I looked at exmike's mdapp's page, and here is my take on the differences between his and my low-undergrad-GPA apps:
http://www.mdapplicants.com/viewprofile.php?myid=922
http://www.mdapplicants.com/viewprofile.php?myid=115
(since exmike and I both had low GPAs, but he got into higher ranked schools (although don't get me wrong, I love Drexel) I decided to see how we stacked up against each other to compare strengths/weaknesses to see why his application was more competitive)
Demographics: Both of us are E. Asian males from California. Neutral.
GPA: exmike (3.1) vs ttac (2.8). Exmike has the clear advantage here. He was on the dean's list near the end and really turned his undergrad career around. OTOH, I never really showed that I had turned myself around, and only took 7 of 8 postbac classes piecemeal (although I was working full-time) and presented an academic risk to ADCOMs. In addition, he did a formal postbac and did very well, proving that he could handle the material at a med school level. Also, my GPA of 2.8 includes 7 postbac classes (3.8) averaged in with my undergrad GPA of 2.45. I don't know if exmikes 3.1 is undergrad only.
MCAT: I had a slight advantage here (2 pts), but I don't think it was statistically significant.
Undergrad school: Both of us went to very good schools. I had a slight (but probably not statistically significant) advantage.
Research: I did 5 years of fulltime research after school and got onto about 6 publications (4th author or so). Exmike had 1 year of research. Advantage goes to ttac.
EC activities: I was a reserve officer in the army for 6 years, went to a bunch of army schools, did pretty well as an army officer. exmike didn't go into his EC activities too much but OTOH, he did have an MPH. From what I saw I think I might have had a slight advantage here (in terms of schools looking for diversity etc etc)
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So what is the point of this comparison? C.R, as you have already graduated from college, there is no way you can pull of the 'miraculous turnaround' that exmike did. You MUST do a postbac of some sort, preferably a formal 1 year program for example at Georgetown or Drexel.
Clearly, if we compare the applications, we can see that demographics, MCAT, and undergrad institution cancel each other out. I probably had a slight edge in research experience and unusual EC's. Exmike had a far better GPA with much more of a proven track record with academics (last 2 years were excellent, did MS and MPH with great records).
You can see how important that was in the application process. Adcoms want to know that a person has really changed, not just said they reformed. How do you prove this? You take full-time science classes for > 1 year and do GREAT. Taking one or 2 classes at a time and doing well isn't enough to prove this to adcoms. C.R: You need to find yourself a full-time postbac program where you are taking classes with the med students, and you need to do well. You probably won't be ready to jump back into that having taken 5 years off from college, so you might want to spend a year taking undergrad level prereqs informally. Do well in that. Study hard for the MCAT and shoot for >34. Apply for a formal postbac (competing with the med students) and work your butt off. If you do all of these things and have great LORs, you should be able to get in somewhere. This process will probably take 2 years of full-time commitment.
I'm obviously not speaking for Drexel's adcom, but let's just say that I have alot of insider knowledge when it comes to adcoms and leave it at that. <ahem>
ttac
p.s. exmike: Congrats on turning it around so dramatically and getting into some great schools. You deserve to get into a great school for all of your hard work.
p.p.s. To exmike (I've pm'ed you): What do you think about this comparison and the conclusions I've drawn?