Hypothetically, if someone obtained a PhD from a brick and mortar institution, wouldn't it be far easier to get a medical school to admit you even with a low gpa?
Hypothetically, if someone obtained a PhD from a brick and mortar institution, wouldn't it be far easier to get a medical school to admit you even with a low gpa?
You should pursue a PhD because you want to, not for a checkbox for med school.
+1. I couldn't imagine 'going through the motions' for that many years.
By the time you finish PhD you are likely to be 30. Persuing medicine and establshing ypourselves will take another 10 years. You will be 40. It is going to be tough, and a high risk plan.
Good luck suffering through the training required for a PhD if all you really want is an MD, dude. What everyone is telling you is true. There are much better ways to rehab a GPA that does not involve committing 4-6+ years of your life to an advanced degree. I'm also not quite sure you understand exactly what is required in order to obtain a PhD, especially one in the biomedical sciences. It's not something to take lightly. Also, I'd be willing to wager that a lackluster grad career can hurt you just as much as a lackluster undergrad career. If you're not fully committed, it's easy to have a lackluster grad career.
I applied this application season with a PhD. I'm absolutely sure it helped, but it didn't magically open doors. I still had to jump through every single hoop that all other pre-meds have to jump through: Clinical work, shadowing, non-clinical volunteering, research, etc. Prior to applying I was told my PhD would be nothing more than a really nice EC. I'd say that wasn't too far off the mark. I will say, however, that I was cut some slack on my MCAT score as I was invited to interview at a couple of OOS places where my numbers were not competitive for an OOS invite. But I'm also still pending a decision from the school I actually interviewed at with uncompetitive OOS numbers... so it may be that the invite doesn't mean much.
Someone I know applied this cycle with a PhD and sadly hasn't gotten any acceptances thus far. I'm sure having a PhD helps, but as someone else said, it doesn't magically open doors (e.g. won't make up for a low MCAT).
I'd like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don't think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It's a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don't know what we're doing. We can't be sure whether we're asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty.