Advice on what to do during gap year

[babyface10111]

cGPA: 3.5
sGPA: 3.3
MCATs: decent enough

I did 2.5 years of research and 100+ hours of volunteering during undergrad, other leadership, etc.

Here's what I have lined up for my gap year:
-volunteering at hospital
-paid employment (non-clinical)
aaaaaaand I got into an SMP (GU)

so that's where my question comes in. what should I during my gap year?.......

will doing an SMP actually hurt my chances for med school because it looks like I'm highlighting a weak point on my application? I got a lot of advice on this forum telling me not to do an SMP, so that's why I got that paid employment job lined up.

Should I just blatantly ignore it (my gpa) and go forth with just working and volunteering?

What I'm worried about is, if I don't have any acceptances next year, and if I did the smp for the 2014-2015 year, I could just apply next June with my year's worth of grades without having to wait another year.

But then again, SMP's aren't a "oh well, since I don't have anything else to do during the year I'll just do an SMP *just in case*" kind of thing. They are a "last-ditch" effort to get into med school.

I don't think post-bacc classes "a la carte" are a good idea in my case because it's harder to get loans for those and since I've taken a significant amount of science classes one or two classes isn't going to do much for my gpa.

What would anyone else do in my situation?

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[lmn]

What was your trend? Also is your mcat good enough to show that you are more competent than your sgpa may look initially? If your answers are strong upward and a good mcat, then I probably wouldn't bother with the smp and would work to save money for applying and for use during school in the future. You definitely don't need the extra debt if you have shown yourself to be academically competent.

 

[babyface10111]

What was your trend? Also is your mcat good enough to show that you are more competent than your sgpa may look initially? If your answers are strong upward and a good mcat, then I probably wouldn't bother with the smp and would work to save money for applying and for use during school in the future. You definitely don't need the extra debt if you have shown yourself to be academically competent.

trend was, unfortunately, downward with the worst grades in upper level bio courses.

MCAT is pretty good second time around. First time was low 30s (with bio being the lowest score).

hmmmmmm writing this out, things don't look too bright.......

 

[gettheleadout]

Moving to WAMC.