Master degree or Clinical experience

[tanny]

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My GPA is 3.3. However I'm not sure if I want just work in a clinical job ( CNA) or do a master? Which will be better for admission? I know it depends on the applicant.

 

[beachblonde]

My GPA is 3.3. However I'm not sure if I want just work in a clinical job ( CNA) or do a master? Which will be better for admission? I know it depends on the applicant.

Get a clinically related job if possible, skip the master's, and take undergrad classes to bump up your GPA.

That's my $0.02, at least.

 

[261766]

hard to say, but perhaps if you do well academically in the masters program, you might show med schools you are capable of performing at a high level in an academic setting. i'm not sure clinical work can show them that.

 

[njbmd]

My GPA is 3.3. However I'm not sure if I want just work in a clinical job ( CNA) or do a master? Which will be better for admission? I know it depends on the applicant.

You need uGPA work (post bacc) or SMP (Special Masters Program). Any other masters degree is not going to do much for you since you are under the uGPA average for matriculants. A clinical job isn't going to offset that below average uGPA.

 

[tanny]

What the best route for me? I did not say what would improve my GPA? I know what type of masters I will pursue. Getting a master for a year is like 20,000 or more

 

[LizzyM]

Which route will better prepare you for the long-term job market if you don't get into medical school? Given your gpa, I think that you need to prepare for that possibility.

Graduate school programs (not counting SMPs) are infamous for grade inflation. Therfore, graduate school grades are not given much weight. That's what njbmd was gettting at.

 

[tanny]

So what would be best?

 

[MedStudentWanna]

So what would be best?

Best for what? What they're telling you is if you want to go to med school, you should consider an SMP, not a regular master's program. If you were hoping for any other master's degree, forget it. It won't do you any good. If you don't have clinical experience, you need that too, but you can get that through volunteer work and don't have to go through the trouble of becoming a CNA and working for a hospital.

 

[BrainBuff]

Clinical experience is the answer. Skip the Master's. Everyone knows that graduate school grades are very much inflated. Adcoms do not really consider those grades.

 

[LizzyM]

Realistically, a gpa of 3.3 and a job as a CNA is going to get you... a job as a CNA. Without something further, it is very unlikely to lead to a successful application cycle.

 

[tanny]

Realistically, a gpa of 3.3 and a job as a CNA is going to get you... a job as a CNA. Without something further, it is very unlikely to lead to a successful application cycle.

What do you mean? Then what should I consider?

 

[redbull928]

I think masters would only help if you do research. I know some people who have published a few papers and gained a lot of research experience.

 

[LizzyM]

OP, take a look at this grid
http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpa-grid-3yrs-app-accpt.htm
and if you are not URM substract off the numerator and denominator from this grid:
http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpa-grid-3yrs-app-accpt-raceeth.htm

You will see that with the gpa you have now, you have less than a 50-50 chance of being admitted to medical school, if you score very well (top10-15% of all test takers) on the MCAT. So, what we are trying to tell you is that you need to improve your academic track record if you are going to have a decent shot at admission. The best way to improve your academic record is to do a special masters program or to do additional undergraduate work. Grad programs other than special masters programs suffer from a reputation for grad inflation and so they are not considered proof that you have what it takes academically to succeed in medical school.

If you have no clinical experience, you need some of that, too, although it is not necessary to be certified as a nursing assistant and deal with that literally "back breaking" work.

 

[Longshanks]

OP, take a look at this grid
http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpa-grid-3yrs-app-accpt.htm
and if you are not URM substract off the numerator and denominator from this grid:
http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpa-grid-3yrs-app-accpt-raceeth.htm

You will see that with the gpa you have now, you have less than a 50-50 chance of being admitted to medical school, if you score very well (top10-15% of all test takers) on the MCAT. So, what we are trying to tell you is that you need to improve your academic track record if you are going to have a decent shot at admission. The best way to improve your academic record is to do a special masters program or to do additional undergraduate work. Grad programs other than special masters programs suffer from a reputation for grad inflation and so they are not considered proof that you have what it takes academically to succeed in medical school.

If you have no clinical experience, you need some of that, too, although it is not necessary to be certified as a nursing assistant and deal with that literally "back breaking" work.

This link has the grids for applicants according to self-reporting of ethnicity/race on AMCAS: http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpa-grid-3yrs-app-accpt-raceeth.htm

Click whichever link for the ethnicity/race you are curious about and it will give you a pdf. According to the pdf for self declared white, with your GPA one needs to score 33+ on the MCAT to break into the 50%+ rate. Just keep in mind however that these are lumped groups of ranges, so I would assume those at the lower end of each range did worse.

 

[Kaustikos]

Which route will better prepare you for the long-term job market if you don't get into medical school? Given your gpa, I think that you need to prepare for that possibility.

Graduate school programs (not counting SMPs) are infamous for grade inflation. Therfore, graduate school grades are not given much weight. That's what njbmd was gettting at.

I'm sorry, but where do people come up with this? Maybe I'm an exception, but the graduate school here has been notorious for being as difficult as medical school with dropouts and the Med school here actually looking at it as a strong indication of future success. In addition to other graduate programs I have looked at. I think that assumption needs to be removed for graduate programs situated in a medical environment.

 

[Longshanks]

I'm sorry, but where do people come up with this? Maybe I'm an exception, but the graduate school here has been notorious for being as difficult as medical school with dropouts and the Med school here actually looking at it as a strong indication of future success. In addition to other graduate programs I have looked at. I think that assumption needs to be removed for graduate programs situated in a medical environment.

I understand where it comes from, and some grad programs are highly inflated, but yes, I have a similar feeling about my program where we are on very strict grading scales and take some very challenging exams and material. It is a bit open in what classes we can take, so some end up being classes the pharmd or phd students at the med school are taking... and I can confidently say we out perform them

Because of our ability to take those classes, and the majority of our program are people striving for a med school acceptance, I've had professors of those classes tell us that if we're applying for med school we may not want to take their class, as only 4 or 5 out of the 40-50 sitting in the class get an A so we shouldn't expect to do well. Since you know, us pre-med kids are all about the grade right?🙄 Know what? More of a reason to prove to them that its more than just the grade: I want to learn and be challenged, and while I'm at it I'm still going to put in the work to earn one of those few A's and sorry if that means one of your phd or pharmd kids are getting bumped out.

 

[LizzyM]

I'm sorry, but where do people come up with this? Maybe I'm an exception, but the graduate school here has been notorious for being as difficult as medical school with dropouts and the Med school here actually looking at it as a strong indication of future success. In addition to other graduate programs I have looked at. I think that assumption needs to be removed for graduate programs situated in a medical environment.

At many schools, there are nothing but As and Bs in grad school with Cs and lower accounting for <3% of grades. Grad school will not make up for a sub-par undergrad gpa.

 

[URHere]

At many schools, there are nothing but As and Bs in grad school with Cs and lower accounting for <3% of grades. Grad school will not make up for a sub-par undergrad gpa.

I agree with this completely. I went through a MS program (at a grad school associated with a medical school), and while some of the courses were very challenging, the professors knew that PhD students who scored a C or below on anything would be dropped from the program. As a result, they gave out plenty of Bs, but were very generous with points when it came to borderline grades. Because most graduate exams are short answer, this kind of grade manipulation is very easy to manage. Most schools do not want to advertise high failure rates, so this practice is more common than you would think - instead of failing students during graduate classes, professors often just let them fail their qualifying exams so that they can try again the next month, term, or year without leaving the program entirely.

Because undergraduate professors are more willing to fail poor students (in whom the school doesn't have a huge monetary investment), graduate grades and undergraduate grades just aren't comparable.

However, as a previous poster said, research-oriented MS programs can be very helpful for gaining in-depth research experience.

 

[Pedsbro]

You need uGPA work (post bacc) or SMP (Special Masters Program). Any other masters degree is not going to do much for you since you are under the uGPA average for matriculants. A clinical job isn't going to offset that below average uGPA.

👍Best answer to the OP's question is this one.

If you're dead set on getting a Masters after your name, it's SMP or bust. No amount of clinical experience in the world will make up for that 3.3 GPA my friend...