Let me know

[Mulan Hua]

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Hi,
I am currently a senior going to a four year university majoring in microbiology/biotechnology and I am interested in family medicine. I love to work with people and be able to help them in return. There are so many reasons personally and from experience why I want to be a medical doctor, but one factor has held me back, I have a 2.634 GPA right now and work approximately 40-65 hrs/wk ( I am paying for my education and supporting my parents). I have not took the MCAT yet, but I have volunteered alot (see below).

volunteer work, experience and extracurricular activity
1.Research (Dengue Fever, Stress pregnant women, and Alzheimer's disease) ~ 2000 - 3000 hours
2. American Red Cross Youth Corps (helping the elderly, tutoring young children, fundraiser for tsunami victims) ~300 - 400 hrs
3. Clinical ~ 200-300 hrs
4. shadowed a doctor, nurse, PA, and EMT (when asked why do you want to be a doctor, I can provide a logical explanation) (3 years).
5. experience in traditional chinese medicine (3 years)
6. leadership skills from CSU SLICE (2 years)
7. tutor @ APASS for free (4 years)
8. Chemistry Outreach Program

Do you think I have a chance? I am currently staying in school for another whole year to raise my GPA (maybe a possibility of adding another major), but at the moment, I am having doubts in myself, but I will give it my all anyways. I am also looking to go into graduate school, but I would like someone's advice first. Obviously I am clueless.

Thank you all for your time to guide me.

 

[drizzt3117]

probably looking at Caribbean without postbac and SMP.

 

[Stratego]

You have no chance of an acceptance at a US allopathic medical school.

You could however possibly get into an osteopathic (DO) medical school if you get your GPA up higher by retaking some of your classes with the worst grades (aim for a 3.0 at least, though a few will take a GPA of 2.75). Their application service (AACOMAS) will replace a retaken grade with the most recent, provided the credit hours are the same. That means they won't include the first grade when calculating your admission GPA. If you decide to go to grad school, your graduate GPA would also be included in that claculation (which AMCAS, the MD school application service will not do). You can easily become a family doctor via the DO med school pathway.

Your extracurriculars look fine.

 

[Mobius1985]

I'm assuming you are in your junior or senior year right now. Even if you get straight As for the next year, i don't think your GPA will rise high enough to make you competitive at allopathic med schools. I doubt that even two years would help enough. If you got your GPA over the 3.0 mark, and got a very good MCAT score, you might possible qualify for admission into a Special Masters Program (very expensive) about which you can read more in the SDN Post-Baccalaureate Forum. An SMP would take one to two more years, and only the highest performers would get accepted to an MD med school. If you qualify to get into an SMP, you'd also be in good shape to get a DO med school acceptance at that point.

Your time and money redeeming your low GPA would be more efficiently spent by repeating classes you did poorly in and planning on applying to DO schools as mentioned above. Here is a DO GPA calculator where you can project your future GPA if you repeat classes: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=450050

 

[Mobius1985]

.

 

[Mobius1985]

Sorry, accidental duplicates.

 

[KaiHa]

Though it will be hard for you to gain acceptance into an allopatic school (and I have no idea if its possible), you could have a better sense of the situation by emailing the admissions office at the end of this cycle (during their more relaxed period) and ask them to give you a possible answer to the question.