How difficult to recover from sub-par 1st semester?

[BioBeaver]

Basically I'm a freshman Business major who is transferring to Bio/pre-Health next Fall (not a big deal, not behind because of good planning and dual enrollment). My main problem is that this semester has really killed me so far. I'm at a 3.0 cGPA with only 13.5 credit hours right now and still struggling in classes, and although I know it's not terrible, it's obviously not what I had hoped for. So going forward:

Does anyone have any experience with a bad semester freshman year? How did med schools view it?

I go to a military school (VMI) where this semester (the Ratline, as it's called) is full of training and sleep deprivation and in general not much time to study. Will med schools cut me any slack? *I know it's not likely*

Appreciate any advice. Thanks guys.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Sirphillup]

Would you say that your inability to perform well is a result of the training/sleep deprivation schedule?

My advice is that you meet with an advisor while you wait for a response from someone who may have had a similar experience. Explain your situation to your advisor and try to figure out things you could do to improve your grades. Maybe there are different ways for you to organize your schedule so that you can have more time to study or maybe there is a way to lessen your training load since you are a med school hopeful. I am not really familiar with military school curriculum, so I unfortunately cannot be of much help here.

As far as poor first semesters/upward trends: I personally know of several students who had a rough start and then improved their GPA throughout the course of their undergraduate career. All of them are in medical school. I think, though, that these students were able to explain how overcoming academic obstacles made them more mature/disciplined/able to handle setbacks. People make mistakes, we are all human, and I think there are adcoms that will take those things into consideration as you move toward medicine. Just make sure you get on that upward trend and you take this experience as an opportunity to self-reflect/grow!

Good luck.

 

[99445]

went from 2.7 after first year to 3.6 overall after senior year. Just got accepted into two schools!

 

[BioBeaver]

Would you say that your inability to perform well is a result of the training/sleep deprivation schedule?

I think it plays a huge factor. I can work harder, but only running on 5 hours of sleep every day and having ~4 hours of what would have been study time at a normal college being used for training are a challenge. I am adapting slowly, though.