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Paigeleona

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I am looking for help on deciding what my best path would be, and my family and friends are sick of hearing me go back and forth- I need a fresh set of eyes/ears. I am a 22 year old premed who just graduated from the University at Buffalo. I am a non traditional student in the sense that my "story" involves being a foster parent for a young family member during my years of schooling, which I am including as one of my factors in my personal statement. I graduated last month with a 3.95 GPA with a bacherlor's in biomedical sciences. I completed 2 years at a community college with a 3.97 GPA and finished the last two at a University. I have 300 hours of patient contact volunteer, 100 hours shadowing with different specialties, and over 800 hours volunteer in a research lab and will be continuing my research as a paid employee during my gap year.

My current dilemna is the MCAT. Due to my own poor planning, I have pushed this test from an original May date to June and now to July 7. I am struggling due to the fact that many of the pre reqs I took 3+ years ago at my community college, so I have found myself having to relearn much of the information. I am currently scoring ~ 503 on the AAMC practice tests with a ~499 on Kaplan. I am seriously lacking in knowledge of the content and feel that I could do much better with more time, because my test taking and comprehension skills are the only thing scoring me points on the practice tests.

As of right now, I am already taking one gap year. I am very tempted to re plan to take the MCAT next year, at the end of April or the first week of May- I feel I will have a huge advantage score wise, as I can work up until the end of february and take 2-3 months off exclusively to study. I will also benefit greatly from applying earlier in the application cycle. However, will it look bad for me to have 2 gap years? Will this hurt my application at all? Should I still take the MCAT July 7 knowing I am not going to do my best?

I am constantly going back and forth and feel like a failure for not trying, but a failure for trying when I am not ready. Please send all of the advice possible! I NEED IT!

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No, it won't hurt you - as long as you are doing things during your gap years and are able to talk about them in your essays/interviews.
 
Two gap years is nothing, try six!

As long as your gap years are productive and have a strong reason why they were taken that you can give clearly during an interview, there's no problem at all.

Your GPA is strong, take the extra year to work, save some money, add some more hours of ECs, take a break from MCAT studying, and hit it fresh next year.
 
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GPA of 3.9 and an MCAT of 500+ will put you in the running for a majority of DO schools. Why not do that?
 
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