Grade Rehab: Work or school full-time?

[hopefulfuturedoc]

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tl;dr version: Recovering from a poor undergrad performance 5+ years ago and recognizing the importance to prove my academic capability to med schools, do I continue to work full-time and take fewer courses on the side, or drop the job and go full-blast with the coursework? 2015 application cycle.

I'm about a year into my post-bacc journey. My story is similar to some of yours: I had no clue what I wanted to do in undergrad so managed to pretty much destroy my GPA, science and otherwise. Few years later realized that I was being stupid and that I wanted to go to med school, and here I am. I'm doing pretty well in my post-bacc so far and am both re-taking pre-req classes that I got a C+ or worse in during undergrad as well as some upper-levels.

I'm working full-time in a pretty awesome lab right now. It's basic science but the PI is a leader in the field and I have the chance to get great experience and some pubs. But as a pretty high powered lab, a 40-hr workweek is unheard of so the hours are definitely inhibiting both the amount of time I have to devote to my courses and the number of courses I can take.

On the other hand, I know my number one priority is proving to med schools that I can handle med school. I'm not convinced that working full-time and taking 3 classes, two of which are re-takes and one of which is a new upper-level, will do this. I'm in the B+/A- range at a fairly difficult school even in the re-takes (no, I haven't really seen the material before since I never attended class the first go around and simply managed to cram for a few hours before each exam to eek out a pass, so it's new to me... 🙂 ). But I'm worried that med schools will not see 2 retakes plus 1 new upper-class bio as evidence of being able to handle the workload. Although I'd certainly prefer to continue with my job if possible.

I'll be applying June 2015 so I have one year left to show 'em what I'm made of. Do I quit the job and load up on as many classes as I can, and just hammer it in this last year? Financially this would be overwhelmingly difficult but I'm in this for the long haul and am prepared to make whatever sacrifices I need to make to get this done. I'm taking 10 credits now and could EASILY handle 20 if the job went. (Or, I mean to say, the job sucks much more time than 10 credits would take.)

 

[theseeker4]

tl;dr version: Recovering from a poor undergrad performance 5+ years ago and recognizing the importance to prove my academic capability to med schools, do I continue to work full-time and take fewer courses on the side, or drop the job and go full-blast with the coursework? 2015 application cycle.

I'm about a year into my post-bacc journey. My story is similar to some of yours: I had no clue what I wanted to do in undergrad so managed to pretty much destroy my GPA, science and otherwise. Few years later realized that I was being stupid and that I wanted to go to med school, and here I am. I'm doing pretty well in my post-bacc so far and am both re-taking pre-req classes that I got a C+ or worse in during undergrad as well as some upper-levels.

I'm working full-time in a pretty awesome lab right now. It's basic science but the PI is a leader in the field and I have the chance to get great experience and some pubs. But as a pretty high powered lab, a 40-hr workweek is unheard of so the hours are definitely inhibiting both the amount of time I have to devote to my courses and the number of courses I can take.

On the other hand, I know my number one priority is proving to med schools that I can handle med school. I'm not convinced that working full-time and taking 3 classes, two of which are re-takes and one of which is a new upper-level, will do this. I'm in the B+/A- range at a fairly difficult school even in the re-takes (no, I haven't really seen the material before since I never attended class the first go around and simply managed to cram for a few hours before each exam to eek out a pass, so it's new to me... 🙂 ). But I'm worried that med schools will not see 2 retakes plus 1 new upper-class bio as evidence of being able to handle the workload. Although I'd certainly prefer to continue with my job if possible.

I'll be applying June 2015 so I have one year left to show 'em what I'm made of. Do I quit the job and load up on as many classes as I can, and just hammer it in this last year? Financially this would be overwhelmingly difficult but I'm in this for the long haul and am prepared to make whatever sacrifices I need to make to get this done. I'm taking 10 credits now and could EASILY handle 20 if the job went. (Or, I mean to say, the job sucks much more time than 10 credits would take.)

How bad is your old GPA, both cumulative and science only? Are you looking at DO schools, MD schools, or both? How much would going full time school improve your GPA compared with continuing the job at the lab? Yes, schools want to see that you can handle the coursework, but 3 science courses at a time while working full time is good evidence that you can handle the work, so I wouldn't be too concerned there. If you have the time and money, going full time to school and the general ECs you need for med school would probably increase your chances more than staying at the lab. There is no absolute need, though, to take 20 credit hours of science courses; most med students didn't do that in undergrad anyway.

 

[hopefulfuturedoc]

Thanks so much for the quick response. The GPA is pretty durn bad! I have my cGPA up over 3.0 by this point and am working on having my sGPA follow it. Taking classes full-time will not radically transform my GPA because of the number of credits I've already accumulated; I was just thinking that adcoms might want to see somebody handle a full load *in addition* to retakes. (Although like I said, embarrassingly, the retakes aren't quite retakes in my case despite their earlier presence on my transcript. But the adcoms don't know this.) I thought that perhaps one particularly impressive semester with many courses may allay any fears about my capability.

Fine with either DO or MD. I do have an interest in academic medicine so would have definitely preferred the MD if I could rewind 15 years and do this over again, but not sure that's an option at this point. With grade replacement my GPA will be fine for DO schools, and I know that how I do in med school will go farther towards determining my future than the specific degree. I'll certainly apply to both MD and DO though, and I know that some MDs are more forgiving than others, particularly to those of us with a clear re-invention and really good ECs.

Essentially my goal is to get somebody to read my application and say only "Boy, s/he was a mess for five years, but it looks like s/he has the chops for med school so while the GPA is a concern his/her ability to handle it isn't." rather than "Boy, s/he was a mess for five years and it looks like s/he's changed but what's going to happen when she's asked to drink from the fire hose of med school?"

 

[Crow T. Robot]

Wow, I could have wrote your story. I chose the FT work / PT class route. I did take 2 quarters of both FT, but most of my credits were only 6 each quarter. I kept the research job for two reasons- I wanted to stay in the field in case this didn't work out, and I had bills to pay! The most important goal is the highest grade possible- they won't care you took 3 classes if you got a B+ in all of them. Your overall GPA won't be as high as if you took 3 classes a year and got As. Focus on doing it *right* this time, not doing it quickly. In my experience, they didn't care if I could drink from the fire hose if my GPA didn't even get me past the first screen.

 

[hopefulfuturedoc]

Thanks for your thoughts, Crow. I think you make some good points, and another possibility for me is looking for a new job that won't place the same demands on my time that the current one does. In general I am an A/A- student so was disappointed last semester when the B+s appeared and it's good to be reminded that if work is interfering with the grades, then work has to change.

 

[mavric1298]

After talking to some adcoms about this very topic, as long as you have a reasonable load (not 1 class at a time), working and going to school isn't going to hurt you. Two things I would look at; with a reasonable load, can you do your best in your classes even while working? If so, I don't think there is a need to stop working and start piling on debt. Two, if you already have a bunch of credits, see what adding an extra class would even do for your GPA. If your only changing it by .01, then leaving work hardly seems worth it. This can be especially true if you have a ton of credits, and extra lets say 4 quarter classes (summer, aut, winter, spring is all thats left before 2015 apps go out) might not help that much.