First year law student

[zambonia515]

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I'm a first year law student at UW-Madison who was pre-med in undergrad. Took the MCAT in summer of 2002, got a 31, so it's now expired. Undergrad at Cornell is 3.15. Have an MPH with a 3.78 gpa. three years work experience in health care. Started the post-bacc program at UPenn in summer of 2007, took one class there, got an A, then dropped out because it was 1) too expensive for someone who has completed all the pre-reqs and 2) the transition to school after having worked for so long made me hesitate again and 3) the advising at the time was not appropriate for someone with my kind of work experience.

These are my questions:
1) Should I return to the post-bacc program at UPenn, knowing they have a new advisor, for the sake of demonstrating some commitment to something? The alternative is to take courses here at UW-Madison.
2) I'm turning 27 in a few days. When I start med school, assuming I get in, I'll be 28, turning 29 shortly. Is this kind of old for a returning student? I would be in my third year of law school by then if I stick out what I'm doing now.
3) Along the lines of the above, I'd like to apply to military scholarships. Would I be too old then?

Thanks. This is a horrible time to make such an important decision, but I'm really hating law school. Then again, everyone hates it their first year...

 

[DrMidlife]

These are my questions:
1) Should I return to the post-bacc program at UPenn, knowing they have a new advisor, for the sake of demonstrating some commitment to something? The alternative is to take courses here at UW-Madison.

I like the UPenn plan more than the Madison plan, for the stick-with-it reason. But think hard about whether want to have a law school transcript of W's that you have to submit with your med school app.

2) I'm turning 27 in a few days. When I start med school, assuming I get in, I'll be 28, turning 29 shortly. Is this kind of old for a returning student? I would be in my third year of law school by then if I stick out what I'm doing now.

Not old at all. What do you need to do to figure out which way you want to go here? I think you need to focus on whether you want to practice law or medicine vs. which kind of school you want to be in.

3) Along the lines of the above, I'd like to apply to military scholarships. Would I be too old then?

Nope. 36 or 39 is the cutoff I've seen. And that's really a whole 'nother third career choice. Don't do military for the money - do it because you want to be in the military. Find out what a GMO is, at the very least.

Keep in mind that your undergrad GPA is your fate, so getting that 3.15 up to at least a 3.4 for MD schools is essential. Your MPH will be viewed as a solid EC that helps demonstrate your commitment to healthcare, but it won't get you in on top of a 3.15.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Law2Doc]

I'm a first year law student at UW-Madison who was pre-med in undergrad. Took the MCAT in summer of 2002, got a 31, so it's now expired. Undergrad at Cornell is 3.15. Have an MPH with a 3.78 gpa. three years work experience in health care. Started the post-bacc program at UPenn in summer of 2007, took one class there, got an A, then dropped out because it was 1) too expensive for someone who has completed all the pre-reqs and 2) the transition to school after having worked for so long made me hesitate again and 3) the advising at the time was not appropriate for someone with my kind of work experience.

These are my questions:
1) Should I return to the post-bacc program at UPenn, knowing they have a new advisor, for the sake of demonstrating some commitment to something? The alternative is to take courses here at UW-Madison.
2) I'm turning 27 in a few days. When I start med school, assuming I get in, I'll be 28, turning 29 shortly. Is this kind of old for a returning student? I would be in my third year of law school by then if I stick out what I'm doing now.
3) Along the lines of the above, I'd like to apply to military scholarships. Would I be too old then?

Thanks. This is a horrible time to make such an important decision, but I'm really hating law school. Then again, everyone hates it their first year...

Your age is not an issue at all. Folks in their 30s and 40s can be found in every med school these days. The problems I see for you are (1) a low ug GPA, and more importantly (2) a lack of following things through. You started law school and didn't finish. You started postbac and didn't finish. Took the MCAT but didn't stick with a focus on med school. Honestly, med schools are going to look to your other professional school as huge insight as to whether you are going to follow through in their program. So, while some of my compatriots on here will disagree with me, you probably do yourself a huge favor if you finish law school, work in law for a while (in Wisconsin local grads needn't even take a bar exam, I believe), and THEN go back to postbac at Penn and make the transition. You will have an unbelievably easier time if you don't continue to have false starts on your record. It will also show that you gave law a shot and decided against it, rather than look like you are flailing around with professional schools without real focus. And rather than it being a glaring one year mistake, you can apply with a basket full of transferable skills from your prior professional experience. A background in law can be a huge benefit or a big albatross in this process. Your false start makes it the latter. Plus staying on a certain path for a while while mulling the medicine idea comes across as a much better story than the person who jumps from place to place -- leaping before looking. Because medicine is such a long and expensive road, and because seats are so limited at a time when we actually are experiencing somewhat of a shortage, schools focus on whether a person's background suggests that they will see their education all the way through. What you've written doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling that that is the case.

What I read into your post is that you've done a lot of flailing around, jumping from place to place, but haven't really figured out what you want to do in life. You seem to like the idea of graduate/professional level positions, but (3) it's hard to draw a compelling focus on medicine from your jumping from school to school. You cannot go to med school as the next of a series of false starts -- you have to be drawn to it in such a way that schools are going to be convinced that you finish school and plan to practice. And when you try a year of law school and drop out, this is a very very hard argument to make (not impossible, but very hard). Bottom line is you are going to have to have a very compelling story to explain your missteps, and running away from law isn't going to get you in -- you need a compelling draw toward medicine that explains your path. It cannot seem that med school is yet another attempt to figure out where you fit. You already have to know this before you apply and have a compelling reason why, and to explain your past. And that's going to be harder if you have incompleted programs in your past.

I also question your assertion that the Penn postbac advising "was not appropriate for someone with my kind of work experience". You have to realize that the rules don't change just because you have some work experience, and some of the things postbac advisors recommend of undergrads is exactly the same thing you should be doing as a nontrad, silly/petty though it may seem. This path is all about jumping through hoops -- some more demeaning than others. I kind of doubt that some of the inappropriate advising was as bad as you thought. What I see from the brief sketch of your background is someone who desperately was in need to good advising at several points in his/her career, and I cannot imaging the Penn folks were worse than nothing. I'm just saying. If you have specifics, that might change my mind, but usually these programs are pretty well keyed in on what med schools want to see, and the rules are truly the same for nontrads, even if it seems silly.

 

[gman33]

Do you hate law school or the idea of being a lawyer?

With your UG gpa, you have a battle ahead of you to get into med school?
It's not a matter of just retaking the MCAT and a class or two.
For DO schools, maybe a year of retakes to boost your gpa. For MD schools, I'd say a minimum of two years full-time work at 4.0 (or close).

The reason I bring this up, is mainly because you would be done with law school before you would even be starting med school. There had to be some reason you were attracted to law. I'd stick it out for at least a year. If at that point, you can't see yourself in law, then start looking into other paths.

As L2D pointed out, not finishing law school will look bad. Honestly, with a low GPA and a law school dropout on your record, don't expect much luck.

Another option would be to take a leave from law school after this semester and go back to working. It sounds like you just aren't happy now and are looking for other paths. That's not really the best time to make major decisions like going to med school.

 

[student1799]

I concur with everything the prior posters have said. But I wanted to address one of the points you made in your post about leaving the Penn postbacc: "The advising at the time was not appropriate for someone with my kind of work experience." The advising won't be that hot wherever you go: trust me on that. So you're kidding yourself if you think that switching schools will solve this problem for you.

I know whereof I speak, because I'm a nontrad too (45 years old, with a prior career in another field), and I just finished a 2-year postbacc at a very similar school. This place was extremely expensive, and the advising was basically nonexistent. Yes, they write you a committee letter (and med schools apparently believe their committee letters are very good), but that's about it. For anything that required individual attention, such as picking schools or handling unexpected setbacks in the application process (in my case, a disappointing MCAT score), my adviser had NOTHING to say. I was left to rely on my own instincts and what I could learn from SDN, which has been a godsend (especially the nontrad forum).

The bottom line is, no matter what your school may claim, you get YOURSELF into med school (or not). So you have to make sure you really want this, because if you do, you'll be driven to educate yourself about what you must do to get in, and you'll be stubborn enough not to give up when things start to look daunting. But if you're less than wedded to this profession, you're not going to have that inner motivation, and no one else is going to have it for you.

 

[QofQuimica]

I agree with the others. The program jumping you are doing, coupled with a subpar UG GPA, would not reassure an adcom that you are a good bet as a candidate for medical school. Averages for allo matriculants are currently around a 3.6 UG GPA and a 31 MCAT. Your MCAT is fine, assuming you can repeat your previous performance, but your GPA needs some repair. You don't need to do a formal post bac program if you would rather take UG courses at UW, but you should have a solid record of As in several science classes taken over a year or more. Many applicants in your position will take classes for at least two years if they are only going to school part-time.

You haven't mentioned whether you have any clinical experience and/or community service. Most successful applicants have a solid history of activities in these areas, again done over a year or more. I'm not sure exactly what your three years of work in health care involved, but if you didn't have patient contact and/or contact with physicians, you'll still need to get some more health care experience.

The issue of what to do about law school is a tough one. You're presumably one semester into a six semester program (plus summer internships or whatever you'll be doing in between school years), and that's a long, expensive road for someone who has no desire to go into law. On the other hand, dropping out of law school after one semester just adds on to your string of quitting every program you've ever started, as L2D already pointed out. Can you tell us what made you decide to go to law school in the first place? I feel like I'm missing something here as to how a long-time premed like you ended up in law school.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

My thought is that you're making a lot of decisions all at once, which concerns me a little. I'd separate out the law school decision from the medical school decision entirely -- they're two different issues, really. My thought from reading your post is that you're thinking fondly of medicine because law school sucks and not necessarily because medicine is where you want to go.

So I'm not going to be as extreme as L2D and recommend you stay in law school for all 3 years and practice for a while because life is short, and it's awfully hard to force yourself to dedicate several years of your life to something that you don't like and has no real future for you. However, I'd recommend that you stay in law school for the year. You're there, you're already out a bit chunk of the money, and a year really isn't much time. During that time, assess why you went to law school and try to get a grasp on what real legal work looks like versus what law school looks like. If you still hate it, bail. Once that decision has been made, then try to figure out the whole what next question which includes pursuing medical school or not.

 

[zambonia515]

Thanks for everyone's responses thus far. It was my low ugpa that scared me off from applying to med school when i graduated from college. Looks like that concern was validated. I wonder if you guys are overemphasizing the ugpa though. Cornell is recognized to be one of the toughest schools in which to be a pre-med. From my discussions with other admitted med students, some had gpas that weren't much better, and lower MCAT scores on top of that (then again, one of them was a PhD in biochemistry, or something like that). Question for you all: are you all med students already (who had stellar ugpas?) or are you pre-meds in the heat of school?

In response to how I ended up in law school, it's a very long and convoluted story.

 

[Law2Doc]

Thanks for everyone's responses thus far. It was my low ugpa that scared me off from applying to med school when i graduated from college. Looks like that concern was validated. I wonder if you guys are overemphasizing the ugpa though. Cornell is recognized to be one of the toughest schools in which to be a pre-med. From my discussions with other admitted med students, some had gpas that weren't much better, and lower MCAT scores on top of that (then again, one of them was a PhD in biochemistry, or something like that). Question for you all: are you all med students already (who had stellar ugpas?) or are you pre-meds in the heat of school?

In response to how I ended up in law school, it's a very long and convoluted story.

Four of the responders to your post are currently in US med schools. While folks with a range of GPAs get into med school, currently the average for matriculants at US allo med school is about a 3.6/31 (and reportedly rising). And since schools are getting as many as 10,000 applications for 150 spots, you'd better believe that they get a ton of folks with solid numbers, and needn't go too far below the average to fill out their classes. While a lot of folks wish med schools didn't overemphasize the ug GPA, the truth of the matter is that looms large in the process. You can improve on that by taking more ug courses for A's (a formal or informal postbac), and that is what most people do when their stats are significantly below the average for matriculants. Things like experience and advanced degrees will make you a stronger applicant, but if you don't have competitive numbers, you often don't get to that stage.

 

[zambonia515]

It occurred to me to ask how many of you would change your answers if I said I was at a top 14 law school. People who post on SDN generally are overachievers to some extent (myself excluded). Awhile ago, I saw a girl who was in Columbia law school looking to bail for medical school.

Now that, my friends, is borderline crazy to me. But, we must all do what we love in the end provided that time and money are non-issues. I don't happen to fall in that category, but it surprises me at how many posters on these types of forums do. So considerations like mine, perhaps a decade ago would be crazy, but relatively speaking, maybe not anymore. Still, my preference is to lean towards practicality despite the urge to follow suit of our more well-endowed peers.

Bottom line: i'm not trying to bail out of law school because i think medicine is any easier or more fun (as a pre-med turned law student, rest assured that it isn't). family obligations call, and this has been put off for much too long....that's my story.

 

[DrMidlife]

Top 14 schmop 14. Won't help you get into med school with a 3.15.

 

[ChairmanMao]

UW-Madison is a top 14 law school? Really? I didn't know that.

How'de you do on the LSAT? It might be relevant if you take the MCAT. Do well on the MCAT, and it will go a long way towards helping you get in. Medical schools know that Cornell has a tough premedical curriculum. They'll give you some leeway if you picked a tough major and didn't get anything below a B in your science classes.

Other than that, I have to agree with everyone else here who says that you need to ask yourself why you're leaving law. I can guarantee you that you'll make more money fresh out of law school if you go into a lucrative field ($160,000/year starting salary) than if you dropped out and took up a $250,000 debt to complete your post-bac and medical school requirements.

 

[zambonia515]

so sorry, i meant would leaving law school be worth it if it were a T14 school? UW-Madison is not a T14. Transferring up, however, is common in law school. I was just curious if anyone would think it crazy to leave a prestigious law school for med school. Personally, I don't think it is, but med students may have better insight into this.

 

[ChairmanMao]

so sorry, i meant would leaving law school be worth it if it were a T14 school? UW-Madison is not a T14. Transferring up, however, is common in law school. I was just curious if anyone would think it crazy to leave a prestigious law school for med school. Personally, I don't think it is, but med students may have better insight into this.

On paper, no, it doesn't make sense for anyone to leave a top 14 law school to accrue $250,000 in debt only to slave away for minimum wage after six years of schooling. Physician salaries, even the ones in competitive fields, are usually lower than the salaries of the top earning partners at large law firms. Why would anyone want to leave a perfectly lucrative profession that pays a very high six-figure starting salary for a career that pays less, requires a longer training period, and is harder to get into?

Some people do it, but usually, it's for very personal reasons. Maybe one of their family members died and they wanted to make a difference in other people's lives. Or maybe they went into law because of family obligations and only after they graduated did they realize that they're in the wrong field. The people who make that kind of choice usually have a very compelling reason to do so, and while I wouldn't say that they're more successful as an applicant, I would say that they have a better understanding of the kind of sacrifice that this entails.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

so sorry, i meant would leaving law school be worth it if it were a T14 school? UW-Madison is not a T14. Transferring up, however, is common in law school. I was just curious if anyone would think it crazy to leave a prestigious law school for med school. Personally, I don't think it is, but med students may have better insight into this.

I have a JD from a just below top 14 school (Texas), so I kinda get and relate to the prestige thing in law school. Entirely subjectively, I'd say no, being in a top 14 school wouldn't by itself be enough of a reason to stay in school if you don't want to be there. Now if we're talking Yale or something, maybe? Now law school does get easier after the first year -- third year is pretty much worthless -- so staying in gets easier as you go along. But yeah, if medical school is what you want, a JD even from a super spectacular school doesn't get you that much.

As for the ugrad gpa, I've heard Cornell has a rep for having tougher grading, but medical schools are more interested in the number than the school. It seems wrong but for med school applications, it's almost always better to have a higher gpa from a no name school than a not so hot gpa from a tough school/program. You're still stuck having to bring something extra to make up for the gpa. That something extra could include a spectacular mcat or really neat experiences. Grad school experience helps a little but really won't help much with the lower gpa.

 

[QofQuimica]

Thanks for everyone's responses thus far. It was my low ugpa that scared me off from applying to med school when i graduated from college. Looks like that concern was validated. I wonder if you guys are overemphasizing the ugpa though. Cornell is recognized to be one of the toughest schools in which to be a pre-med. From my discussions with other admitted med students, some had gpas that weren't much better, and lower MCAT scores on top of that (then again, one of them was a PhD in biochemistry, or something like that). Question for you all: are you all med students already (who had stellar ugpas?) or are you pre-meds in the heat of school?

Third year med student and student adcom. I actually didn't have any UG GPA from my main institution, which is also a long story. Basically, I went to a P/F college that gave narrative evals instead of grades. I didn't have any credit hours from my college either, and it looked like I was a first semester freshman on AMCAS. 😛

The value of going to a high-powered UG is overrated if you don't have the stats to back that up. My school doesn't have any preference for applicants from Ivy League schools. Of course, schools like Cornell tend to put out a large number of highly competitive premeds, so we wind up interviewing and accepting a lot of them. The problem you specifically have is that there will be many dozens of other Ivy grads who apply here with very high stats, stellar ECs, and no red flags.

I know it's hard, but you should do your best to avoid comparing yourself to other applicants. There are at least two problems: sometimes other people exaggerate about their apps, and even a 100% honest applicant never knows the entire story. Your buddies never saw their LORs, for example, so they have no idea how good or bad those letters are. Applicants also don't see their interview feedback, so they don't know if the interviewer they thought loved them actually recommended to immediately reject them or vice versa. Many, maybe most, people are not able to accurately estimate how well or poorly they interview. Finally, there are other subjective factors that come into play, such as the medical school's desire for a diverse student body, an applicant's disadvantaged status, etc. People often try to play the "what if all else were equal" game. The problem is that all else is never equal, and the admissions process has quite a bit of subjectivity to it. Really, all you can do is make your app as competitive as possible, choose your schools wisely, and apply to enough schools.

 

[student1799]

so sorry, i meant would leaving law school be worth it if it were a T14 school? UW-Madison is not a T14. Transferring up, however, is common in law school. I was just curious if anyone would think it crazy to leave a prestigious law school for med school. Personally, I don't think it is, but med students may have better insight into this.

I left an entire 20-year on Wall Street, where I had attained a high position and made a salary that I will NEVER match in all my years as a doctor (should I be lucky enough to make it into med school). It would have been much more rational to stay where I was, but people's dreams and interests are not always totally rational. I am doing this because I can't get medicine out of my mind, despite having tried to talk myself out of it repeatedly for years.

However, even though I may be following my heart in trying to change careers, that doesn't mean I get to ignore the realities of getting into med school. (I wish I could, because I think the whole system is pretty screwed up, but I'm in no position to change it.) What everyone else has told you is true: med schools are pretty robotic about grades, and a 4.0 from Podunk U will trump a 3.5 from Harvard pretty much every time.

Think about the statistics for a second: most med schools accept less than 10% of their applicants, and some accept less than 5%. Most of the 90-95% who get rejected are eliminated very early on by GPA/MCAT screens: if you don't make the cutoff, they don't read your application, no matter how interesting you are or what school you went to. These screens are pretty much universal at state schools, and nearly so at private schools, except for the very elite institutions like Yale and Mayo. (At those places, they read every application, but the applicant pool is dominated by students with very high GPAs and MCAT scores. So the extra attention given your app isn't going to help very much if you don't stack up well against the competition.) If you DO make it past the screen, you may get a little intangible credit for having gone to a rigorous school, but it won't be enough to seal the deal if your GPA is far below average for that institution. Unfortunately, 3.15 is far below average for pretty much every med school in the US.

I know how you must feel, because I'm going through something similar myself. I got terrible grades at college (an Ivy) because of serious personal problems, but didn't do any of my med school prereqs then. I ended up working on Wall Street, got an MBA at a top school with a 3.8 average, and did well in a 2-year postbacc program. But my uGPA is still low, because it includes bad grades that are 25 YEARS OLD (and don't even include any science courses). Med schools don't care if this makes sense or not--that's how the rules work, and they follow them to the letter. So now that I'm applying, I'm going to be compared to 22-year-olds based on grades that say nothing about how I'm likely to perform in med school--and the likelihood is that I'll be rejected at the vast majority of my schools, based on those grades. I just have to accept that, and do the best I can with what I have to work with.

In your case, I think it would be very unwise to try to apply to med school without going back to postbacc and putting in a solid couple of years taking courses and building up your volunteer experience. As others have said, you need that experience both for your app and for your own personal thought process--this is a such a harsh and grueling system that there's no point putting yourself through it unless you really, really want to be a doctor. And if you rack up a bunch of A's in postbacc, that will raise your GPA and make you much more competitive.

Don't believe those who insist it's impossible to get into med school without a picture-perfect record, because there are many stories of people who have gotten in despite some sizable blemish (low grades OR low MCAT score OR weird past--but not all of the above). But you have to make the rest of your application as strong as possible, you need to articulate a bulletproof rationale for why you want to be a doctor, and you must prepare yourself for an uphill battle. Most of us nontrads here are fighting those battles, and we'll welcome you into our ranks if you decide this is really right for you.

 

[Law2Doc]

so sorry, i meant would leaving law school be worth it if it were a T14 school? UW-Madison is not a T14. Transferring up, however, is common in law school. I was just curious if anyone would think it crazy to leave a prestigious law school for med school. Personally, I don't think it is, but med students may have better insight into this.

No, it really doesn't change the answer. Either you really want to be a physician more than the path you are on, or you don't. Some of us made the jump from professional jobs, not merely school. As for thinking it's crazy -- lots of people will think so, and it doesn't matter what level school or career you are coming from. Because at some level, most would agree it is "crazy" to uproot a successful career to try another. That really isn't the point though. You have to be doing something you enjoy and makes you happy, because life is too long a time to be unhappy. That being said, coming with a low ug GPA probably means you have a fairly long path to take before you are ready to apply. That's just the way it works -- you have to make yourself competitive to give yourself a good shot, and have to eliminate as many of the red flags in your app as you can. No school is going to say -- this dude got into Harvard law so we are going to ignore his 3.15. Doesn't work that way.

 

[Law2Doc]

How'de you do on the LSAT? It might be relevant if you take the MCAT. Do well on the MCAT, and it will go a long way towards helping you get in. Medical schools know that Cornell has a tough premedical curriculum. They'll give you some leeway if you picked a tough major and didn't get anything below a B in your science classes.

Disagree with both of the concepts in this post. There is no correlation between LSAT and MCAT. Very different tests, testing on very different concepts. As far as standardized tests go, these are probably the two with the least overlap.

And do not get locked into the false notion that a high MCAT excuses other things. These days so many people are applying that you have to be competitive in every part of your app. No school is going to say -- the dude got a 40 MCAT so we are going to ignore his/her 3.1 GPA and the fact that s/he dropped out of another professional program. Doesn't work that way. Repeating OPs 31 MCAT score once s/he has brought his/her GPA up to a 3.4 is going to be much much higher yield. The notion of sliding scale MCAT vs GPA is a creature of SDN, but really doesn't get used in reality. These days, when schools get 10,000 applications, they are really looking for reasons to reject folks -- to thin the applicant herd to a manageable number, and a 3.1 GPA is going to be all they need to see to do this.

 

[dragonfly99]

A little harsh on the OP lawdoc, b/c he/she hasn't quit everything he started. It looks like he/she did an MPH then worked for a couple of years too.
I think you erred in enrolling in law school if it wasn't really what you wanted to do. I don't think you should drop out in the middle of the year. Would suggest finishing first year, and a summer internship, trying to find out what the practice of law, vs. being in law school, will be like.

Every profession has good and bad things about it. You'll have lots of student debt if you quit your school now and try to switch to med school. I think you'll have no luck with your 3.15 GPA...being from Cornell would help but not going to overcome a 3.15. If you had nothing below a B in science courses I might change my opinion...but I still seriously doubt you'll get in med school without retaking some science classes and getting A's. I am concerned that you quit your postbach...it makes me worry about your commitment to medicine and your ability to stay with things... I think adcoms would feel the same. You need to have a heart-to-heart with yourself about what you really want...maybe on Christmas break or something. I would think that with your MCAT score, if you could raise the GPA a little and do some volunteer work in health care, that DO schools would look favorably upon your application. Are you willing to consider that, or a Caribbean or UK medical school, if your GPA keeps you out of US MD schools? Would you rather take the safe route and go to law school, perhaps working in health care policy or for a medical organization? I have a friend, former premed who is a lawyer, who has worked for a state dental society and now works in Washington, DC.

In short, don't quit law school without a concrete plan of what to do next. There are "opportunity costs" to everything in life. Choosing to be a physician or a lawyer both have costs/benefits.

 

[Law2Doc]

A little harsh on the OP lawdoc, b/c he/she hasn't quit everything he started. It looks like he/she did an MPH then worked for a couple of years too.
...

I am concerned that you quit your postbach...it makes me worry about your commitment to medicine and your ability to stay with things... I think adcoms would feel the same. ...

Harsh = helpful, here. I'm just calling it the way some adcoms are going to see it. The OP hasn't finished law school and did have a false start in a postbac program. So the question of finishing what s/he starts is going to loom large. That plus low GPA means it's going to be a long and uphill battle. I'm not saying the OP cannot get to there from here with a lot of grade rehabilitation and resume enhancement. I am saying that finishing what s/he is currently enrolled in is going to make one of those problems go away, and not doing so is going to require a really compelling story.

 

[bipolardoc]

Harsh = helpful, here. I'm just calling it the way some adcoms are going to see it. The OP hasn't finished law school and did have a false start in a postbac program. So the question of finishing what s/he starts is going to loom large. That plus low GPA means it's going to be a long and uphill battle. I'm not saying the OP cannot get to there from here with a lot of grade rehabilitation and resume enhancement. I am saying that finishing what s/he is currently enrolled in is going to make one of those problems go away, and not doing so is going to require a really compelling story.

IF Med school is what you want, Apply DO, more relaxed admissions and if that doesnt work apply to a reputable carib school like SGU or ROSS, either way you will be a doc and out of your misery. I say dont even waste time on all these post bacs, just take the MCAT, apply to DO and carib schools and get your medical career in gear.

Good luck

 

[Law2Doc]

IF Med school is what you want, Apply DO, more relaxed admissions and if that doesnt work apply to a reputable carib school like SGU or ROSS, either way you will be a doc and out of your misery. I say dont even waste time on all these post bacs, just take the MCAT, apply to DO and carib schools and get your medical career in gear.

Good luck

Going offshore rather than even attempting to rehabilitate your credentials is a really bad move. The caribbean schools are designed to be "second chance" schools -- they should not ever be any US students first choice. It's a much much harder road -- attrition rates are huge, and currently only 40% of those not coming from US schools secure US residencies, as compared to 94+% from US schools. (While those schools you mentioned brag better board passage rates and match lists than some of their caribbean cohorts, they play games with their student base -- holding them back and not allowing them to take boards automatically, such that a very big first year class somehow ends up a quite small group doing reasonably well at the other end -- but if you aren't in this group, you can be hung up in limbo for many years not allowed to advance, or kicked out). And you basically close the door to a ton of residency programs and specialties if you aren't a US grad. So no, this should be your default only if you cannot, after reasonably effort, secure a US seat, not something you do so as not to "waste time". You always owe it to yourself to try to rehabilitate what you've got. Someone with above a 3.0 and a graduate degree is going to have a shot at improving their credentials for med school if they put the time into it. DO would also be an option for OP with some amount of rehabilitation. But considering something offshore is way premature, and no, not something you out to opt for instead of postbac.

The notion of not wasting time and getting your career in gear is foolhardy, as you put yourself on a harder path, with lower odds of reaching your goal, and which makes certain specialties out of reach. If the OP did a year of postbac, wasn't able to improve the stats or get A's, but still wanted to be a doctor, then maybe an offshore option might enter the discussion, as it's purpose is to give folks in such situation a "second chance" at being a doctor. But not at this "first attempt" stage.

You also have to be cognizant of what is going on in the industry. US med schools are increasing their ranks -- through an increase in numbers of seats across all schools and through opening of new med schools. But the number of residency slots are not increasing (quite intentionally). The end result is that fewer and fewer offshore educated people are going to be able to snare a residency slot each year. So expect the caribbean option to be lower and lower yield each year. The crunch has started, and as US school and residency seats hit parity, the ability of offshore schools to place people in the US will end in a handful of years. If you aren't already on this road, I would be really careful about getting on it now. The number of folks in those offshore school match lists are going to be smaller and smaller each year from here on out.

 

[zambonia515]

Glad this thread has a good discussion going.

I'm seeing some of you cite statistics regarding the competition of getting into medical school. I taught two courses on health care as an adjunct instructor as part of my work experience; one of them was a survey course introducing the U.S. health care system to working professionals getting their degree in health care administration (that's my background, incidentally). The trend as I was teaching it, and learning it at the time, is that there is a huge need for primary care physicians. With that in mind, our legislature favors the establishment of more medical schools and encouraging students to enter the field. The fact that the MCAT is now offered 16 times a year makes me think that the AMA and Congress are interested in relaxing the standards to make applying more attractive. And the competition by other health care professions (DO schools, PA, RN, etc) would draw away some of the applicants to medical school.

Having a background in medical education reform makes me interested in the source of these stats.

 

[student1799]

Glad this thread has a good discussion going.

I'm seeing some of you cite statistics regarding the competition of getting into medical school. [...]Having a background in medical education reform makes me interested in the source of these stats.

If you are interested in detailed stats about average MCAT scores and GPAs for applicants and matriculants to med school, the best place to start is the AAMC: http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/start.htm They present this information in a number of different ways: overall, by state, and by demographics of applicants (age, sex and race). There are also a bunch of charts in the front of the MSAR with even more statistics that I didn't find on the AAMC website.

The second most important data source is the schools themselves. First there's the MSAR, which gives a standard presentation for each school including the average GPAs and MCAT scores of its entering class. If you pay $14.95 for an online subscription to the US News med school rankings, you can get more detailed admissions data, including the number of students accepted (as opposed to the number who actually enrolled, which is what you see in the MSAR). Not all schools report this info to US News, but when they do, it gives you a much more realistic picture of the school's acceptance rate.

The fact that the MCAT is now offered 16 times a year makes me think that the AMA and Congress are interested in relaxing the standards to make applying more attractive.

I'm not sure I agree with you there. I think the more frequent test dates are a direct function of the switch to computerized testing, which makes it easier to give the test more frequently and faster to get the scores out (though not nearly as fast as it should be, IMO). In the paper test days, when the MCAT was given only twice a year, it was a huge logistical hassle to accomodate that many test takers and score their exams; now, with more dates available, the test-taking population is more spread out over a range of dates, which is easier for all concerned. IMO, the MCAT itself is getting HARDER--and will get harder still if some of the proposed changed to the exam are adopted, like adding more biochemistry. (See this article for details.)

There does seem to be a contradiction here between the expressed wish for more doctors and the steady drive to make it harder to become one. My guess is that the competition won't decrease, because there are already so many more applicants to med schools than seats. If more than half of current applicants don't get in, you'd hardly have to relax standards by a lot to fill the small number of additional seats that will be opening up.

 

[Law2Doc]

The fact that the MCAT is now offered 16 times a year makes me think that the AMA and Congress are interested in relaxing the standards to make applying more attractive. And the competition by other health care professions (DO schools, PA, RN, etc) would draw away some of the applicants to medical school.

This isn't really borne out by the fact that the average GPA and MCAT continue to rise each year. Additional offerings of the MCAT probably result in higher test scores, because retakes become more viable. While, there is a need for folks to go into primary care, and that is certainly part of the lip service some places use to explain why med school classes are being increased, so far nobody has increased the number of residency slots. So there is a fixed number of people who can go into those fields each year, and no ability to increase that by schools simply admitting more US med students. In fact, what we are seeing is that this results in more US students being pushed into primary care slots at the expense of the offshore applicants who previously snared those slots. So no real increase in doctors, just a reallocation of residency slots amongst graduates. I wouldn't bet on any relaxation of standards. And doctors have no real competition from other professional schools. PA and RN schools aren't drawing anybody away from med school; that's kind of like saying law schools are facing competition from paralegal programs. It's simply a very different group of people, not feeders from the same pool.
Competition from DO schools hasn't let to a drop in credentials of MD applicants -- it probably has the opposite effect. (And there are likely folks on this board who will be upset with you over the fact that you lumped DO with PA and RN as ancillary fields competing against "medical schools").