[Deleted]

[LaPlena]

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[gonnif]

some thoughts:
1) The first consideration that any adcom evaluator is academic preparedness. Your current GPA clearly shows that you are not prepared for the rigors of medical school.
2) Getting an MPH does, repeat, does not show any evidence of handling the rigors of medical school, therefore it will not, repeat not help you overcome the lack of academic preparedness.
3) You will be rejected long before anyone even considers your motivations. Getting an MPH will be a waste of time, money and effort, not matter how much you want to convince yourself it will work, no matter your diversity, SES, good intentions, etc. Get you head out of the clouds or whatever bodily orifice it may be hiding.
4) You have sub 3.0. You need to prove that you have the academic ability for the rigors of medical school. You need an SMP and you need to shine in it.

As a marine drill instructor would say to a new recruit doing something really dumb in basic training, go take an ice cold shower for at least 20 minutes until your lips are blue then slap yourself repeated in front of the mirror until this idea (of an MPH) is purged from your soul.

 

[Goro]

To follow up gonnif's wise words, OP, How are Adcoms supposed to know that you can handle medical school when you take courses like Sociocultural & Behavioral Aspects of Public Health, or Fundamentals of Health Budgeting & Financial Management????

 

[inwantstobeadoctor]

Definitely do an SMP! As everyone else has said, you need to show medical schools you're capable of the rigors and workload that comes with being a medical student. There are plenty medical schools that have dual MD/MPH programs if you still want to do an MPH later down the road.

 

[gonnif]

So do an SMP even over doing some post bacc classes?

If you have a very strong rising trend over two years and have an outstanding MCAT, then you should apply. Ignore your overall single GPA number as that is not how an adcom evaluate your application

 

[gyngyn]

So do an SMP even over doing some post bacc classes?

You would need a sustained period of academic excellence in upper-graduate sciences to allay fears.
The alternative is a strong showing in an SMP that is familiar to schools that might be interested in you.

 

[gyngyn]

But what about the classes in parasitology, protozoology, helminthology, epidemiology, virology, & pathology that I would be taking?

Everyone gets an A, though. In that way it is quite different from undergrad.

 

[wholeheartedly]

But what about the classes in parasitology, protozoology, helminthology, epidemiology, virology, & pathology that I would be taking? I understand those classes you mentioned can't prove I can take science classes but wouldn't those graduate courses I mentioned show that I can take harder classes? I am not looking at MPHs in community health but rather in infectious diseases.

I'm just genuinely asking.

How many credits are contributing to your science GPA?

How many credits total have you taken?

What tanked your science GPA so badly?


I’m going to approach this from a slightly different angle than the adcoms since I’m not an adcom and I do have an MPH in epidemiology focusing on infectious diseases. I have not applied to medical school, but have researched the overlap of these two things pretty extensively over quite a few years.

I’m taking a slightly different angle because there’s really several questions here that need addressing.

1. The question the adcoms are answering is will an MPH overcome undergrad GPA deficiencies in proving your academic capabilities to a med school adcom. As noted above, the answer is no.

Some of the courses you take in an MPH will definitely be more rigorous than anything you took in undergrad, for example advanced epidemiology and biostatistics for those majoring in those areas (ie not the epi and biostats all mph folks take) and some of the science courses (oh and public health law, lol).

But as @gyngyn noted, everyone tends to get really good grades in grad school and so grades are often regarded as inflated. There’s pretty wide variability in content and difficulty i grad classes, so it’s really hard for med schools to get any sense of how grades in those classes reflect your ability to handle the rigors of medical school. Undergrad courses best serve this purpose so that’s what they rely on heavily.

2. The question you’re sort of focusing on is, will an MPH help improve your application to medical school?

The answer to this is: possibly. If you have an otherwise solid and competitive application and you treat earning your MPH as more than checking boxes to earn an additional piece of paper and try to maximize your experiences in the program then it can absolutely serve as a great experience like an EC for your application. To really do this well it means jumping into things beyond the degree experience, like participating in the ID journal club, volunteering at the free clinic, working on a longer research project with a faculty member, and or participating in community outreach activities.

If your app is deficient anywhere besides ECs, an MPH isn’t going to compensate for that, especially grades.

3, 4, & 5: Other questions related that you should be seriously considering:

Is the MPH right for me personally? If so when should I do it? Do my goals of helping people even require the MD or would the MPH be sufficient?

It sounds from your description like you truly are passionate about public health so I think getting an MPH could be a good fit for you. The degrees are expensive, so if you decide you want to go to medical school and invest the time and effort to get your other grades up to where you need them to be competitive for medical school, I usually recommend people get the MPH after medical school as it’s usually more cost effective. You can combine it and get it for free in quite a few fellowship programs and you start earning a wage sooner. Which is helpful if you work in public health because it doesn’t pay real well most places.

Doing it later also really allows you to tailor your MPH better to what you’ll be doing in medicine and better target your courses and experiences to mesh with your medical training and future goals. This is pretty huge.

The only reason I would recommend getting it before medical school is to use that experience to decide if you even need to go to medical school to accomplish your goals. You could get your MPH, work for a bit in the field, and maybe that turns out to be exactly what you were trying to do. Then you’re good and you’re done without the extra investment. Plenty of people have done the MPH and found it fit better with how they wanted to improve people’s health

If you do it and decide you still need to go to medical school, then you build your app as a nontrad at that point.

I’ve gone a bit more in depth on some of these things in other posts if you search my history. I’m not going to find them tonight.