How To Get There

[ftredrr]

Hi guys, I am in desperate need of some advice and will keep this as brief as possible. After 3 years working as a software engineer I have realized my passion is medicine. My GPA for undergrad was 2.75 with no medical school relevant sciences taken.

This puts me in an interesting situation. I realize my low GPA is detrimental to my application, but I feel I am a blank slate with my sciences. After researching, these are my options: - Take my required pre-reqs at CC (~$7,000) - Enroll in a 4-year public school in General Studies and go there full time for 2 semesters (~$14,000) - Attend a 1-year post-bacc program (~$20,000)

After looking at my options I realize SGU and Ross are my best options for medical school. My question is, what is my cheapest option to make my application competitive enough to get in both SGU and Ross? Assuming I get a 4.0 and a 28 on the MCAT.

Also, are there any advisors out there that are not attached to any schools? Free or paid.

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[Crayola227]

sweet mother of Jesus don't go Carrib

I'l let others advise further

 

[RangerBob]

Like Crayola said, please don't apply to the Caribbean. It's even harder to get into residency from the Caribbean with more DO/MD schools opening up. Unless you have a lot of money lying around that you don't care about, and are OK with putting in 4 years of hard work with a chance of not actually matching into residency (I don't know the stats, but I know it's getting worse), then it's just not a smart choice these days.

Honestly a GPA of 2.75 is very low--that will be very hard to recover from. You really need to get that up to at least a 3.4 or 3.5, but to do that would mean taking 4 years of courses and getting a 4.0. Ideally you want to aim for a overall GPA of 3.4 if possible (but I think that would take ~4 years at a full course load), and a science GPA of at least a 3.7 or higher to make up for the low overall GPA.

I'm a big proponent of everyone following their dreams, but also being realistic. Getting into medical school with a 2.7 GPA is going to be really tough. And the toughest part isn't the getting in--it'll be getting the grades you need to try to get in. You have to think long and hard about what you're going to do differently to average a 3.8-4.0 each quarter/semester, because that's the kind of turnaround you'll need to show, along with a really strong MCAT. If you're not sure you can handle that, consider starting with community college courses while you're still working in your current job to see if you can get the grades necessary.

I did a post bac, coming in with a 3.45 undergrad GPA, which was below average for pretty much every MD school, if not all of them. I had a ton of credits, enough that I was eligible for both a BA and a BS from my undergrad, which made it even harder to bring up my GPA. I got all A's and A-'s in my post-bac program (~3.9 GPA), which brought my science GPA up. After 2 years of post bac (one year part-time during my glide year, as I was invited to come back and TA) with those grades, my overall GPA went up 0.4 points to 3.49. It is unfortunately very hard to bring up a GPA after finishing undergrad. But I did show a sustained and positive trend, and I did really well on the MCAT. I got two medical school interviews (I applied to 8 or so programs, mostly UC's, but--that's a whole other story), which turned into one acceptance.

Regardless of what route you choose, you will need to take more than just the pre-reqs. You probably want to take at least two years of coursework at a full coarse-load to prove to medical schools that things are different now and that your undergrad GPA is a fluke. Sustained upward trend is the key phrase here.

Don't forget about volunteer experience, and other things that demonstrate your commitment to medicine.

This endeavor is going to take a lot of time and commitment. There are no guarantees, so realize all that hard work may still not net you an acceptance, but the more work you put in, the more you persist (such as re-applying if you don't get in the first year), the better your odds are of making it happen.

 

[Goro]

"Assuming I get a 4.0 and a 28 on the MCAT."

The Carib diploma mills prey upon gullible marks like you. Don't even think about them unless you like the idea of being unemployed and deeply in debt.

You can start by reading up on the posts in this forum by the wise DrMidlife.

Hi guys, I am in desperate need of some advice and will keep this as brief as possible. After 3 years working as a software engineer I have realized my passion is medicine. My GPA for undergrad was 2.75 with no medical school relevant sciences taken.

This puts me in an interesting situation. I realize my low GPA is detrimental to my application, but I feel I am a blank slate with my sciences. After researching, these are my options: - Take my required pre-reqs at CC (~$7,000) - Enroll in a 4-year public school in General Studies and go there full time for 2 semesters (~$14,000) - Attend a 1-year post-bacc program (~$20,000)

After looking at my options I realize SGU and Ross are my best options for medical school. My question is, what is my cheapest option to make my application competitive enough to get in both SGU and Ross? Assuming I get a 4.0 and a 28 on the MCAT.

Also, are there any advisors out there that are not attached to any schools? Free or paid.

 

[Ad2b]

Assuming I get a 4.0 and a 28 on the MCAT.

This shows a lack of research on your part because the scale for MCAT ceased to exist almost 2 years ago.

2nd - you can reinvent yourself but don't kid yourself that 4.0 is easy to get now that you've matured. I certainly can speak to "length of life" as my gut tells me there's only 1 person older than me still hanging around here (that individual is an MS... something for sake of anonymity it's being nebulous for a reason)

3rd - stay away from Carib. I personally know 3 that went to AUC, all are licensed physicians in US and at VERY good places but ... they had a crap ton of free money for them to do so (parents were bloomingdale rich, so to speak)

4th - stay away from CC because if a reinventionist has a PhD school on their transcript vs another with CC, who do you think the med school folks are going to think can handle the med school curriculum better?

5th - no need to throw away money on advisors - just hang out here; ignore the trolls, ignore the advice that doesn't work for you (including mine if that's how it seems)...

1986 GPA: <2.196
2016 GPA: 3.89ish
Annnddddddd.... I turn 52 next week.

It is not an easy road for many reasons. Kids might look at you weird, especially if you treat them weird, like they are subservient to you; if you treat them with respect, I have found my younger peers to be extraordinarily awesome. I've been blessed to have them in my classes. Someone once said the ability to memorize the material is not difficult or harder than our younger peers but the pathway to doing so it (that is the case with me). With external factors trickling in like kids, mortgages, cars, "life" - there are times when you may wonder "REALLY?" and it might slow you down.

At the end of the day, I can only speak for me: I tried to stop the path 3 decades ago, tried to stop it again 4 years ago and something called passion dragged my sorry ass back to it and I have officially applied to medical school the day it opened on 6/7/16... at the age of 51. NO REGRETS... Oh, and I took the MCAT last week and that beast is lying dead in some testing center gasping for air because I stuck a stave through it's throat and said, "HA!" - yeah, MCAT Beast... lol. It whimpers.

Good luck to you as you figure this out!