Medical Do I have a chance - Low GPA; TBD MCAT?

[Goro]

Hello!

Short story: I have a low GPA (cGPA 3.17 and sGPA 3.04) from undergrad where I majored in Biomedical Sciences and International Affairs. I have yet to take the MCAT, but am wondering what MCAT score I should shoot for (obviously highest is best, but realistically speaking) in order to have even a small chance at getting accepted to MD schools.

Long story: My dad passed died when I was a senior in high school and I was not very close to my mom (parents were divorced), so the death definitely took a toll on both my mental health and my GPA the first few years. My GPA did have an upward trend with earning As and Bs in more advanced science classes, but my pre-med prerequisites were mostly Cs since I took those the first few years of college. Throughout college, I became interested in public health and the intersection of medicine and public health and so I decided to get an MPH in Infectious Disease Epidemiology. MPH was from a top 10 school. I am now a Research Associate in the Department of Neurology at the school of medicine from the university I had gotten my MPH from.

Extracurricular's and Special Features:
- 1st author on 1 review article submitted to a national journal on cardiovascular treatment medicine
- 1st author on 2 research articles submitted to well known national journals
- Will have 2-3 more co-authorship publications by the time I am applying
- Worked for CDC and DPH on disease surveillance for 2 years
- Interned for an NGO for 3 months where I designed and implemented primary research in a low-resource country in East Africa (one of the publications where I was first author)
- Shadowed an orthopedic surgeon
- Volunteered as COVID contact tracer for 5 months
- Volunteered in a leadership position where we launched the nation's first conference in this field of study (not stating the topic as to remain anonymous)
- LOR from 2 MDs, 1 PhD, 1 MPH, and a committee letter
- Volunteered with health screenings for low income residents for 4 months
- Over 2,000 hours of direct patient care in a variety of hospital and clinic settings
- Worked in a genetics lab in undergrad where I did basic lab work
- Presented work at national conferences

Interests
- Vulnerable populations
- Global health
- Infectious diseases and community-based participatory research

Given all these experiences, do I have a chance given my low GPA from undergrad? On a side note, I have been out of school for 3 years and am studying 10-15 hours a week for the next 4-5 months before taking the MCATs. If so, if I get between a 70-80 percentile, which schools should I aim to apply to? 80-90 percentile? 90+ percentile? My hope is to integrate public health and medicine in my profession in order to build capacity in resource limited settings and being able to provide both immediate and long-term and sustainable treatment, care, and solutions on the individual and population level. Any help, suggestions, or encouragement would be much appreciated!

A high MCAT score does not remediate a low GPA.

What were your year by year GPAs?

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[tantacles]

I would strongly suggest a post-baccalaureate program for GPA improvement, particularly if you are able to do well on the MCAT. Don't rush this. If you do well on the MCAT and are able to do well in a post-baccalaureate program, you have a good shot at acceptance.

If your junior and senior year were >3.8, however, you might not even need to go that route, so I would love, as @Goro mentioned, to see your breakdown of GPA by year.

And you already know the answer: As high as you can get. The absolute minimum score any human should aim for is 508, and for you, the higher the better.