Folks, I'm in a state of crisis right now and not sure whether to proceed or not with my plans for career in medicine. A little background first to let you know where I'm coming from.
I have BA and BSc from a UofT, a Canadian university (I'm Canadian citizen). I performed appallingly bad in my first few years at university and finished BA with a GPA of 1.82! I had no idea what to do with myself and had no discipline. That was some years ago. Since then I worked abroad and volunteered in the slums of eastern Africa. It's there that I found a passion for working with individuals on the edges of society and decided to pursue further education in mental health and eventually a career in psychiatry. So I came back to Canada and completed a BSc with GPA of 3.62 on 4.0 scale. A substantial improvement. Recently I wrote MCAT with little preparation and scored 504 (CP 125, CARS 129, BB 122, PSB 128). Feeling that I could score substantially higher with proper preparation, I scheduled another MCAT for September and been studying for it for it this summer. My plan was to score as high as possible and apply to Canadian-friendly American DO and MD schools since competition in Ontario is too stiff for somebody with my stats.
But a couple of days ago I downloaded AMCAS GPA excel calculator and discovered to my shock and horror that since my BA took over four years to complete, some of those atrocious grades would end up being lumped together with my BSc grades in one post-bacc section and if that is the case, then the evidence of vast improvement between the first and the second degree would be diminished. However, since I never took any science before doing BSc, my overall sGPA is still around 3.61 and this includes grades for all the so-called pre-med courses that I took including physics, calculus, chemistry, bio, etc.
So now I do not know what to do. Do I have any chance at American DO schools? I lost all motivation to study for MCAT since I now feel like, what's the point? If my only shot at medicine is some Caribbean school then my current MCAT score would probably suffice. Speaking of Caribbean schools, I wouldn't mind doing residency in FM in the sticks somewhere in the US but I know this path is very risky.
Guys, any advice?
Thank you so much for reading this.
I have BA and BSc from a UofT, a Canadian university (I'm Canadian citizen). I performed appallingly bad in my first few years at university and finished BA with a GPA of 1.82! I had no idea what to do with myself and had no discipline. That was some years ago. Since then I worked abroad and volunteered in the slums of eastern Africa. It's there that I found a passion for working with individuals on the edges of society and decided to pursue further education in mental health and eventually a career in psychiatry. So I came back to Canada and completed a BSc with GPA of 3.62 on 4.0 scale. A substantial improvement. Recently I wrote MCAT with little preparation and scored 504 (CP 125, CARS 129, BB 122, PSB 128). Feeling that I could score substantially higher with proper preparation, I scheduled another MCAT for September and been studying for it for it this summer. My plan was to score as high as possible and apply to Canadian-friendly American DO and MD schools since competition in Ontario is too stiff for somebody with my stats.
But a couple of days ago I downloaded AMCAS GPA excel calculator and discovered to my shock and horror that since my BA took over four years to complete, some of those atrocious grades would end up being lumped together with my BSc grades in one post-bacc section and if that is the case, then the evidence of vast improvement between the first and the second degree would be diminished. However, since I never took any science before doing BSc, my overall sGPA is still around 3.61 and this includes grades for all the so-called pre-med courses that I took including physics, calculus, chemistry, bio, etc.
So now I do not know what to do. Do I have any chance at American DO schools? I lost all motivation to study for MCAT since I now feel like, what's the point? If my only shot at medicine is some Caribbean school then my current MCAT score would probably suffice. Speaking of Caribbean schools, I wouldn't mind doing residency in FM in the sticks somewhere in the US but I know this path is very risky.
Guys, any advice?
Thank you so much for reading this.
