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Hi Everyone,
I'm a nontrad student from California, graduated in 2009 with a BA in Psychology and a minor in math. I have always been interested in medicine, but during the mid part of college, I became immensely interested in public health as well. I still envision a career where I'm both impacting directly the lives of patients as well as population health of entire communities. I took the MCAT in 2008 and I scored a 28O (10/7/11). I knew that those scores weren't competitive for allopathic schools so I held off on applying for med schools and decided to go into a public health program while I retook the mcat. So it was either I was going to PH school first or medical school. it turned out that this was vice versa, but that's okay with me.
During the spring of my graduating year, I received an opportunity to study at an ivy league for my MPH in health management and global health. I accepted and moved to the east coast that fall after I graduated from undergrad. My grad program was definitely a heck of a lot more intense than undergrad, especially because this was a joint program with the school of business. Half of my curriculum was MBA coursework. Prior to taking these classes, I had no business background whatsoever in coursework or in experience. So the first semester really felt like learning an entire new language and mindset for me. Moving to another part of the country was also a big adjustment on my part considering I had never moved anywhere further than 30 miles from the place I grew up prior to this. Unfortunately, this all ended with me not passing an MBA class called "Sourcing and Managing Funds." Per my school's policy, anyone not passing a grad class ends up on academic probation. But also per my school's policy, you are taken off of academic probation once you graduate. During my second year, I made up this class and received a high pass. Our program doesn't really have letter grades persay: we are graded as Honors, High Pass, Pass, and Fail. After getting that F in the MBA class, I realized that I should probably hold off on applying to med school until I can handle this program and graduate from it.
My grad grades ended up being a majority of high passes, a few honors, 4 passes, and one F from that MBA class I took in the fall but retook and passed. But nonetheless, I graduated last year. Since then, I've been back in LA working as a clinical quality analyst for a big health services organization. I absolutely love my job and I've been able to work on some amazing and innovative projects. One of the projects I am working on is a pilot on diabetes management for underserved patients in poor neighborhoods here in Southern California. We are on month 2 of the project and we are already seeing a big improvement in our patients receiving proper testing such as Hemoglobin A1c bloodwork, LDL screenings, and tests for nephropathy. We are also seeing an increase of diabetic patients who are controlling their blood sugar when they were previously uncontrolled. While I did not have the ideal grades in grad school, I have been able to really apply all that I have learned during my 2 years in grad school here at my job.
Nevertheless, I know that the F in my first semester in grad school is going to ding me. And maybe I'm just ranting or being paranoid, the uncertainty I guess, lies in how badly is this going to affect my application? Corporate finance really has no relation to anything health related, but an F is still an F 🙁
I really shouldn't be worried about this right now considering I'm about to retake the mcat on Friday, but I guess I just wanted to get this off my chest because it's been bothering lately and I know I have to deal with this sooner or later because I'm going to be applying this June.
Here are my stats going into this year:
Undergrad
- 3.83 cGPA
- 3.71 sGPA
Experience
- Lots of clinic and shadowing experience in undergrad
- Was a residential technician for a transitional living center for brain injured patients during my freshman year in undergrad
- Research assistant at a neuroeconomics lab for 2 years
- Research fellowship for radiology research on tourette's syndrome during the summer 2006
- Interned at the World Health Organization at the department of health systems financing in summer 2010
- Was a student organization consultant for two years advising student organizations at my college
- Started 3 clubs in undergrad
- A cooking club
- An honor society
- An international volunteering group where I took 10 students down with me to northeast brazil to volunteer at an orphanage and also do some fieldwork on the healthcare system there. One of the most eye opening experiences of my life!
- Was the social director at my grad school's student association
- During my second year in grad school- I worked as administrative support for the division of prenatal diagnostics at the school of medicine at the university at my grad school
- And the lastly, my clinical quality analyst position where I've been able to directly put my public health skills in good use to impact the lives of patients here in SoCal!
MCAT
- 28O in 2008
- Retaking it this Friday. Been scoring between 30-32R/S on practice. Hoping for the best outcome Friday!
My LOR will be
(My undergrad doesn't have a premed committee)
- Physics prof in undergrad
- Orgo prof in undergrad
- Portuguese prof that taught my entire team medical Portuguese before we went to Brazil
Grad
- My academic adviser (a little iffy about this one but she saw that I improved grade-wise over the 2 years and have written me rec letters before)
Professional
- An MD physician from my work (for allopathic schools)
- A DO physician from my work (for osteopathic schools)
This has been a long post, thanks for reading this until the end. I will be submitting my primaries as early as possible (june 1st ish). I am looking at a total of 25 allopathic schools and 5 DO schools, but the exact ones I will probably decide when I get my MCAT scores back in May.
Thanks for all your help and guidance!
I'm a nontrad student from California, graduated in 2009 with a BA in Psychology and a minor in math. I have always been interested in medicine, but during the mid part of college, I became immensely interested in public health as well. I still envision a career where I'm both impacting directly the lives of patients as well as population health of entire communities. I took the MCAT in 2008 and I scored a 28O (10/7/11). I knew that those scores weren't competitive for allopathic schools so I held off on applying for med schools and decided to go into a public health program while I retook the mcat. So it was either I was going to PH school first or medical school. it turned out that this was vice versa, but that's okay with me.
During the spring of my graduating year, I received an opportunity to study at an ivy league for my MPH in health management and global health. I accepted and moved to the east coast that fall after I graduated from undergrad. My grad program was definitely a heck of a lot more intense than undergrad, especially because this was a joint program with the school of business. Half of my curriculum was MBA coursework. Prior to taking these classes, I had no business background whatsoever in coursework or in experience. So the first semester really felt like learning an entire new language and mindset for me. Moving to another part of the country was also a big adjustment on my part considering I had never moved anywhere further than 30 miles from the place I grew up prior to this. Unfortunately, this all ended with me not passing an MBA class called "Sourcing and Managing Funds." Per my school's policy, anyone not passing a grad class ends up on academic probation. But also per my school's policy, you are taken off of academic probation once you graduate. During my second year, I made up this class and received a high pass. Our program doesn't really have letter grades persay: we are graded as Honors, High Pass, Pass, and Fail. After getting that F in the MBA class, I realized that I should probably hold off on applying to med school until I can handle this program and graduate from it.
My grad grades ended up being a majority of high passes, a few honors, 4 passes, and one F from that MBA class I took in the fall but retook and passed. But nonetheless, I graduated last year. Since then, I've been back in LA working as a clinical quality analyst for a big health services organization. I absolutely love my job and I've been able to work on some amazing and innovative projects. One of the projects I am working on is a pilot on diabetes management for underserved patients in poor neighborhoods here in Southern California. We are on month 2 of the project and we are already seeing a big improvement in our patients receiving proper testing such as Hemoglobin A1c bloodwork, LDL screenings, and tests for nephropathy. We are also seeing an increase of diabetic patients who are controlling their blood sugar when they were previously uncontrolled. While I did not have the ideal grades in grad school, I have been able to really apply all that I have learned during my 2 years in grad school here at my job.
Nevertheless, I know that the F in my first semester in grad school is going to ding me. And maybe I'm just ranting or being paranoid, the uncertainty I guess, lies in how badly is this going to affect my application? Corporate finance really has no relation to anything health related, but an F is still an F 🙁
I really shouldn't be worried about this right now considering I'm about to retake the mcat on Friday, but I guess I just wanted to get this off my chest because it's been bothering lately and I know I have to deal with this sooner or later because I'm going to be applying this June.
Here are my stats going into this year:
Undergrad
- 3.83 cGPA
- 3.71 sGPA
Experience
- Lots of clinic and shadowing experience in undergrad
- Was a residential technician for a transitional living center for brain injured patients during my freshman year in undergrad
- Research assistant at a neuroeconomics lab for 2 years
- Research fellowship for radiology research on tourette's syndrome during the summer 2006
- Interned at the World Health Organization at the department of health systems financing in summer 2010
- Was a student organization consultant for two years advising student organizations at my college
- Started 3 clubs in undergrad
- A cooking club
- An honor society
- An international volunteering group where I took 10 students down with me to northeast brazil to volunteer at an orphanage and also do some fieldwork on the healthcare system there. One of the most eye opening experiences of my life!
- Was the social director at my grad school's student association
- During my second year in grad school- I worked as administrative support for the division of prenatal diagnostics at the school of medicine at the university at my grad school
- And the lastly, my clinical quality analyst position where I've been able to directly put my public health skills in good use to impact the lives of patients here in SoCal!
MCAT
- 28O in 2008
- Retaking it this Friday. Been scoring between 30-32R/S on practice. Hoping for the best outcome Friday!
My LOR will be
(My undergrad doesn't have a premed committee)
- Physics prof in undergrad
- Orgo prof in undergrad
- Portuguese prof that taught my entire team medical Portuguese before we went to Brazil
Grad
- My academic adviser (a little iffy about this one but she saw that I improved grade-wise over the 2 years and have written me rec letters before)
Professional
- An MD physician from my work (for allopathic schools)
- A DO physician from my work (for osteopathic schools)
This has been a long post, thanks for reading this until the end. I will be submitting my primaries as early as possible (june 1st ish). I am looking at a total of 25 allopathic schools and 5 DO schools, but the exact ones I will probably decide when I get my MCAT scores back in May.
Thanks for all your help and guidance!
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