3.79 vs 3.8? Is it worth it to go over credit limit, sacrifice sanity for a semester and get that bump?

[Drythagoras]

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[Mr.Smile12]

Previously,

D

Thread 'School list for older nontrad? T10 in reach? soft x-factors, cumulative UG c3.8/s3.91, Grad c3.84/s4.0.'

May 31, 2025

[Deleted]

• Drythagoras
• Replies: 5
• Forum: Pre-Medical (MD)

Title: I'm worried they have filters that check >=3.8 in code, so it automatically filters you if you have a 3.79.
Any validity? I also think there's a big psychological element when the adcom looks at many applications and they see a shiny number they will go for the number.
It's like 519 vs 520 all over?

Could you be more specific with "They"? Would you really want to go to schools that don't want you based on numbers alone?

The applicant pool determines the "filters," but it's more complicated than screening out using a single number.

Read

Admissions Committees: The Art of the Decision | SDN Review

Abstract: Faculty serve three to four year terms on admissions committees, so they can vary significantly year-to-year with shifting priorities over time.

www.studentdoctor.net

 

[polymerization]

This might come off a little blunt, but I honestly don’t understand how you have time to chase a 0.01 bump in GPA but no time for clinical experience or nonclinical volunteering—things without which your application just won’t get taken seriously at most schools. It’s frustrating because you really could have a strong application anywhere, but right now it feels like your focus is on the wrong stuff.

Respectfully, no one is going to care about an extra layer of “shiny numbers” if it looks like you’re collecting degrees just for the sake of it. You already have a PhD. The faculty reviewing your file know exactly what that means, because they’ve been through it themselves. You don’t need to prove rigor. What’s missing is a clear humanitarian mission and some evidence of how you’re living that out in your work and activities.

 

[Goro]

Title: I'm worried they have filters that check >=3.8 in code, so it automatically filters you if you have a 3.79.
Any validity? I also think there's a big psychological element when the adcom looks at many applications and they see a shiny number they will go for the number.
It's like 519 vs 520 all over?

You need to take a break from the pre-med routine. What you're worried about is sheer fantasy.

 

[Med Ed]

This might come off a little blunt, but I honestly don’t understand how you have time to chase a 0.01 bump in GPA but no time for clinical experience or nonclinical volunteering—things without which your application just won’t get taken seriously at most schools. It’s frustrating because you really could have a strong application anywhere, but right now it feels like your focus is on the wrong stuff.

Non-trads occasionally come in not thinking the laws of gravity apply to them. I have mostly seen this in applicants who are mid-career in STEM fields, and are either disillusioned or seeking a non-MBA path to enhancing their professional prospects.

 

[Drythagoras]

This might come off a little blunt, but I honestly don’t understand how you have time to chase a 0.01 bump in GPA but no time for clinical experience or nonclinical volunteering—things without which your application just won’t get taken seriously at most schools. It’s frustrating because you really could have a strong application anywhere, but right now it feels like your focus is on the wrong stuff.

Respectfully, no one is going to care about an extra layer of “shiny numbers” if it looks like you’re collecting degrees just for the sake of it. You already have a PhD. The faculty reviewing your file know exactly what that means, because they’ve been through it themselves. You don’t need to prove rigor. What’s missing is a clear humanitarian mission and some evidence of how you’re living that out in your work and activities.

My main concern is avoiding the stupid things that people get passed over for, if I don't have to do it, all the better then. I've seen hiring decisions where you have an ocean of resumes, they get put in the trash or chosen over the other for the stupidest reasons. My gut feeling was that human nature didn't change when you went from one selective process to another selective process.

About my last post, I took all your advice and immediately refocused my efforts for the summer. De-emphasized research time commitment, upped clinical hours to 1k completed by application, will be 2k projected. Added more shadowing across other specialties. I found a non-clinical volunteering opportunity I that aligns with my interest, and I'm enjoying more than my clinical volunteering lol. Other stuff on humanitarian and personal motivation I didn't include the previous post because I'll dox myself.


Also do you think that not having patient care experience will be a detriment? I have lots of one on one time with patients doing "clinical" things, but it's not in service for curing them, it's in service of research.

Non-trads occasionally come in not thinking the laws of gravity apply to them. I have mostly seen this in applicants who are mid-career in STEM fields, and are either disillusioned or seeking a non-MBA path to enhancing their professional prospects.

Could you help me with what you mean by that? I dont want to give off this energy at all.

 

[Med Ed]

Could you help me with what you mean by that? I dont want to give off this energy at all.

Can you briefly articulate why you want to become a physician?

 

[polymerization]

My main concern is avoiding the stupid things that people get passed over for, if I don't have to do it, all the better then. I've seen hiring decisions where you have an ocean of resumes, they get put in the trash or chosen over the other for the stupidest reasons. My gut feeling was that human nature didn't change when you went from one selective process to another selective process.

About my last post, I took all your advice and immediately refocused my efforts for the summer. De-emphasized research time commitment, upped clinical hours to 1k completed by application, will be 2k projected. Added more shadowing across other specialties. I found a non-clinical volunteering opportunity I that aligns with my interest, and I'm enjoying more than my clinical volunteering lol. Other stuff on humanitarian and personal motivation I didn't include the previous post because I'll dox myself.


Also do you think that not having patient care experience will be a detriment? I have lots of one on one time with patients doing "clinical" things, but it's not in service for curing them, it's in service of research.

Buried the lede on that one! Good for you.

I can thoroughly empathize with the gnawing sense that this process generates outcomes that are increasingly difficult to predict.

I'm just an applicant like you, not an authority on what someone should do beyond the requirements... that said, I do think I have observations and reflections to share with you at this point.

Now that I have the majority of the application process behind me (i.e., I have done all the things, sent out my completed application, and am hearing back from schools), I wish someone had told me a few things...

It's not good enough to have numbers and experiences, the process itself already assumes you will have them. It will also assume autonomy over your numbers and experiences to a degree that I personally find to be unreasonable. It's not acceptable to say that you were just doing what you could with the opportunities you had available, they really want you to own every single day of your life and derive some meaning from it, preferably in a way that comes across like yearning for some aspect of a physician's role that pushes you toward it (even if it seems like you are taking detours away from the medical field over time).

It is your job to connect the whole of your life experience into a narrative that is both internally and externally consistent and demonstrates clearly that medicine is the obvious next step given everything you've seen and done—and that for you, the pinnacle of your career will necessarily involve caring for patients and populations in the ways only a physician can.

This is not a small task, even if it might initially seem like an easy switch. The truth is that it's hard to reconcile these demands against an entire lifetime throughout which you probably had competing motivations and demands on your time and attention...and let's be honest—medicine requires an upfront commitment so all-encompassing, that it is really hard to make some of the claims the application requires in a compelling way the more removed you are from the traditional path...take it from me, I'm also a 10-years-out-of-undergrad applicant. You've got your work cut out for you...but I'm really confident you can do this! Good luck.

 

[Drythagoras]

[Deleted]

 

[Med Ed]

Okay here's a stream of consciousness dump:

This is largely a chronology of events interspersed with internal dialogue, and you didn't really answer my question.

 

[Drythagoras]

[Deleted]

 

[eigen]

No offense, but neither of those reasons seems like a compelling narrative for pursuing medicine to me.

If you want to help people directly, there are a ton of ways to do that that don't involve getting an MD and practicing medicine.

And the latter point doesn't seem to jive with the first one: are you setting yourself up to be a translator for translational research? Or do you want to directly care for patients?

Not saying this is you, at all, but I have a whole generation of students that I consider my "Gray's Anatomy" students who have a completely twisted view of how medical research exists in conjunction with medical practice, and it shows up in a lot of negative ways when they talk about their aspirations in the field.

 

[Drythagoras]

[Deleted]

 

[moltmannfanboi]

Non-trads occasionally come in not thinking the laws of gravity apply to them. I have mostly seen this in applicants who are mid-career in STEM fields, and are either disillusioned or seeking a non-MBA path to enhancing their professional prospects.

I think that this is right. I'm one of these mid-career STEM people and it's taken me 5 years to put together an app. I don't know how I could have done it any faster while still remaining employed full-time, and I'm honestly not sure I would have wanted to. The "time" has given me space to have checkpoints as to whether or not I want to keep going and make sure that my motivations are the right ones.

I'll say that tech culture doesn't really help my kind out with the type of attitude you need to bring to medicine. "Move fast and break things," is the norm and it doesn't work in a process as regimented as med school admissions (or medicine in general).

 

[Med Ed]

Thanks, I will have to do a lot of work in fleshing my narrative out.

The problem isn't so much your narrative, which is just the story you tell yourself. The borrow a phrase from @eigen it doesn't appear that you have done the metacognitive work to understand your real underlying motivation. This is why my fairly basic question appears to have caught you completely unprepared.

But, I don’t think my two motivations are at odds at all. My two MD mentors do just this in combining direct patient care with their technical backgrounds, it's complementary. They're much more effective at building new technologies and bringing them into practice. That’s the model I want to follow, caring for patients first, then also filling gaps between clinical practice and effectively translating new tech or research

This is the landmine that people in your situation so often step on. You see the MD as a means to an end, a ticket to ticket to a job in some space that you find personally interesting. It can come off as egocentric, and why burn a seat on someone who already has a successful career?

Alas, medical schools don't educate people to fill gaps between clinical practice and new tech or research. Specialization happens later. The basic function of medical schools provide a foundational education for undifferentiated physicians, and if you want to go down this path you need to understand that and embrace it. Your application will have to have the same foundational elements as everyone else, including non-clinical volunteering.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

On the personal side, I think I can empathize more with patients' uncertainty and frustration after my own medical scares, During volunteering and my clinical research role, I felt I wanted to also help directly and immediately, and do more than help "someday" and indirectly via research.

On the intellectual side, There's many technologies that are made with no understanding of actual clinical need, and often clinicians misinterpret what new tech can deliver. I'll be uniquely positioned speak both languages as an expert with my PhD. It feels more fulfilling to care for patients first, and then develop the tech they need.

Okay, you have a Ph.D. But you don't need an MD to do what you say you want. I think I shared this article before:

How to Engineer a Health Professional Career | SDN Review

NOTE: In this article, “engineering” can refer to quantitative analytical subjects like physics, mathematics, computer science, or finance/economics, but

www.studentdoctor.net

We can discuss the problems of Ph.D. training elsewhere, but I'm unsure what your program or alma mater offers in terms of building a career in intellectual property or innovation. We need expertly trained Ph.D.'s to pick up enough patent law to practice. I know a few people who went into research administration and manage innovation grants.

INVO Practicum: Innovation + New Ventures - Northwestern University

Create – Protect – Innovate (MIPEF): Bringing ideas to market (Part I) | epo.org

www.epo.org

IP and Patents for Innovation and Career Pathways - Law, Policy, and Engineering

The IP and Patents for Innovation and Career Pathways program is for upper-level undergraduate students or graduate students in STEM or Law considering careers

lpe.psu.edu

Such research you want to participate in is collaborative by design. I don't know how time and responsibility are allocated for your two mentors. Did any of them tread the same path you are: getting a Ph.D. first then returning to an MD? Do they really believe you would be okay with a decade of training away from innovations (unless you attend Carle, EnMed, or Arizona State which might be a little shorter timeline)? There's more you need to be a successful physician entrepreneur.

Why Innovation in Health Care Is So Hard

Health care in the United States—and in most other developed countries—is ailing. Medical treatment has made astonishing advances, but the packaging and delivery of health care are often inefficient, ineffective, and user unfriendly. Problems ranging from costs to medical errors beg for...

hbr.org

Again, I don't think any of us can dissuade you. Many people pursue a medical degree with a specific goal in mind, even if it's not to immerse oneself in patient care. This is an interview from earlier this year.

Persistence, Passion, and a 31-Year Journey: How I Finished Medical School Against All Odds | SDN Review

Samuel Dyer, MD, PhD has worked for over 25 years as a Medical Science Liaison (MSL), leading MSL teams and field medical operations in more than 60

www.studentdoctor.net

 

[Drythagoras]

The problem isn't so much your narrative, which is just the story you tell yourself. The borrow a phrase from @eigen it doesn't appear that you have done the metacognitive work to understand your real underlying motivation. This is why my fairly basic question appears to have caught you completely unprepared.

By narrative, I explicitly mean how I explain my motivations to others. I think the way this convo developed I did a poor job of communicating.

Through line for me is to severely minimize how much I talk about research and tech in my PS and if I'm lucky enough to get interviews. I view the MD as a means to an end of being able to treat patients and make a direct impact.
My other research and tech experience I hoped added uniqueness over the average applicant, but I see that the way I discuss it, people take it the wrong way.

I have nearly 100 hours now in a nonclinical volunteering opportunity with an underserved group that I *really* enjoy, and I will have ~300 by the time of application. I fixed this immediately after I received the feedback on here months ago. I have other clinical volunteering that's focused towards patients in another area that I'm focused on professionally. I haven't discussed my volunteering experience with specific patient populations that I want to be able to serve, my experience with their community support systems, or my own personal narrative. All that, I left out because I don't want to dox myself.

I'll focus on cookie cutter things rather than trying to be unique and hopefully the unique things are self evident.

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My simple question on whether a 3.79 will get filtered vs. a 3.8 has morphed into something else.

Some nontrads don't think the laws of gravity dont apply to them

The purpose of posting on forums like this is to figure out what those rules are, not that I or any other applicant are above them.