Need advice about post-bac

[illini34]

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I graduated in 2008 with a BA in political science from the University of Illinois with a 2.67 gpa. I started off as a bio major and took a couple of chemistry and biology classes (mostly B's and C's and one D+ 😱 ) and eventually gave up on the dream to go to medical school and switched to political science. I have been working for the past couple of years for the State of Illinois and although my job pays well, I cannot stop fighting the urge to give med school another go. Fortunately my job location is right on the campus of our local community college. I was planning on taking the rest of my pre-reqs there and retaking bio and chem classes. I was wondering if this would look bad if all my post-bac work was done at a community college? I need some major GPA repair and was hoping to take advantage of D.O. grade replacement. So my question is, should I try to enroll in a formal program? Or take classes at the nearest university which is an hour away? Doing so would mean quitting my job because my schedule is Mon-Fri 8:30-5.

 

[n3xa]

I graduated in 2008 with a BA in political science from the University of Illinois with a 2.67 gpa. I started off as a bio major and took a couple of chemistry and biology classes (mostly B's and C's and one D+ 😱 ) and eventually gave up on the dream to go to medical school and switched to political science. I have been working for the past couple of years for the State of Illinois and although my job pays well, I cannot stop fighting the urge to give med school another go. Fortunately my job location is right on the campus of our local community college. I was planning on taking the rest of my pre-reqs there and retaking bio and chem classes. I was wondering if this would look bad if all my post-bac work was done at a community college? I need some major GPA repair and was hoping to take advantage of D.O. grade replacement. So my question is, should I try to enroll in a formal program? Or take classes at the nearest university which is an hour away? Doing so would mean quitting my job because my schedule is Mon-Fri 8:30-5.

I would do some research about formal programs. You might need to bring that GPA up to a 3.0 before being considered for some of the programs in IL.

 

[Quik]

This topic has been beaten to death, just in the few months I've been active here... If you search a bit you'll find exhaustive info and varying opinions on your question. I'll paraphrase my take, and yes, this is opinionated from my own experience and what I've gathered from adcoms, directly. Some courses at a CC, while doing post-bacc are ok. This is dependant on the school however, as some look down more than others on courses taken at a CC. I would say some, especially the more basic ones, are fine. However, I wouldn't do all, or any of the upper division sciences at a CC. In this case, by upper division, I mean anything above the 100 level.

 

[Pons Asinorum]

There is also a pretty lively post-bacc dedicated forum here on SDN:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdisplay.php?f=71

OP - you might want to fish around in there a bit as well as you collect the info you need to make a decision.