need some serious advice, really torn

[ns10]

so my intention is to apply for an MD this year, but seeing as it's already August and I still haven't sent out my primaries and I just took my Mcats today, which seemed to me to be a horrible, I ran out of time for both the verbal and physical science sections, forcing me to guess on a lot of questions so I don't think I even broke a 30

my overall gpa is 3.49 my sci gpa is 3.3 ish I think I don't remember

I definitely want to take the mcats again, but is there any point in my trying to apply this year because it's so late?

I have no research experience, have 109 hours of volunteer, was a TA for bio lab and was on a team for a year

I just really didn't want to take a year off because of personal reasons, like not wanting to be home at all

what would be the best thing fr me to do and do I have any chances at the low tier med schools at this point?

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[Stratego]

Everyone thinks they did a horrible job on the MCAT when they finish.

With subpar stats for MD schools and a late application, I agree with your concerns that you'd be wasting your money to apply this year. Especially as your ECs seem to be on the weak side.

Your GPAs would benefit from a year of straight As to make the numbers more competitive. If you reschedule your MCAT for January or April, you'd have a lot of months to study, and you could maybe take a formal classrom prep course to raise your MCAT score.

With no research and only 109 hours of (?clinical, presumably) volunteering, no mentioned physician shadowing, and no leadership, there is lots of room for other improvements to strengthen your application. Being a TA and having sports involvement will be good things to have on your application, however.

As a side note, with a 3.49 cGPA and an MCAT of 26+, your numbers could be competitive for DO medical schools. I still think you'd need to work on your ECs for them too, though.

 

[DaTruMD]

I agree with Stratego. DO looks like your best bet as of right now...

 

[homer21]

I don't know why you have to apply this year, but I was going to apply last year and I was heart broken that I didn't do great on the MCAT (I got a 25). I had some good extrcurriculars, but I knew I could improve. Rather than taking a late MCAT I decided to wait a year. I reasoned that If I didn't do something different and took the MCAT again I probably wouldn't have done much better. I beefed up my application took some extra classes and retook the MCAT this year (31) and now I have a much stronger application. The worst thing you could do (assuming that you did get a low MCAT) is to take it again and get another bad score. That would raise a red flag and would significantly decrease your chances. Anywho Good Luck to you

 

[ns10]

I think I've decided to wait and see how I did on the Mcats I took yesterday because I don't want to rush and take anther Mcat without significantly improving, and as for applying, I think I'm leaning towards waiting a year

thanks everyone so much for the input