I failed 2 classes... am I screwed?

[USCTrojanzzzz]

So, I'm currently a student at a community college, and I'm planning to transfer to a 4-year institution as a Junior this Fall (USC hopefully.)
I got D's in 2 online courses (GE's) last year because I forgot to take the finals (idiotic, I know.) I managed to repeat the courses during the Winter Intersession and got A's. Apart from this incident, I am (almost) a straight-A student (3.94 GPA). I've recently decided to pursue a career in Medicine, and I feel like these D's are constantly hanging over me; they destroyed my chances at some of my dream undergrad schools, and now I feel like they might prevent me from going to Medical school. My question is: is there any way that I can explain the D's to the med schools that I apply to so that the D's don't significantly lower my chances of admission?
I'm planning to apply to a mixture of DO and lower-ranked MD schools, because I know that I'm way past getting into any of the top-20 med schools; at this point, I feel like getting into any med school in the US will be an achievement.
I could really use some guidance right now.

P.S. If it helps, I was 16 when I got the D's (I'm 17 now.)

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[Pagan FutureDoc]

As long as your overall cGPA and sGPA look fine and you get satisfactory grades in all of your prereqs, a couple Ds will barely be a blip on your application

 

[bluemamba7]

at this point, I feel like getting into any med school in the US will be an achievement.

That should be your mindset regardless of your gpa

 

[Alejandro]

haha, it makes me laugh that you're 17. You're so young! To be honest, I don't think that a couple D's make a huge difference. While I didn't have D's, I had a couple C's in undergrad and still managed to get by. The fact that they're when you're 16 yrs old...i don't think any admissions committee is gonan care. just make it so you have enough courses and good grades that it drowns out the negative weight it causes on your GPA. This means: Go lights out.

The one piece of advice I'd share after having interviewed a bunch of people is that getting into medical school is NOT just a GPA. Yes, it matters, but part of it is also being well-rounded and demonstrating that you're passionate about other things to, both in medicine and outside. And the MCAT can be a place of redemption too. A lot of applicants are very one-dimensional and its super easy to give them a poor evaluation. Many college students in response to this will complain: WELL I HOW CAN I BE LIKE A SUPERSTAR WHEN I HAVE CLASSES AND EVERYTHING ELSE? Well, nobody said that you HAD to do it during college years. You can always graduate, have a life, make money, and do other things before you commit to going into medicine.

Everyone complains about premed life being hypercompetitive, but the real tragedy is not being hypercompetitive, its that everyone becomes a cookie-cutter applicant with nothing interesting to share. There's a herd-mindset that you must apply at time X, and if you don't you're a sucker. You figure out when YOU want to go to medical school, not someone else. Everyone gets on this silly hamster wheel without having any interest in what they do. It makes my job being an evaluator super easy though: reject, reject, and reject.

 

[USCTrojanzzzz]

There is so much bad advice in this comment.

If you don’t mind me asking, what in particular are the bad pieces of advice? I’m genuinely curious

 

[USCTrojanzzzz]

haha, it makes me laugh that you're 17. You're so young! To be honest, I don't think that a couple D's make a huge difference. While I didn't have D's, I had a couple C's in undergrad and still managed to get by. The fact that they're when you're 16 yrs old...i don't think any admissions committee is gonan care. just make it so you have enough courses and good grades that it drowns out the negative weight it causes on your GPA. This means: Go lights out.

The one piece of advice I'd share after having interviewed a bunch of people is that getting into medical school is NOT just a GPA. Yes, it matters, but part of it is also being well-rounded and demonstrating that you're passionate about other things to, both in medicine and outside. And the MCAT can be a place of redemption too. A lot of applicants are very one-dimensional and its super easy to give them a poor evaluation. Many college students in response to this will complain: WELL I HOW CAN I BE LIKE A SUPERSTAR WHEN I HAVE CLASSES AND EVERYTHING ELSE? Well, nobody said that you HAD to do it during college years. You can always graduate, have a life, make money, and do other things before you commit to going into medicine.

Everyone complains about premed life being hypercompetitive, but the real tragedy is not being hypercompetitive, its that everyone becomes a cookie-cutter applicant with nothing interesting to share. There's a herd-mindset that you must apply at time X, and if you don't you're a sucker. You figure out when YOU want to go to medical school, not someone else. Everyone gets on this silly hamster wheel without having any interest in what they do. It makes my job being an evaluator super easy though: reject, reject, and reject.

Thank you for taking the time to write this comment; I really appreciate it

I’m definitely planning to ace all of the courses that I take from here on out; I don’t care how much work it takes. I am a little bit nervous about OChem though; I guess I’ll try to self-teach it to myself over the summer so that I can go into the class prepared .

As to what you said about GPA; that’s reassuring. I’m definitely planning to take a gap year after undergrad, in order to beef up my resume. I’m planning to go back to my home country (which is in Africa) and work/intern in a clinic there for a few months. I’ll also make sure that I get some shadowing/research done during that time. I also co-created a small charity in my home country a couple years back, so I’m definitely planning to go back and work on that.

Again, thanks for your post

 

[Kr#36]

It is near impossible to transfer from a Caribbean school to a USMD school, regardless of how well you do on Step 1. The only school that I've heard of doing it is NEOMED, and it is an extremely rare occasion. The fact alone that they even mentioned Caribbean schools to someone with an otherwise 3.94 GPA is ridiculous. That poster is a recent Caribbean grad and seems to be a victim of survivorship bias.

You probably could have stopped your sentence after “the fact alone that they even mentioned Caribbean schools” and it would have summarized bad advice.

 

[altblue]

That was a pretty profound error, even for an online course... did you talk to the professors about it?

On a personal level I'd be worried about my organizational skills

 

[curbsideconsult]

Thank you for taking the time to write this comment; I really appreciate it

I’m definitely planning to ace all of the courses that I take from here on out; I don’t care how much work it takes. I am a little bit nervous about OChem though; I guess I’ll try to self-teach it to myself over the summer so that I can go into the class prepared .

As to what you said about GPA; that’s reassuring. I’m definitely planning to take a gap year after undergrad, in order to beef up my resume. I’m planning to go back to my home country (which is in Africa) and work/intern in a clinic there for a few months. I’ll also make sure that I get some shadowing/research done during that time. I also co-created a small charity in my home country a couple years back, so I’m definitely planning to go back and work on that.

Again, thanks for your post

It sounds like you have a pretty interesting background. I'm intrigued to see how everything turns out. Keep us posted on your progress!

The fact that you're worried about these two grades when they occurred at such a young age is heartening. I agree with @Alejandro. Be glad that you made and learned from these mistakes while you're still young. Now especially, and for the next few years through undergrad, is the time to learn from your mistakes. Granted you don't have much wiggle room since you have your mind set on medical school, but take advantage of as much as you can in terms of experiencing life and figuring out what works for you and what doesn't. You're going to hit a lot of bumps along the way and fall on your face and, in >98% of circumstances, that's ok. As cliche as it sounds, it truly is more about how you pick yourself up from failure and learning from it rather than the failure itself.

Hope you get into USC!

 

[acethecomeback]

I failed a class when I was young, and I let it drive me out of college completely. I didn't go back until years later, and when I apply this year, my GPA will probably be 3.7ish if my anticipated grades for this semester hold true. Obviously, I've accumulated a huge number of solid As in more recent coursework. I remember being there and feeling like I couldn't come back from my mistake, but now it barely registers. If med school is what you want, don't let a mistake stop you. Learn from it and soldier on.

 

[handsanitizer2021]

As long as your overall cGPA and sGPA look fine and you get satisfactory grades in all of your prereqs, a couple Ds will barely be a blip on your application

As long as your overall cGPA and sGPA look fine and you get satisfactory grades in all of your prereqs, a couple Ds will barely be a blip on your application

could i ask for your advice? similar situation with failing and all but in undergrad. at my school you can register for independent research credits with a professor as a freshman/sophomore, and they are pass/fail (s/u). i signed up for 3 credits last semester while learning the techniques and i got a pass from my PI pretty easily. this semester i'm taking 17 credits so i only signed up for 1.5 research credits since our credit max is 18.5. my PI told me i haven't done enough work this semester (in terms of data and experiments) and she told me she plans to give me a fail for those credits. HELP i'm scared i will get continuously questioned about this throughout the application process. it won't affect my GPA and i'm a good student but she thinks i haven't done enough. technically 1.5 credits that she is grading me on means coming in for 4-5 hours/week which i have definitely done, even if it isn't enough work for me to stay in the lab, i still have spent enough time in lab to pass. i will talk to my advisor about withdrawing from the research and if that doesn't work i'll try to talk to my PI. but what if nothing works and i end up with an unsatisfactory on my transcript? how bad will that affect my application? what can i do?

 

[jarednogeek]

could i ask for your advice? similar situation with failing and all but in undergrad. at my school you can register for independent research credits with a professor as a freshman/sophomore, and they are pass/fail (s/u). i signed up for 3 credits last semester while learning the techniques and i got a pass from my PI pretty easily. this semester i'm taking 17 credits so i only signed up for 1.5 research credits since our credit max is 18.5. my PI told me i haven't done enough work this semester (in terms of data and experiments) and she told me she plans to give me a fail for those credits. HELP i'm scared i will get continuously questioned about this throughout the application process. it won't affect my GPA and i'm a good student but she thinks i haven't done enough. technically 1.5 credits that she is grading me on means coming in for 4-5 hours/week which i have definitely done, even if it isn't enough work for me to stay in the lab, i still have spent enough time in lab to pass. i will talk to my advisor about withdrawing from the research and if that doesn't work i'll try to talk to my PI. but what if nothing works and i end up with an unsatisfactory on my transcript? how bad will that affect my application? what can i do?

I don’t think failing 1.5 credits will have a big impact at all to an otherwise good app. But I would definitely talk to my advisor and prof to see how to fix things and get that pass.

 

[handsanitizer2021]

I don’t think failing 1.5 credits will have a big impact at all to an otherwise good app. But I would definitely talk to my advisor and prof to see how to fix things and get that pass.

my prof won't give me a pass, she's pretty salty tbh and i'm trying to withdraw for personal reasons (parents' health) so that it won't show. thank you though!

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I failed 3 classes and had 26 withdraws. If I can get accepted, a single F or W won’t hold you back.

 

[handsanitizer2021]

I failed 3 classes and had 26 withdraws. If I can get accepted, a single F or W won’t hold you back.

ahhh but i'm going to apply summer after junior year i think, will they think this is too soon? first sem. sophomore right now

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

ahhh but i'm going to apply summer after junior year i think, will they think this is too soon? first sem. sophomore right now

One F shouldn't sink you if everything else is good and you apply broadly and smartly.

 

[freedoctor17]

ahhh but i'm going to apply summer after junior year i think, will they think this is too soon? first sem. sophomore right now

The fact that it's also a pass/fail class means it's not part of your gpa so it might not even be noticed by some screeners.

The worst thing is just that you probably can't get a research letter or rely on this PI if you were interested in any research heavy schools if they are going to be like this. As long as that's not an issue for you i think you'll be fine. Just don't ask them for a recommendation letter.