good advice needed

[chan]

Okay. Heres the story. Once I graduated from college with my first B.A. (psych) I began working at a UC doing research on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It was awesome and was the job that actually made me want to go back to school and pursue medicine. I began taking a class at my local junior college, but with work conficts (aka missing my final exam) got an F in my bio I course. I took anatomy the next semester and had to withdraw, again due to work hours being too demanding. The following semester I took anatomy again, stuck it out and earned a "B", (could have got an A if work was not so tough on me). The next semester I took Chem 1A with the same type of situation happening with my job (too many demanding hours, but I tried to stick it out and earned a D)... awesome, I know. The next summer semester, I retook my 1st bio course I earned an F in an got an A (cut down my hours). This along, with realizing that my Ugrad GPA is not that hot (a 2.5) made me realize that I need to cut down on work full time and purse school full time. I enrolled as a post bacc at a local state university and through my year there I have complete all my coursework with a 4.0 GPA.

My question is, how do you guys think adcoms will look at this short period at a junior college before i started my post bacc program. I wish I could just erase it completley from my transcripts. I am scared that this big flaw in my application is going to hurt me when I apply next year.

 

[blee]

First of all, congrats on your 4.0 so far. That's awesome. I know it isn't easy to back off of work, but you obviously made the right choice for yourself.

Well...those CC courses are not going to help you, I know that much. Your most recent coursework is great, and maybe you can play up that part of your application. Don't try to make excuses for it; IMO, unless you also got good grades, no one will care how much you had to work at the same time. This is all possible if you get invited to an interview. Getting to that point, of course, may be tricky; your best shot is to really nail the MCAT and get yourself some strong LORs, maybe from your previous employer as well as from a couple of profs.

 

[smc927]

AdCom people are just that - people. Put yourself in their shoes. An applicants comes in with some junior college mistakes. Since then they've had excellent experience, great stats, etc, etc. I'm sure they never really say,

"Well, this applicant has shown several years of excellent performance. But a long time ago they screwed up. So even though they have now demonstrated how extremely qualified they are, we shouldn't take them. I mean, come on, they made mistakes when they were younger. We can only take perfect students."

 

[blee]

AdCom people are just that - people. Put yourself in their shoes. An applicants comes in with some junior college mistakes. Since then they've had excellent experience, great stats, etc, etc. I'm sure they never really say,

"Well, this applicant has shown several years of excellent performance. But a long time ago they screwed up. So even though they have now demonstrated how extremely qualified they are, we shouldn't take them. I mean, come on, they made mistakes when they were younger. We can only take perfect students."

They are also dealing with thousands of applicants, many of whom did NOT get poor grades at any point in their lives.

 

[smc927]

They are also dealing with thousands of applicants, many of whom did NOT get poor grades at any point in their lives.

If it were based entirely on numbers the admissions process could be left up to a computer. People could submit their application, the computer could crunch the numbers, and those with the best GPA and MCAT scores would get an automatically dipatched letter in the mail.

That is not how it works. Even the most prestigious schools accept people with less than perfect numbers. Low scores DO MATTER - you are definitely at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, they do not automatically disqualify you unless you let them.