusive (i.e. you can do research and volunteering at the same time). Typical hospital volunteering requirements only want a few hours a week (3-4).