Obviously you want to do well on everything. But I would think that clinical experience would give you a comparative advantage. Think about it this way...they will see tons of people with awesome scores and grades but a great EC resume will not be shown by everyone. So if you build an insane EC resume with clinical volunteering, clinical employment and research (and for a significant amount of time); I would tend to think that would go a long way. That being said you can't completely trade one for the other.
I may be a little biased because that must have been how it worked for me (so yeah...n=1). Every applicant/application is different so exactly how much different things would be weighted by different schools in different situations would be pretty hard to tease out exactly.
You also had a master's program in which you performed very well (it sounds like from your story) after being rejected initially with your mediocre GPA. Do you think your ECs would have been sufficient to eventually get you in even without the additional academic experience?
I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, I'm just wondering why you think your EC resume had a greater influence on your acceptance than your post-bacc academic performance. Was this topic addressed in your interviews?
The problem as I see it is that a ton of applicants have strong ECs AND strong scores, so you can't really be complacent about either one (as you said here, you can't trade one for the other) and a lot of people mistakenly think they have outstanding ECs when they're actually fairly average (or at least SDN average, which is probably above average, but not enough to make up for poor grades)
OP - two things:
1. I am confused about how you're a sophomore but you've already had a couple crappy years and one good year of college. In theory a freshman year of 2.5 could be brought up over 3.6 by maintaining a 4.0 the next 3 years, but of course that's easier said than done and it requires a lot of time and energy and dedication to raising your grades. A few 3.5 semesters isn't a big deal, but remember that a 3.5 means having as many Bs as As, and on average, you want more As than Bs, especially to balance out a weak first year (or couple years). Keep in mind that if you're starting with a 2.5, even a hundred 3.5 semesters won't raise your GPA to 3.5. That's just how averages work. (That would be a 3.48, for those like me who are curious)
2. A lot of pre-meds don't even really think about this while they're still in undergrad, but it actually is possible to graduate and not go straight into med school. If you can't maintain a high enough GPA in undergrad while participating in many hours every week of volunteering, leadership activities, and MCAT studying, you can take off a year or two to get your application in order. MANY people do this successfully, and some schools even prefer applicants with some real world experience. (I actually would recommend reading VictorAlpha's story which is in his signature above)
I would think it would be much easier (not to mention less expensive) to get your grades right the first time around, while you're still in undergrad, and use any "gap years" (years between graduating and attending med school) to enhance your clinical and/or research experience and study hard for the MCAT. But that's totally just my opinion.
