Hello, I want to go to an MD school. And I honestly haven’t done much during my undergraduate, what should I do?
I just graduated May 2025, and I’m sure my stats aren’t good enough to go to med school so I’ll be taking a gap year or two, and the main point of my post is to ask what I should do during these gap years.
My major was biochemistry, and most of my science grades are 4.0, but some are 3.0-3.5 , but my biochem lecture/labs are very weak, so it brought my gpa down, especially with the fact that these courses were 4-5 credits each.
GPA/sGPA I haven’t calculated it yet, but I’m sure it’s somewhere around 3.4-3.5.
I haven’t taken the MCAT yet and that’s the plan this summer. I honestly feel confident I’ll get a good score because I do well at studying and practicing from high school up until my first 2 years of college, and then things went south due to family problems and personal (mental) health, so everything just spiraled from there.
So let’s say I have a low gpa and a good enough mcat score, what do I need to do during my gap year to get into MD (realistically aiming for MSU/UofM as it’s my home schools)?
For volunteering (clinically) I’ve probably done only over 100 hours. I did non clinical volunteer such as volunteering at my church, and also teach English to underserved children in my home country (Vietnam) for free as they want to learn English but didn’t have the finance to do so. But each of these I did only for a couple of months. I did leadership for 3-4 years in my undergrad (building up a student org that helps out international students from Vietnam to navigate campus life better). I worked part time (non clinical) all 4 years and I worked as an MA only for 3 months during a summer but had to quit because the place I was working at was extremely toxic, but also mostly due to family as well so it gave me motivations to quit.
This summer after graduation, I’m currently working (non clinical) part time, while searching for a clinical related job, studying for the mcat, and will start volunteering at hospitals, along with non clinical volunteer as well (like food banks and probably teach English again). I’ve only been able to get one professor to agree to write me a LOR, shes my biochem lab professor but bc I have low grade, idk how strong that letter will be. I was in a scholarship program (it’s a scholarship program for first generation students), so I’m able to get my scholarship advisor to write me one, but they’re not professors so I’m unsure how helpful it’ll be. That’s why I thought about taking a certificate program/masters, just to offset my GPA, and get a strong LOR. I just dont know if it’s worth it, the certificate is around 10K and the masters is around 29K for two years, that way I dont feel like I’m wasting my gap year away, but I definitely am going to be doing a lot of clinical hour whether or not I’m taking the program.
Additionally, (unrealistically) top medical schools like John Hopkins was my dream school and I was working really hard for it until things got hard and I couldn’t try as hard anymore, but it’s still my dreams to get into (especially since they give free tuition to low income families). I also heard that these schools like strong research, so I was wondering if should try to get into a research based masters program? I just graduated and I’m really confused on where to go. Therefore, if you could give me advise on how to aim my path that way, I would really appreciate it!
Thank you so much for reading!
I just graduated May 2025, and I’m sure my stats aren’t good enough to go to med school so I’ll be taking a gap year or two, and the main point of my post is to ask what I should do during these gap years.
My major was biochemistry, and most of my science grades are 4.0, but some are 3.0-3.5 , but my biochem lecture/labs are very weak, so it brought my gpa down, especially with the fact that these courses were 4-5 credits each.
GPA/sGPA I haven’t calculated it yet, but I’m sure it’s somewhere around 3.4-3.5.
I haven’t taken the MCAT yet and that’s the plan this summer. I honestly feel confident I’ll get a good score because I do well at studying and practicing from high school up until my first 2 years of college, and then things went south due to family problems and personal (mental) health, so everything just spiraled from there.
So let’s say I have a low gpa and a good enough mcat score, what do I need to do during my gap year to get into MD (realistically aiming for MSU/UofM as it’s my home schools)?
For volunteering (clinically) I’ve probably done only over 100 hours. I did non clinical volunteer such as volunteering at my church, and also teach English to underserved children in my home country (Vietnam) for free as they want to learn English but didn’t have the finance to do so. But each of these I did only for a couple of months. I did leadership for 3-4 years in my undergrad (building up a student org that helps out international students from Vietnam to navigate campus life better). I worked part time (non clinical) all 4 years and I worked as an MA only for 3 months during a summer but had to quit because the place I was working at was extremely toxic, but also mostly due to family as well so it gave me motivations to quit.
This summer after graduation, I’m currently working (non clinical) part time, while searching for a clinical related job, studying for the mcat, and will start volunteering at hospitals, along with non clinical volunteer as well (like food banks and probably teach English again). I’ve only been able to get one professor to agree to write me a LOR, shes my biochem lab professor but bc I have low grade, idk how strong that letter will be. I was in a scholarship program (it’s a scholarship program for first generation students), so I’m able to get my scholarship advisor to write me one, but they’re not professors so I’m unsure how helpful it’ll be. That’s why I thought about taking a certificate program/masters, just to offset my GPA, and get a strong LOR. I just dont know if it’s worth it, the certificate is around 10K and the masters is around 29K for two years, that way I dont feel like I’m wasting my gap year away, but I definitely am going to be doing a lot of clinical hour whether or not I’m taking the program.
Additionally, (unrealistically) top medical schools like John Hopkins was my dream school and I was working really hard for it until things got hard and I couldn’t try as hard anymore, but it’s still my dreams to get into (especially since they give free tuition to low income families). I also heard that these schools like strong research, so I was wondering if should try to get into a research based masters program? I just graduated and I’m really confused on where to go. Therefore, if you could give me advise on how to aim my path that way, I would really appreciate it!
Thank you so much for reading!
