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Also quick dumb question: If my mom is from Spain and I am part Spanish ethnically, does that make me latino/ hispanic? Adviser said who are you kidding. But I don't see why not especially since I also speak Spanish. Still looking for schools to add.
It occurred to me. But I've seen so much neuroses and poor advising that I'm biting.am i the only one smelling troll?
Your gpa isn't low for any school. So that advice wouldn't apply to you. You should volunteer a lot this year, and find ways to really help people. Get other clinical experience than scribing. Then apply to any top 20s you'd like, some mid-tier private and your state school. Also, fix your attitude about your grades and overall qualifications because while you may genuinely be insecure about them, it will come off as fake and pretentious as hell.@mw18 Any specific medschools which like upper tier colleges and mcats and don't mind a lower GPA. My adviser said Georgetown has a high mcat screen and cares more about undergraduate institution, so that's the only one I have.
How many times do they have to say that you're competitive for any school with your stats? And what lower GPA are you talking about? GPAs in the 3.7-4.0 range are no easy fit aka "as competitive as you can get". You can stop trolling now.Are there any schools which I should add which are sympathetic to a lower gpa or health issues given that I picked a hard major and a difficult school I’m trying to get to 20. Perhaps I should have named this thread health issues chances because my adviser seems to think that the biggest problem will be that my health issues will negatively impact me and make medical schools think I’m too much of a risk. I’m still frustrated by the idea that health issues that aren’t my fault will look as bad as she said.
Your advising office is so ignorant of the medical school application process, that they are actually sabotaging your attempts to be a doctor. From now on ignore what they have to say and listen to us.Hi guys,
I'm not actually applying this cycle, but someone writing a recommendation for me wants a school list. Here is what I have so far along with my stats and my schools
Freshman Semester 1: 18 credits, 6 classes
- Undergrad: Top 5 University
- State of residence: trying to stay anonymous
- GPA: 3.81 overall, 3.89 BCPM. MCAT 527: Biomedical Engineering and Math double major.
Semester GPA: 3.7 [rough start + issues managing my chronic disease independently + unfortunately was not aware that an A- avg is not great until I met with pre prof advisor],
Freshman Semester 2: 16 credits, 5 classes
Semester GPA: 3.83 [pre-prof adviser told me to gun for ~3.85]
Sophomore Semester 1: 20 credits [yikes], 7 classes
Semester GPA: 3.86
Sophomore Semester 2: 21 credits [I used to be a compsci double before I switched to math when I got sick lolol #teamnosleep], 7 classes
Semester GPA: 3.88
Junior Semester 1: 16 credits
Semester GPA: 3.55 [diagnosed and treated for endometrial cancer, I'll leave out details but it felt like nothing mattered anymore]
Junior Semester 2 15 credits
Semester GPA/sGPA: 3.83 [started the semester 3 weeks late due to surgery, asked to take a health leave of absence at the conclusion of the semester because of illness.]
~1 year health leave: took MCAT~
Senior Semester 1: 15 credits: 5 classes
Semester GPA: 4.00: A+ in every single class [Lots of support from various disability offices/ rights groups which helped me a lot.]
Senior Semester 2: 20 credits: 2 legit classes, 4 easy A upper level science classes
Semester GPA: 4.00: A+ in all but 1 class which gave an A [took a really weird machine learning class]
Tentative college list:
- Explanation of low GPA/ high MCAT discrepancy: I had several health issues including endometrial cancer during college. As a result, I eventually had to take a health leave of absence from college to receive treatment for a year. Unfortunately my health issues reflected in grades, and I had to quite research after 2 years because of the side effects of my treatment. I feel cheated because I used to be on the right trajectory before my health issues ruined my life and my hopes and dreams.
- Ethnicity: Mixed: Asian and White lolol the worst of both worlds.
- Gap years will be spent doing research and being a scribe
- Unpaid lab research, which I had to quite after 2 years because I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. The treatment made me really weak and I physically was unable to continue doing research. Summer internships in medtech and consulting firms.
- Recommendations: Head of dept, adviser who taught me science course, math professor, humanities professor, doctor I worked with for research, research PI, and person from internship from top tier consulting firm [BCG/ Bain/ McKinsey]
- No publications, various poster presentations, business plan competition awards
- Shadowing: 80 totals hours
- Volunteering: ~300 hours
- President of 2 pre-medical related clubs at school, 6 service medical trips abroad, lesser leadership positions in other groups and other volunteer groups
- Other: Graduating equivalent of magna cum laude for top ~15% of class but not summa cum laude because I'm too stupid.
My preprof advisor last week told me to give up on applying to a top 30 college because medical schools won't like the fact that I've had so many health issues when there are so many applicants with better stats and better health than me and my high MCAT relative to GPA raises some issues related to work ethic. Also objectively my life has been pretty horrible after having cancer due to overall weakness and not being the same person anymore since I used to be smart but I'm not anymore I'm not expecting much anyways. I just want to get into any medical school.
1. LSU school of medicine
2. Umass Medical
3. Tufts University
4. Sidney Kimmel Medical College Thomas Jefferson University
5. University of Vermont
6. Eastern Virginia medical school
7. Virginia commonwealth medical school
8. Georgetown U
9. Tulane
10. Pennsylvania State University
11. Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
12. Frank H Netter school of medicine at Quinnipiac university
13. University of maryland school of medicine.
Any schools I should add? More specifically. are there any schools which accept students with high mcat scores from top colleges with comparatively lower gpas. Advising office said my best bet was to apply to colleges that don't often get applications from my college. I don't know much about it but would it be worthwhile to try to add some DO schools or would I need to take more tests or do another application entirely.
Hi guys,
...
- Undergrad: Top 5 University
- State of residence: trying to stay anonymous
- GPA: 3.81 overall, 3.89 BCPM. MCAT 527: Biomedical Engineering and Math double major.
Tentative college list:
- Other: Graduating equivalent of magna cum laude for top ~15% of class but not summa cum laude because I'm too stupid.
My preprof advisor last week told me to give up on applying to a top 30 college because medical schools won't like the fact that I've had so many health issues when there are so many applicants with better stats and better health than me and my high MCAT relative to GPA raises some issues related to work ethic. Also objectively my life has been pretty horrible after having cancer due to overall weakness and not being the same person anymore since I used to be smart but I'm not anymore I'm not expecting much anyways. I just want to get into any medical school.
Advising office said my best bet was to apply to colleges that don't often get applications from my college. I don't know much about it but would it be worthwhile to try to add some DO schools or would I need to take more tests or do another application entirely.
But in any case, reach out to your individual professors. If you are willing to set out to them the circumstances you have expressed here, there should not be a problem with them providing you with good references. Create a script for writing to them, possibly something along the following lines -
"Hello. I am doglova, and I was in your [biology/maths etc] class/conducting [bio?] research in [semester and year]. I then suffered some serious health issues and took a leave of absence, and lost touch with you as a result - at the time I was undergoing treatment for cancer and found it a difficult subject to talk about. Fortunately I am now fully recovered.
I am hoping to make an application to med school, with a GPA of 3.77 and an MCAT of 527. I am hoping that you would be willing to write a good recommendation for me, based on [my performance before becoming ill]/[my performance while dealing with the effects of serious illness]. I look forward to hearing from you."
Good luck.
If you took the MCAT after your Junior year and applying next cycle, doesn't that put you at a risk of having that near perfect MCAT expired if you don't get in? Though there's a good chance you'll get at least one acceptance, but every year there are students with perfect stats that end up reapplying. If I were you, I would apply this cycle.
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The problem would be that I wouldn’t actually have enough recommendations to work with if I tried this cycle. I tried reaching out to people I worked with in the past. But they either didn’t reply or said the grade they gave me for research was generous given the circumstances and they dont want to hear from me again since they didn’t appreciate being left in the dark for so long about my issues which I guess is fair. And I’m assuming most of the recs I have now are weak since they are all from after I returned and although I talked to them alot because I had to go out of the way to be super transparent about my health issues/ associated accommodations they don’t know anything other than how well I did in their class and having my resume.