Hi Everyone!
I'm new to this whole forum thing but I was wondering if any one knows if I have a chance at pod school with a 2.5 gpa? I'm applying right now and am very nervous...please let me know
I'll be very honest with you and take my advice as you wish.
Your GPA is very low - I don't know where you received your undergraduate education but I know at some undergrad institutions, obtaining a 3.0 is comparable to 4.0 at other places. This leads me to the second point, the MCAT. Now, I know myself and Dr_feelgood tend to emphasize the value of the MCAT as a seperator which can truly identify the aptitute of the applicant - I have a friend of mine who got into an MD school with a 3.0 GPA but a 32 MCAT - so again, if your MCAT is strong then it will offset the GPA and possibly demonstrate to any admissions committee your true academic "worth" sort of speak.
Now to the honesty bit, with a 2.5 GPA, I will not be suprised if you receive an interview from a few schools and possibly obtain an acceptance letter. However, you should be advised that the schools will have no problem having a low-GPA student on board and then overwhelm them with incredible amounts of workload during the first year, only to watch them dropout and benefit from their tuition money. Sadly, this happens from time to time because schools are private institutions at the end of the day.
My advise for you is to be prepared for school. If you haven't taken an MCAT course - take one (kaplan, princeton, etc.) and take the exam with an aim to score well. Then I recommend you to honestly review your undergraduate work and examine what went wrong. I am sure you are intelligent person, and very often we face unforeseen circumstances that can offset our grades. For that, you need to examine your undergraduate history and not only see what went wrong, but how you can improve. Perhaps, extra post-bacc courses would raise this GPA to a solid 3.0 and above or even a Masters could be a strong option for you.
Either way you definately have options but you need to put in strong efforts to not only enroll but to do well during your student career as a podiatric medical student. I hope you didn't get offended or disappointed by this post but in full honesty, I would've said the same thing to my brother or a member of my family if they were in your exact shoes.
Best of luck with your endeavours.
Regards,
podman
