Hey all! I posted this on the main thread, but maybe I would get some more response/advice from this thread since i'm in the same boat as some people here. I just started browsing around here again recently, and I'm a bit confused quite frankly. I'm kinda just wondering what others advice would be at this point if I were to pursue med school (again), what the best way to go about it would be.
Long story short, I started college off great, finished horribly, for reasons that don't really matter. I have no problem owning up to the poor grades, and unfortunately my grades had a downward trend through college. I was pre-med through college and a bio major/psych minor. I have all my prereqs, although I didn't get a's in them all. My cumulative undergrad sGPA wound up being a 2.32, with my cumulative undergrad GPA at a 2.86. I took MCAT study courses, but decided not to take the MCAT my senior year or apply to school for obvious reasons. I graduated college in 2011.
Now, I've been working in medicine since graduating. I'm assuming that working as an MA counts towards patient care hours, in which I've accumulated over 13,000 hours. I also wound up taking the GREs and got myself into a MS program focused in exercise science and epidemiology. (almost) all my classes were science classes, as I figured I needed to boost my GPAs. I originally was going to go the PA route, which is why I didn't just go back and re-take my basic science courses (caspa just averages all grades together, no grade replacement). Anyways, my cumulative graduate GPA was a 3.85, and my graduate sGPA is a 3.92. I did continue to work full-time through my master's program along with being one of the primary caretakers of a special needs child, along with increasing my volunteer hours. I did shadow physicians a few years ago, which I could do more of, and I know I would have LOR from physicians and the director of my master's program.
I have no problem repeating some courses, especially if I have any intention of applying to med school. My question is really what is the best way to go about applying/what classes to retake? My overall science is up to a 2.70 now, I know that needs to come up, and my overall GPA is over a 3.0 now. And I'll need to study/take the new MCAT. I haven't done too much research yet into if pre-reqs need to be taken within a time frame, but I'm coming up on 10yrs from when I started college, which is when i took my bio 1 and 2 classes, so I dont know if I should retake those too, or just the Biochem and upper level biology classes. Any input/advice would be awesome! My post-bacc is 2 years with all a's, and 2 b+'s, but how long do you need to take classes for them to consider it an "upward trend" with grades again?