CERT Program at VCU?

[ElJamo17]

Hello,
I am thinking of applying to the CERT post-bacc program at VCU. I'm wondering though, what percentage of students who complete it are able to get into Medical/dental school? What is the program like? Is it similar to med school at VCU? How expensive is it and are you able to secure loans for it?
I would really appreciate anyone chiming in with more details. I am a Virginia resident.
Thank you.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[DrResetti]

I do not want to be condescending... But the answers to all your questions are on the website

Premedical Graduate Sciences Certificate Program (CERT) VCU School of Medicine

medschool.vcu.edu

 

[ElJamo17]

I do not want to be condescending... But the answers to all your questions are on the website

Premedical Graduate Sciences Certificate Program (CERT) VCU School of Medicine

medschool.vcu.edu

thanks but the statistics are not recent

 

[ElJamo17]

Per the rest of your questions,

• I took out about $38,000 in federal loans to pay for housing + tuition for the year
• Program is very hard. It's supposed to simulate your first year of med school. But I had a lot of gripes with how it was run, so I hope med school isn't actually like that.

It looks like you didn't get into VCU.
1) What was your GPA in the CERT program?
2) When you say "very hard," how hard is it relative to 15 credits in a semester in college taking all science courses? IE Biochem, genetics, molec bio, gen chem, etc.?
3) It looks like you got into EVMS, did you get any other acceptances?
4) What was your GPA in the CERT program and what was your MCAT?
5) What made physiology so hard? Is there any way to prepare for it?
THANK YOU!!!!!

 

[cookwademan]

Don't bother with CERT. I did in 2018 and got a 3.82 in CERT and 512 MCAT and wasn't even offered an interview. Plus, you don't even get a master's degree. Save your money and if you do decide to do a graduate program, at least do one where you get a master's degree. If I could give this program negative stars I would.

 

[BaddingBreak]

I went to a cutthroat T15 undergrad and then did the CERT program in 2018-2019, and I found that the course load matched the rigor of my undergrad experience. CERT not only helped me rehabilitate my 3.3 uGPA, but also plugged me into Kaplan MCAT prep which helped me raise my MCAT 7 points from my self-study prep MCAT. It almost felt like being in medical school with cadaver labs and classes like Physiology, Histology, etc., and made me really want to go to med school at VCU. It is significantly cheaper than comparable programs like the Georgetown SMP ("Georgetown Physio"), both in tuition and in cost of living. I really enjoyed living and going to class in downtown Richmond. My SO lived in DC at the time, and I was able to see her basically every weekend with how close our cities were.

That said, I would echo a lot of what others have said -- you MUST do well here for it to be a worthwhile monetary investment. Prepare to devote 70-80 hours a week to reading, class, studying, and outlining. There wasn't a ton of comradery within my class, and it was difficult to form connections with the faculty as well. The 3.5 GPA for a guaranteed interview is NOT a shoo-in for anyone; they really make sure a select few are meeting that mark, especially with that first semester Physio class -- it's a killer. Even then, very few people in my CERT class who interviewed with VCU med were accepted, including several who stayed for a second year to get their Masters. I was disappointed that CERT didn't set me up for success at VCU, but there's no doubt it set me up for success elsewhere.

 

[yogidabear]

I am a recent graduate of the CERT program. Please do not enroll in this program. After graduating as a top student in the class (way over the 3.5 GPA requirement and scored over the 90th %ile for the MCAT), I have not been accepted to VCU medical school. If your goal is to get into medical or dental school, there are far better post-bacc/ masters programs to achieve that result. A guaranteed interview means nothing. If they guaranteed an interview to a cardboard box, they still don’t need to admit them. I was fortunate enough to get into a better medical school than VCU, but only because of my standardized exam scores.

In short, this program is a $30,000 MCAT prep class. The administration is horribly run (the professor who “ran” the program was physically absent in the Caribbean for the first 10 weeks of the program), we were treated like second class students even though we were in the same courses as PhD students, and the attrition rate of students in the program was startling (we started with about 110 students and finished with 50 something). And get this—I had classmates score poorly in a class and the administration would try and persuade them to drop ANOTHER $30,000 for the master’s degree. What a joke!