Advise for bummed out premed!

[Homer101]

Hi Guys,
Here is the story:
Did my undergrad from UC Berkeley with overall GPA: 3.46, BCPM: 2.98. Have a C+ in one of the organic chem classes, 2 Cs in Calculus II and III, and about 3 more in upper division Bio courses.

Volunteer work: Afgan border Red Cross, Street Children Bangladesh, ER volunteer Calif, non-profit NGO which does food drives in South Asia.

Jobs: Teacher at Elementry school, bascially work with the science program.

MCAT: took it about 3 years ago and bombed it. 24 (8 N.S, 10 P.S, 6 V) I have two jobs at the time.

I have always wanted to go to medical school and work abroad with WHO, CARE, Unicef. I don't know if my GPA is good enough to even make it to any medical schools. I plan to take the MCAT again during summers 2005. Your advice would be really helpful. Should I try to up my GPA by taking post-bacc courses? By the way I got accepted for my MPH at Yale, but they don't have grades over there would that go against me, they have honor, pass, high pass and fail. Or a decent MCAT score be enough to make me a good candidate.

Love to get some feed back.

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[Phil Anthropist]

1) It might not be necessary, but I would take a few courses to get the bcpm up to a 3.0. You would probably only need to get an A in one or two classes (calculate to be sure). Again, might not be necessary, but couldn't hurt.

2) Some schools specifically state that only MCAT scores taken within three years are considered. This means you might not even have to worry about the 24. Study hard for this Summer's mcat. Shoot for a 46 U

3) Your overall GPA is not that bad--it's a lot higher than many on the postbac forum that have gained acceptances. Some of these are even sub-3.0/low 3.0 GPAers.

4) Yale MPH *might* be a good route as long as your MCAT is good. However, the non-letter grades at Yale could be a disadvantage. Did you ever consider doing a special masters program or enrichment postbac instead?

I would definitely go the postbac enrichment route if you don't have a major upward science trend. If you did well on the GRE, you can use that to apply to most SMPs, including BU, G-town, and Rosalind Franklin. RFU has a very strong informal linkage--check the recent threads. You might have a shot at getting in.

It sounds like you really want to do something with international health and I wouldn't discourage it, but you might want to consider putting the MPH on hold. I don't know how Yale's program works, but there's quite a few MPH programs that you can finish in one year while you're in med school. I have two physician friends that got MPH degrees between their clinical years. One went to Harvard and I think the other one went to either Hopkins or Harvard. It only took one year.

You might also want to consider Boston University's special masters. At BU you can get your MA in Medical Sciences (which includes some med courses) in one year. You can then do an MPH at BU in one-year (maybe even less). I think International Health is one of the concentrations, but don't quote me on that. Just a thought.

5) Your ECs sound great!

 

[CaliforniaBear]

First of all, don't give up hope.

I graduated from Berkeley also with a low GPA (3.07 overall and 2.8 science), but I had a decent MCAT. That still was not enough, so I decided to do the post-bac/SMP route. This has been the key for me to get into medical school.

For you, I would definitely suggest retaking the MCAT. If you are able/willing to pay the money, take a test prep course. I took Berkeley Review and Kaplan, and I thought Kaplan was much better. If you can get a 30+, that might be enough, but I think that your science GPA probably needs to improve. You can either re-take the courses you did poorly in, but I think that the post-bac programs do a lot more to make up for bad grades. I think Columbia has an international health program that is supposed to be really good, it does some work with an Israeli medical school (I think). I'm in the Georgetown SMP program, and that does a lot for people in a position like yours. Your EC's look really good, so that will work in your favor.

Feel free to PM if you have any questions.

 

[premed]

Hi Guys,
Here is the story:
Did my undergrad from UC Berkeley with overall GPA: 3.46, BCPM: 2.98. Have a C+ in one of the organic chem classes, 2 Cs in Calculus II and III, and about 3 more in upper division Bio courses.

Volunteer work: Afgan border Red Cross, Street Children Bangladesh, ER volunteer Calif, non-profit NGO which does food drives in South Asia.

Jobs: Teacher at Elementry school, bascially work with the science program.

MCAT: took it about 3 years ago and bombed it. 24 (8 N.S, 10 P.S, 6 V) I have two jobs at the time.

I have always wanted to go to medical school and work abroad with WHO, CARE, Unicef. I don't know if my GPA is good enough to even make it to any medical schools. I plan to take the MCAT again during summers 2005. Your advice would be really helpful. Should I try to up my GPA by taking post-bacc courses? By the way I got accepted for my MPH at Yale, but they don't have grades over there would that go against me, they have honor, pass, high pass and fail. Or a decent MCAT score be enough to make me a good candidate.

Love to get some feed back.

Just 3 C's? Hahaha

1 F, 2 D's, 1 C-, 5 C's, 3 C+'s...went back to my AMCAS just for you.

Accepted at USUHS. Interviews at SLU, NYMC, Drexel, and hopefully Georgetown.

All joking aside...like Calbear said, you have a long/tough road ahead, but you are by no means out of the race. I also had a 27Q MCAT score with a GPA that was far worse than your's at one point. I got serious about the CAT's...went up to a 33Q, took a full-time load of post-bac classes while working full-time, and am currently doing the SMP. Don't lose hope my man.

 

[Lindyhopper]

You done some great things. I really hope that counts for alot. I'm wondering if you considered DO programs. Although, I hope & think that MD programs would be interested in you, DO programs seem more open to nontraditionals.
Best of Luck

 

[Homer101]

First of all I would like to Thank each and everyone of you guys who took out the time to write a reply. Based on what I understand from all the posts is that the GPA part is pretty borderline, and I actually think I can take 2 courses or so in BCPM and push that GPA to about a 3.0, which would mean the overall going to about a 3.5

As far as the MPH is concerned I got into Columbia and Johns Hoppkins as well, but they aren't offering me too much financial aid that is why I was thinking about going to Yale. I was planning to either take the MCAT right now or take it the next summer.

Thank you once again for all the help and guidance.