Hi all,
So to get to the point the way my college works we all take required courses, and medical pre-reqs aren't a part of it. For the past couple years I've done pretty well, all A's and B's, so my GPA was at a comfortable 3.67. I applied to Hopkins, Bryn Mawr, Bennington and Goucher for a post-bac program. I knew that my application would be a stretch, I'm a fresh college graduate with no tangible medical experience save having a management position at an EMR company. Predictably I was denied from Goucher, invited for an interview and then denied from Hopkins, invited to interview - placed on a waiting list and then denied from Bryn Mawr and, luckily, accepted into Bennington.
Today I went into my registrar's office to get my grades and send them to Bennington. To my great surprise (there's no clear rubric for how my professors choose a grade since every class is discussion based) I had my worst semester ever. All B's/B+'s except for one A- in my lab class. This dropped my final undergraduate GPA to a 3.62 , instead of upping it to a 3.7 as I had been hoping :/ . Worse, it looks like I slacked off my final semester in college.
I want to enlist in the air-force in order to pay for medical school, and after investing in Bennington's program I'm hoping to get into an upper tier medical school if I don't enlist. I know that without grades in my pre-req courses and an MCAT score my viability as a medical school candidate is vague at best, but I guess I'm just wondering whether my undergraduate GPA is going to seriously weight me down when I apply for medical school. My transcript is sent with a letter emphasizing the "all-required" nature of my curriculum, and I have a compelling reason for the dip in my grades (my brother died in the middle of this semester) but I know that no one is going to bother looking at these things until well into the admissions process.
Any honest thoughts/advice welcome
So to get to the point the way my college works we all take required courses, and medical pre-reqs aren't a part of it. For the past couple years I've done pretty well, all A's and B's, so my GPA was at a comfortable 3.67. I applied to Hopkins, Bryn Mawr, Bennington and Goucher for a post-bac program. I knew that my application would be a stretch, I'm a fresh college graduate with no tangible medical experience save having a management position at an EMR company. Predictably I was denied from Goucher, invited for an interview and then denied from Hopkins, invited to interview - placed on a waiting list and then denied from Bryn Mawr and, luckily, accepted into Bennington.
Today I went into my registrar's office to get my grades and send them to Bennington. To my great surprise (there's no clear rubric for how my professors choose a grade since every class is discussion based) I had my worst semester ever. All B's/B+'s except for one A- in my lab class. This dropped my final undergraduate GPA to a 3.62 , instead of upping it to a 3.7 as I had been hoping :/ . Worse, it looks like I slacked off my final semester in college.
I want to enlist in the air-force in order to pay for medical school, and after investing in Bennington's program I'm hoping to get into an upper tier medical school if I don't enlist. I know that without grades in my pre-req courses and an MCAT score my viability as a medical school candidate is vague at best, but I guess I'm just wondering whether my undergraduate GPA is going to seriously weight me down when I apply for medical school. My transcript is sent with a letter emphasizing the "all-required" nature of my curriculum, and I have a compelling reason for the dip in my grades (my brother died in the middle of this semester) but I know that no one is going to bother looking at these things until well into the admissions process.
Any honest thoughts/advice welcome
