I need some advice please

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premedstudent395

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I'm in 12th grade, but i'm also a dual-enrollment student, so I will be graduating this spring and entering college as a junior. I'm currently on the biology track, so I've taken principles of Bio I & II as well as chemistry, and other basic courses.

I'm applying for research and shadowing experiences for this summer, but I don't have any from my previous years of school, aside from entomology research for one semester. I am a bit concerned that I will have trouble taking the MCAT or getting into med school because of this. Additionally, my college GPA is currently a 3.0. I can raise it a little this semester, but i'm worried it's not good enough for med school.

I want to just enter college as a freshman, but my parents don't want me to waste credits I got from dual-enrollment (and rightfully so). What do you think I should do.
 
I'm in 12th grade, but i'm also a dual-enrollment student, so I will be graduating this spring and entering college as a junior. I'm currently on the biology track, so I've taken principles of Bio I & II as well as chemistry, and other basic courses.

I'm applying for research and shadowing experiences for this summer, but I don't have any from my previous years of school, aside from entomology research for one semester. I am a bit concerned that I will have trouble taking the MCAT or getting into med school because of this. Additionally, my college GPA is currently a 3.0. I can raise it a little this semester, but i'm worried it's not good enough for med school.

I want to just enter college as a freshman, but my parents don't want me to waste credits I got from dual-enrollment (and rightfully so). What do you think I should do.

For the love of god ENJOY YOUR YOUTH or else you'll turn into one of those 40 year old doctors who have a mental breakdown twice a day and snort 6 different things before bed.
 
I'm sorry, but this is really pressing right now. Do you have any advice, please?
 
Do what you think is best, not your parents. Believe it or not, you’re a young adult now and only you are in charge of your education from now on. 3.0 is very low, and I would not recommend taking the MCAT before passing Organic chem, physics, biochemistry, and at least psych or sociology.
 
Do what you think is best, not your parents. Believe it or not, you’re a young adult now and only you are in charge of your education from now on. 3.0 is very low, and I would not recommend taking the MCAT before passing Organic chem, physics, biochemistry, and at least psych or sociology.

I will be in college for two more years after this, just at another institution. I'm hoping to take those classes in the next two years. Do you think it will be enough to raise my GPA an acceptable amount?
 
I can also add genetics and other classes to my future course load, to help myself.
 
I will be in college for two more years after this, just at another institution. I'm hoping to take those classes in the next two years. Do you think it will be enough to raise my GPA an acceptable amount?

Even if you got a 4.0 throughout (keep in mind how difficult this will be since the people you are competing against have more years of test taking and studying experience) your end GPA will be a 3.5 which will be on the lower end of most MD schools.
 
Even if you got a 4.0 throughout (keep in mind how difficult this will be since the people you are competing against have more years of test taking and studying experience) your end GPA will be a 3.5 which will be on the lower end of most MD schools.

You're right. I guess my best option right now is to fight to enter as a freshman or find something else to do

Thank you.
 
Don't be in a rush on this stuff. Suggestions:
  • GPA: You're right that your GPA isn't competitive for med school, and you need to bring it up significantly. That's going to take longer than one semester. You should not retake courses in which you earned a C or better (read this: Simple rules for retaking courses). Rather, you need to take new courses and do very well in them. Set yourself up for success by letting go of artificial timelines (i.e., "I have to go straight from college into med school") because those will cause you to overload yourself and bring down your performance. Instead, take a sensible number of credit hours and apply yourself 100%. You need A's. At the end of undergrad, you may still need to take a post-bacc or an SMP to get your GPA up as high as it ought to be. Don't worry about that right now; you can cross that bridge when you come to it.
  • MCAT: You should not rush taking the MCAT. It's the most important exam you'll take between now and the time you start med school, so you can't afford to screw it up. As @stickgirl390 says, make sure you take the appropriate coursework and do appropriate test prep. Don't take the test before you're ready -- MCAT retakes hurt you in many schools' eyes. The MCAT is like marriage: you need to be ready so you can get it right the first time.
  • Research: This is the least important extracurricular, and it has no bearing upon your ability to perform well on the MCAT. Focus instead on your other ECs: clinical and nonclinical volunteering, and shadowing. @LizzyM posted some guidance about the number of hours you should be shooting for on these: How many volunteer hours are solid?.
Don't double major. It just increases the chances that you'll overextend yourself and perform poorly.

TL;DR: Focus right now on your GPA, and accept the fact that you'll probably need an extra year of undergrad or a post-bacc during a gap year to get your GPA where it needs to be. Prepare adequately for the MCAT before taking it. Research is good, but the other ECs are more important.

EDIT: Although indelicate, I agree with @LoveBeingHuman:)'s admonition to enjoy your youth. Med schools will be here for a long time yet, but your youth won't. Work hard, but take time to live.
 
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Don't be in a rush on this stuff. Suggestions:
  • GPA: You're right that your GPA isn't competitive for med school, and you need to bring it up significantly. That's going to take longer than one semester. You should not retake courses in which you earned a C or better (read this: Simple rules for retaking courses). Rather, you need to take new courses and do very well in them. Set yourself up for success by letting go of artificial timelines (i.e., "I have to go straight from college into med school") because those will cause you to overload yourself and bring down your performance. Instead, take a sensible number of credit hours and apply yourself 100%. You need A's. At the end of undergrad, you may still need to take a post-bacc or an SMP to get your GPA up as high as it ought to be. Don't worry about that right now; you can cross that bridge when you come to it.
  • MCAT: You should not rush taking the MCAT. It's the most important exam you'll take between now and the time you start med school, so you can't afford to screw it up. As @stickgirl390 says, make sure you take the appropriate coursework and do appropriate test prep. Don't take the test before you're ready -- MCAT retakes hurt you in many schools' eyes. The MCAT is like marriage: you need to be ready so you can get it right the first time.
  • Research: This is the least important extracurricular, and it has no bearing upon your ability to perform well on the MCAT. Focus instead on your other ECs: clinical and nonclinical volunteering, and shadowing. @LizzyM posted some guidance about the number of hours you should be shooting for on these: How many volunteer hours are solid?.
Don't double major. It just increases the chances that you'll overextend yourself and perform poorly.

TL;DR: Focus right now on your GPA, and accept the fact that you'll probably need an extra year of undergrad or a post-bacc during a gap year to get your GPA where it needs to be. Prepare adequately for the MCAT before taking it. Research is good, but the other ECs are more important.

This was very helpful, thank you so much.
 
For goodness' sake slow down! I say this not as a [much] older person advising you to savor your fleeting youth -- though that's actually good advice. But rather, from an entirely pragmatic viewpoint of how best to get into medical school.

Right now, your rush to the finish has put you in a rather substantial hole. So STOP DIGGING!

Seriously.

You are now worse off application-wise than you would have been had you not hurried.

Why? Well, while you might save money and graduate sooner, you've been taking college classes -- which will count toward your final medical school application GPA no matter what you now do -- as a young high school student. Every college-level class you take counts toward your AMCAS GPA. That B you earned as a high school junior because you were competing against college sophomores? -- Yeah, you just shot yourself in the foot with that. Because instead of being 'excellent', you were merely 'good'. Now you'll have to make up for it, and the best way to do that is by spending more time as an undergraduate in college so you can dilute those B's with A's.

Since you're still a HS senior -- if you can DROP the dual-enrollment portion of some of your classes (anything you won't get an A in) - Do It! Take the class for high school credit only and forego the college credits. Again, for anything that isn't a safe A. Because all of those B's are going to diminish your admission chances much faster than your relative youth will enhance them.

Then when you get to college, do not try to rush through! You will be compared to students who have four years to accumulate leadership experiences, research, maturity, and yes, top GPAs, and right now, that comparison is not favorable to you. If you transfer in with two full years of credits, you're already halfway done, relatively immature, with minimal leadership and EC's and a sub-par GPA. If you were wanting to apply as a 'traditional' applicant (straight out of college), you're already virtually doomed.

Seriously.

Your best chance of improving your situation is by spending more time in college. (I know this is not what you or your parents want to hear, but listen carefully and do more research here to investigate whether what I'm saying is true or not. Do it soon.) Your best shot at medical school is to spend at least two more years in college before you apply. Plan to graduate in three (or even four) years instead of two. Retake your Bio or Chem and get the easy A's before moving on to upper level Bio and Chem classes. Take fewer credits each semester to assure you get exclusively A's -- you've got wiggle-room in the credits you need, so keep your coursework load light enough to assure success. Volunteer, do research, and get involved in a few meaningful activities. If you're doing any volunteering or medical-related activities now, keep at least one of them going in college so you can show continuity and dedication. Apply after you've got two stellar years of college grades (3.7+) behind you along with your ECs and volunteering.

If your motivations for spending only two years in college are financial rather than ego, realize that by not getting into medical school on your first attempt due to a poor undergraduate GPA, the most effective cure will still be -- more college. Or even more expensively, something called a 'Special Masters Program'. But neither of these is as good an option as simply spending more time in college.

I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but better to find out now...
 
I completely agree and i'd like to do this, but my family insists that I don't let 50 credits go to waste. There's no getting around them. I really want to retake my science classes, especially since the school i'm transferring to is more prestigious than the one i'm currently at, and i'd probably learn more there. But I will continue trying to reason with them.

For whatever reason, however, they're completely willing to let me pursue a post-bac or some other program afterwards (although it will be just as expensive, and I think even more trouble), and find other ways to get experience. So I'm allowed to take a 2 year gap to pull something together after I graduate.

I'm not sure if this will be enough or what will happen, but I do have time. I guess if anything I can just be a Lab tech. Thank you for taking the time to give me that advice, i'll do my best.

Kinda wish I just stayed in high school.
 
  • Research: This is the least important extracurricular, and it has no bearing upon your ability to perform well on the MCAT.
I don't know about that, I learned more biochemistry in one semester of research than in biochemistry 1-3.
 
I don't know about that, I learned more biochemistry in one semester of research than in biochemistry 1-3.
I can't tell if you're joking, exaggerating, or just had really crappy biochem professors.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using SDN mobile
 
I can't tell if you're joking, exaggerating, or just had really crappy biochem professors.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using SDN mobile

I'm exaggerating a bit, but cell biology never really clicked for me until I saw it in action doing research and getting to plan my own experiments.

Also, a combination of horrible Biochemistry professors and an amazing PI who treated his undergraduates like grad students.
 
I'm exaggerating a bit, but cell biology never really clicked for me until I saw it in action doing research and getting to plan my own experiments.

Also, a combination of horrible Biochemistry professors and an amazing PI who treated his undergraduates like grad students.
LOL'ed at your username
 
Relax a bit, you're gonna burn out hard. Trust me- did all this amazing stuff in HS and then came into college and I couldn't even focus bc I was so burnt out from HS from taking 7 AP classes a year in HS. Sure college became "easier" when I got there, but good lord it was not worth the effort that early. If I could go back, I would honestly take a year off bw HS and UG.

Take a year off and do some amazing ECs; realize you don't have to go directly to college- you are 17-18, you could probably do a lot of growing up to do and a great way to do this is doing some humanitarian work. there are several 1 year, paid volunteer things (AmeriCorps, etc) that could give you the much needed break, doing good for a community, while still helping beef up your resume for med school. Realize that doing so may also help you get into a better UG school (but overall, where you go to school barely matters- from someone who got into several ivies, I can tell you going to a state school is honestly just as good. What you do there matters the most)

Also, I'm not sure if even starting as a freshman will "erase" your college GPA. Unless you are just trying to take two more years of courses to further off-balance your 3.0? Am I right in saying this? Regardless, a 3.5 will suffice to get into a mid-low tier allopathic school if you kill your MCATs with a 90th+ percentile with amazing extracurriculars.

Take my advice with a grain of salt. Just saying what I would do bc I feel like if you've done 2 years of UG during high school, you probably worked just as hard as I did.
 
I completely agree and i'd like to do this, but my family insists that I don't let 50 credits go to waste. There's no getting around them. I really want to retake my science classes, especially since the school i'm transferring to is more prestigious than the one i'm currently at, and i'd probably learn more there. But I will continue trying to reason with them.

For whatever reason, however, they're completely willing to let me pursue a post-bac or some other program afterwards (although it will be just as expensive, and I think even more trouble), and find other ways to get experience. So I'm allowed to take a 2 year gap to pull something together after I graduate.

I'm not sure if this will be enough or what will happen, but I do have time. I guess if anything I can just be a Lab tech. Thank you for taking the time to give me that advice, i'll do my best.

Kinda wish I just stayed in high school.
Your parents are not in College trying to get accepted into medical school, you are! I’d suggest speaking to an advisor at the university you will be attending, and see what they suggest. Take this advice, along with that of your parents, and make your OWN choice that best fits your goals.
 
At this point you will have to take a Gap year, because with 60 more credits you will only get a 3.5 with a straight 4.0 for the next 60 credits, and that is good enough for D.O with E.C's, and decent MCAT but very slim chances for M.D.(considering the fact that many don't reward reinvention)
The other thing is

An extra year of college will help you a lot, more E.C's, time to find yourself, maybe go out with a few guys or girls(do not know which way you swing), etc

I wasn't dual enrolled, but I graduated pretty early and I had the same idea that I was gonna ace this and that, and I want to be the youngest person in a med school..

Yeah no..
I realized that...
I would rather travel a little first, meet a few girls, spread my wings, make new friends, focus on my passions, etc before I decide on if I want to make the biggest commitment in the world.

With the average age being 24 for a med student now, why not chill out and enjoy life a little?

It would probably suck that you are in a grad school and you still can't even have a drink legally to unwind after a rough week.

Of course I was told all this too, and you always learn it the hard way.

You probably won't listen to me OP, and trust me I didn't listen either when I was given the same advice.
It was the right advice though..
 
I'm looking for an adviser at the school i'm going to attend to contact, I'll see what advice they have.

I'm definitely going to take a gap year + an extra year of college (I want to sneak in a SMP or post bac, or study abroad).

I really appreciate all of the help you guys are giving me.
 
I'm in 12th grade, but i'm also a dual-enrollment student, so I will be graduating this spring and entering college as a junior. I'm currently on the biology track, so I've taken principles of Bio I & II as well as chemistry, and other basic courses.

I'm applying for research and shadowing experiences for this summer, but I don't have any from my previous years of school, aside from entomology research for one semester. I am a bit concerned that I will have trouble taking the MCAT or getting into med school because of this. Additionally, my college GPA is currently a 3.0. I can raise it a little this semester, but i'm worried it's not good enough for med school.

I want to just enter college as a freshman, but my parents don't want me to waste credits I got from dual-enrollment (and rightfully so). What do you think I should do.

Could it be possible to enroll as a freshman with a double major intent?

Apply your already-earned credits for one major and pursue another outright as a freshman? On one hand you're not wasting your established credits (=happy parents), and on the other you're pursuing a major that would provide you enough time/credits to perform some significant GPA repair.
 
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