After spending my first two years messing around with pre-nursing and partial semester in an LPN program, and putting off dreams of medical school I realized that telling myself I’d be satisfied with a BSN was just actively hurting my GPA and tanking my chances overall. I got my acceptance letter for the last two years but decided to change majors altogether and set up a new plan of study. Not really needing to care about my GPA these last two years, and more specifically some classes I took as a sophomore in high school for dual credit, have not been kind to my GPA/SGPA. I have a background as an EMT working on a reservation(1 year), a volunteer EMT (2 years) in a rural community, a CNA (3 years), and now a resource tech (.5 years) working mainly ER/ICU and occasionally the other hospital floors ranging from behavioral to the floors (these jobs have had a lot of overlap). I am confident in my test taking and interviewing abilities, but my GPA is obviously going to hold me back. Going into my junior year I am confident I can maintain a 4.0 with the courses I'm taking (gen bio/chem 1&2) and apply with a 3.5cGPA. My other concern is that because the pre-nursing courses I took were all survey courses I am playing catchup with the real science courses to get into biochem and ochem. This means when I apply the only high-ish level classes I’ll have on my application will be A&P 1 and 2 and microbiology. Overall there's a pretty obvious dramatic upward trend in my coursework. I'm attending undergrad at the school with the only medschool in state, and for the most part accepts exclusively in-staters, they are also big in rural medicine and I'm hoping that my experience in rural and high need areas will help my chances.
There is an obvious need for improvement, but I'm hear for advice and any critical feedback is more than welcome. I'm realizing that MD is likely out of reach even with a stellar MCAT unless I can really impress my state school, and I've already started living and breathing MCAT prep. Thank you in advance!
There is an obvious need for improvement, but I'm hear for advice and any critical feedback is more than welcome. I'm realizing that MD is likely out of reach even with a stellar MCAT unless I can really impress my state school, and I've already started living and breathing MCAT prep. Thank you in advance!
- cGPA 3.28, sGPA 3.11
- Planning to take MCAT next May.
- South Dakota
- Caucasian
- University of South Dakota
- Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer): Looking for input on how you guys would write out my hours. I’ve been a volunteer EMT for about two years, this involved dedicating alternating staying available for calls M-F and F-M with three crews. Relatively high call volume, lots of community events like teaching school children and the like. I’d estimate for actual number of hours worked at least 500. Around 7000 paid clinical hours.
- No research yet, looking to get into a lab this summer of fall.
- Have a lot lined up for this summer in various specialties, will be able to reach at least 100+ hours by August.
- 200+ hours of volunteering in animal rescue, planning on starting volunteer firefighting in a non-clinical role this summer
- Long history of martial arts, used this as a teaching role while in high school, but have been active in teaching self-defense in the community while in college.
- As an EMT I’ve been able to attend a lot of multi-day medical seminars and training courses (Rural trauma team development and similar 16 hour courses by the ACS).
