Any advice for this idiot?

[SomeGirl]

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So here I am, halfway through 2nd semester sophomore year. I completely messed up my college career so far and I don't know how on Earth I'll be able to recover my junior year. My GPA is a 3.55 (which isn't considered awful, but the average GPA of a successful applicant is much higher) and my EC's are pretty bad (nothing freshman year and just volunteering and math research this year, not science, also no doctor-shadowing or clinical volunteering).

The thing that really concerns me is that I managed to get my stupid self stuck in a tricky situation: I need to boost my GPA, but I also need to take hard classes (or else med schools will think I'm a slacker). So far, I've been taking the hardest possible course load because I enjoy the academic challenge and because I wasn't even considering med school until the beginning of this semester, so my grades weren't too much of a concern.

If I try to lighten up my course load junior year, med schools will see that I stopped pushing myself. If I continue to take tough classes, then my GPA will stay the same or sink. And I won't have enough time or energy to boost my EC's as much as I want to. What do I do? 🙁

 

[SnakeOilForSale]

Nothing freshman year is ok. A lot of people take the first year to acclimate to college and that's totally acceptable. Research does NOT need to be science. The point of research, I believe, is just to reflect intellectual curiosity. Someone who does research in speech pathology for example can definitely be as competitive as someone doing research in bench sciences, IMO.

So it sounds like you volunteered and did research sophomore year, that's great. You can begin shadowing or clinical work this summer and beyond.

The courses do get harder as you progress, but the hope is that you've mastered the skills from previous courses and attained better studying habits in order to be able to handle them. It sounds like you haven't gotten good study habits solidified yet, which will be a problem that follows you as long as you are in academia if you don't fix it now.

My advice is to pinpoint what's not working for you as far as studying goes, take some time to get good grades and raise your GPA. The clinical work won't matter if the GPA isn't okay. There's no rush. There's always time to do more activities once you've sorted this out.

 

[gyngyn]

If I try to lighten up my course load junior year, med schools will see that I stopped pushing myself. If I continue to take tough classes, then my GPA will stay the same or sink. And I won't have enough time or energy to boost my EC's as much as I want to. What do I do? 🙁

No, we will see that you took upper division classes and got A's.

 

[Goro]

A 3.55 is NOT lethal, just below avg.

So here I am, halfway through 2nd semester sophomore year. I completely messed up my college career so far and I don't know how on Earth I'll be able to recover my junior year. My GPA is a 3.55 (which isn't considered awful, but the average GPA of a successful applicant is much higher) and my EC's are pretty bad (nothing freshman year and just volunteering and math research this year, not science, also no doctor-shadowing or clinical volunteering).

The thing that really concerns me is that I managed to get my stupid self stuck in a tricky situation: I need to boost my GPA, but I also need to take hard classes (or else med schools will think I'm a slacker). So far, I've been taking the hardest possible course load because I enjoy the academic challenge and because I wasn't even considering med school until the beginning of this semester, so my grades weren't too much of a concern.

If I try to lighten up my course load junior year, med schools will see that I stopped pushing myself. If I continue to take tough classes, then my GPA will stay the same or sink. And I won't have enough time or energy to boost my EC's as much as I want to. What do I do? 🙁

 

[Whyamionhere]

Why do some people think a 3.55 is a kiss of death equivalent to flunking out of undergrad? If the rest of someone's application is great, who would reasonably look at a 3.55 combined with a great mcat score and EC's and be like "wow this idiot".

Summer would be a great time to really amp up the EC's but I promise it's possible to focus on school and EC's during the school year too.

 

[bananafish94]

The classes get harder but you get better.

 

[WedgeDawg]

Your GPA is more important than taking hard classes. Don't take the hard classes unless you can handle them. Someone with a 3.7 who took a fairly easy courseload has a good shot at getting into medical school. Someone with a 3.2 who took very hard classes has a poor shot. Easing off on your courseload a bit is nowhere near close to being any sort of red flag.

Once you've got your classes and GPA under control, you can start throwing in some ECs. Or you can do ECs over the summer.

The advice I like to give people who are worried about balancing GPA and ECs is that GPA is much harder, more time consuming, and more expensive to fix during a gap year than ECs. Focus on your GPA and everything else can be taken care of after.

 

[DokterMom]

Messed up? Hardly. Lots of people at this point are beginning to try to dig themselves out of some pretty deep holes. You're not "in a hole" at all -- though you're correct that compared to the most competitive med school applicants, you are a bit behind. But just a little bit -- and you've got a really good reason for it, seeing as how your decision to become a physician is a fairly recent one. So what to do now?

1. First, continue to do well in your coursework. That should be your number one priority right now. Maintain your GPA and improve it if you can.
   
2. Second, look for physicians you can shadow. Spring break is a great time to do this -- you don't need a whole lot of notice. Enlist everyone you know with any kind of connections and find a few doctors you can follow around. If you can't find doctors to shadow, also consider NPs, PAs, dentists, podiatrists, optometrists -- anyone medical. NOW is the time to do this because you just decided you might want to become a physician, so find out more about it. (You might not like it, and wouldn't it be better to know that now rather than later?) Also, it fits neatly into your story line: "I realized I was interested in a medical career so started to investigate."
3. Be honest with yourself about IF you really did enjoy it and think you truly want to become a physician. FAR too many pre-meds skip this step.
4. If you decide you do want to move forward, look for an interesting volunteer gig. Accept that all the "good hospital volunteering spots" will be long gone (they're not all that "good" anyway) and look for something a bit out of the ordinary: Hospice, memory care unit, nursing home, homeless shelter, suicide or abuse hotline, developmentally disabled, VA, Planned Parenthood, free clinic. Look for something you can do on a flexible schedule that will let you interact with sick/hurting people. Ideally, it will be something that ties logically into other aspects of your life so your volunteering there feels natural. Start volunteering as soon as you can and stick with it.
   
5. Plan on taking a gap year. It'll take the pressure off your timeline and give you time to build up your application, boost your ECs, and take your MCAT late in the summer after your junior year after you've finished the requisite coursework and while studying for the MCAT won't hurt your GPA.
6. And stay out of trouble. It should go without saying, but any legal troubles (drug problems, DUIs) or academic integrity violations will be deal-killers for you and are totally avoidable.

That's the recipe -- Good luck to you!