Medical Help me from making dumb mistakes

[Goro]

Hi! I’d like to apply to med schools next cycle and have some questions I wanted to get sorted out so I can plan for the next year. Thank you in advance for answering my questions, I really appreciate it!!

1. I have a low gpa (3.45) and low sgpa (3.15). I’ll be taking an SMP this upcoming year and going to do my best to fix my study habits, straighten up my priorities, apply myself, and ace it. My MCAT score is a 513 (128/128/128/129). After reading these forums (maybe too often), I’m worried my mcat score won’t be enough to offset my low gpa. I was averaging 516 on the practice exams so I was distraught when seeing my score. I’m almost afraid to ask this question but...should I retake it after my SMP is done?

2. I’m very passionate about social entrepreneurship and how it can be used to improve healthcare access and reduce other healthcare disparities. I took an entrepreneurship course and fell in love with the whole process of coming up with a solution to a public health issue and tweaking it and tweaking it until it’s viable. As part of our course we had to pitch our final concept/organization to a panel of judges (this panel was no joke. Our professor is good friends with very influential people in healthcare so these judges were quite intimidating), and my team’s pitch won! Granted, this pitch competition was only part of the course I took so maybe the victory was not as profound as winning a pitch competition with a monetary prize. Still, it meant a great deal to me. How do I highlight this in my application? I’d like to list it as a meaningful experience in my work/activities section but I’m not sure how it would be viewed. I wanted to get an SDNner’s opinion.

3. I think my biggest problem to overcome is my own self-doubt. Not sure if this is something you can advise on...or if there’s resources or a stickies thread I could read lol. I’ve been working on reducing it for quite some time. I used to adopt a poor poor mentality of “if I don’t even try to succeed, then I won’t be disappointed when I fail”. Studying for the MCAT was the first time I could say that I had tried to succeed and even though I didn’t get the score I imagined, I was so proud of myself for working so hard. But I’m terrified about this upcoming SMP. I chose to do it because I want to remedy my bad habits and my poor mentality. I know I am capable of being that hard working, will-do-whatever-it-takes-to-help-my-patients kind of doctor and I want to take this one year to fix myself now instead of continuing to half-ass my life. I’d love some advice/words of encouragement/tough love/good chocolate suggestions.

Thanks for listening

1) A 513 is fine for a reinventor.
2) Actions speak louder than words. Walk the walk, and don't merely talk the talk
3) This is NOT medical advice, but talk to your doctor and/or make friends with the folks at the school's student support services.

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[Goro]

For #2, by walking the walk you mean if social entrepreneurship is a passion of mine, there should be more I’ve done that can show this other than one course with a pitch? i.e. Illustrate this passion throughout the application through activities and possibly future plans rather than saying “I took this one course and liked what I did in it”.

Thanks @Goro !

What I mean is actually do it, not just talk about how much you like it. As I always tell my kids, "words are easy, doing is harder".