need some advice

[pookadooka]

Hi

I've been reading the posts on SDN for a while now and i know its been done many times what are my chances but i figured i'd do one myself cause i'm getting really worried about my stats, etc.

I moved here a few months ago to Canada and am currently living in MI and working as a research assistant at MSU. I am applying for the 2006-2007 med school cycle. So my prob is that I was wondering in your opinion how I should address the weak areas in my application? The big thing is that in undergrad I was not motivated to do any work as a result of dealing with a lot of personal issues and depression. I've always known I wanted to be an MD and I have a lot of volunteer experience in the clinical and non-clinical setting, shadowed a physician, have done both clinical and basic science research, and have supervised a 4th year honor's thesis project (designing his project, and essentially doing everything a supervisor is supposed. Regardless because of my issues in undergrad I have a really crappy UG GPA (3.2 with an up-ward trend going from 3.0 to 3.7 which I know is still pretty bad) and I did a master's degree in pharmacology and have a GPA of 3.7. THe other thing is that because of other circumstances such as working full-time ever summer when i was writing the MCAT i have written the mcat 4 times (although my last was was written in aug 2004 so this is prob the last time i will be able to use this score...all my scores are above 25 and all are expired except for my last score) and the score i will be using is 29S (9PS, 8VR, 12BS). I guess my question is what do you think my chances of gainig acceptance are seeing as i have a very poor aplication profile. Also would you recommend that i address my poor GPA and multiple mcats in my personal statement. The thing is that I know I can do better and I did do better in grad school and i also know i can do better at the mcats given the opportunity to study for them better but i also know that at this point its kinda a bit late and i don't want to write the aug mcat.

any advice would be great and sorry for the long post

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[RxnMan]

Check out my profile and see what had to do. I had to apply 3 times over four years to get an acceptance! But take heart - you have a >3.0 GPA, and this opens many doors for you. Most schools will filter out apps below this cut-off. The MCAT could be better, but many people get in with 29s. The masters will help set you apart from the pack.

I also believe there are some special issues regarding your Canadian citizenship (if I read your post right), which may make it harder to get in. I have met med students from Canada, so it is possible, you may just need to do some extra paperwork. You need to investigate this soon (if you want to apply for 2007) because legal troubles are one of the few things that can seriously ruin your chances.

If your heart is set on it, apply to many schools, and many different schools. You may not get in the first time, but that's ok - You are not defined by if/when/where you get in. Most people don't have the strength to chase their dreams to begin with.

 

[pookadooka]

thanks for the advice rxnman

your application is definitely inspirational

as for the cdn citizen thing i'm actually an american citizen (long story short but i was born in the US and my parents never bothered to get me a cdn citizenship when we moved there shortly after i was born)

 

[RxnMan]

On second thought, if you don't get any bites on this time around, do two things: 1) talk to the ADCOMs that reject you. They may not all answer, but the few who do will give you better insight than anyone can here. 2) this may be painful to hear, but getting that MCAT into the 30-33+ range will also help a great deal. You've taken it a number of times, so you may be frustrated with it, but try one of those prep courses (Kaplan, Princeton). It helped me, at least.