OP, it's eerie how similar your situation is to what I've gone through. I hope by sharing my situation with you, and my advice, that you will make the changes you need to make and get into medical school.
This will be a long post, but I hope it provides you and future SDN readers some insight and advice on how to approach situations similar to yours and mine.
Although my uGPA wasn't as low as yours, my initial MCAT was a 28 in 2014 (~508 now). At the time, that was the average MCAT for matriculated students at the schools where I was applying. I applied the summer after graduating college and worked for a year (although to be fair, even at this point, I shouldn't have been applying. I thought I could explain the issues that impacted my grades in college and that someone out there would empathize...more on that later). Silence from medical schools. I got a much more prestigious job working in clinical research at the med school in my hometown, rewrote my secondaries, and re-applied. I thought to myself that surely my
stacked resume and comparable MCAT would get me in (I had 1000+ community service hours, 500+ hours of research, several awards and leadership positions, was briefly a varsity athlete, etc.). By comparison, I blew a lot of the competition out of the water when it came to everything non-academic. But the fact remained that my GPA was sub-par and my MCAT was just on-par. As you might imagine, I received another round of no interviews.
Heartbreaking. Why didn't these schools care that my parent had attempted suicide, the impact it had on me, the depression I went through in college, especially after how eloquently and thoroughly I explained it in my essays? Time marched on...
I knew that my GPA was an issue, and I wanted to show schools that the issues outside the classroom that plagued my Junior and Senior year no longer held me back. During that Fall, I took a Phys course at the CC. That Spring, I applied for and enrolled in an online Graduate Certificate program in Anatomy & Physiology through a USMD school and completed half of the program. I aced the courses, had been studying to retake the MCAT and retook it and earned a better score. Having completed 15 hours of post-bacc credit aced, a better MCAT, I decided to apply again. If you're sensing a theme here, you're probably able to guess what happened.
I didn't get it. Why the hell was I not getting interviews?! That Spring, I had the chance to speak with an assistant admissions dean at one of my state schools, and she told me she loved my application, that my personal statement was the best she had recalled ever reading, loved my experiences, my MCAT (which was better than most of their students), and all of that.
Here's where the catharsis began: she told me that her staff (and likely the staff at other schools)
needed proof that my unique, harsh circumstances were no longer holding me back academically, and that those circumstances would not persist into medical school, and to bring my proof of academic competence full-circle. She commended me for acing my DIY post-bacc work and doing well on the MCAT while holding down a full-time job at the hospital, but that there just wasn't enough of a pattern for whomever reviewed my file to feel like they should interview me, despite my incredible extracurriculars.
That same Spring and following Summer, I concluded the rest of my graduate certificate program and took 2 more community college courses, bringing my post-bacc credit count to 28 hours of all As. I re-applied, re-wrote my primary and secondary essays, and hoped that between these efforts, my new publications from managing major clinical research projects from my then 2 years of working at an academic medical center would be enough.
That October, I received my first invitation to interview at a ~top 30 MD school OOS. I was
overjoyed. Elated.
FINALLY someone out there was acknowledging how much work I had been putting in. Out of 10,000 applicants this school received, I was one of 400 they chose to interview. I flew out to the school the day before, stayed with a current student, had such a great feeling from everything, the pre-interview social event the night before, the people I met, the conversations I had,
everything. I went into that interview humble but confident, calm but focused, professional and tactful, and felt I did well in all of the activities and interviews throughout the day.
Seven weeks later I was hit with a rejection email from the place I thought I would be spending my next 4 years.
Hello darkness my old friend...
I wrapped up the graduate-level Tumor Biology course I was taking through my alma mater (we get 1 free course per semester as an employee), took some time to reflect.
[don't worry, this post is coming to a close shortly].
I now had 30+ hours of upper-level and graduate post-bacc coursework aced, a better MCAT than most applicants who gain an acceptance, 10,000+ hours of research and clinical experiences, presentations at 3 international conferences, multiple publications, etc. I reflected, took a staunchly different twist on some of my primary and secondary essays, and put together what I thought was the best possible app (short of me quitting my well-paying job and enrolling in a SMP). This cycle, I was invited to interview at two more schools (both of them being in-state, which was cool for me personally as a TX resident), and
finally gained an acceptance to the place I will gladly, lovingly, and proudly call home and be trained to become a doctor.
I am 28 years old.
Things I wish I had done differently:
- Enroll in a SMP. Yes, they cost money, and yes, I would've put myself into more debt just to do one, but it would've been minute compared to the time I had lost through 4 years of applying. As I'm sure you're starting to sense, our most valuable asset is time, not money. But clearly the one thing holding me back was my GPA. I loved working at my job, and it pays really well. I got to enjoy my mid-20s living a lifestyle that was lavish compared to what I grew up with, and what I had in college. So there aren't that many regrets there, however I wish I had gotten to start medical school at say, 25, or 26, and I had a good enough application to get accepted to probably any SMP I applied for. OP, a DIY post-bacc will cost money, so go ahead and just do a SMP if you want to get in sooner rather than later.
- Not applied the first two cycles that I did. The first time around, I was still dealing with depression. The second cycle, I was happy in life, but I hadn't brought my academic competence full-circle. It would have served me a lot better to wait until I had done more academically after college.
- Applied more broadly to DO schools. I applied to one after my third cycle, but I should've applied more broadly.
Additional, specific advice to you:
- Since you already completed a Master's, you might not need to do a SMP. When you say it wasn't super science heavy, what do you mean? What field is your degree in, and how many of your courses constitute as science? A MPH or MSW will likely not help your standing at all, no offense.
- You will not gain acceptance to a USMD school with your GPA what it is currently (and I am assuming your sGPA is similar). How many of your Masters hours were BPCM? There are some USMD schools that will only consider your most recent X-credit hours of BPCM when reviewing your application (LSU comes to mind, which you can read more about here). LSU requires 32 hours of recent BPCM courses, and they'll scrap the rest of your transcript. I think Drexel and Tulane have similar policies. If you did say, 9-12 hours of BPCM courses and got As, you could DIY the remainder, and so long as you ace them, apply to schools with such policies as LSU.
- Apply broadly to DO schools. Drop any previous misconceptions you have about DO degrees. Any stigma about it being a lesser degree mostly comes from pre-meds that haven't even stepped foot into a medical school and are basing their useless opinions on antiquated evidence from historical bias 30+ years old, who exude that ignorance into the echo chamber of ego and narcissism that is SDN.
- Your MCAT of 508 is not holding you back. See my entire story, along with the bullet above as evidence. Re-take it if you want, but you need to remake your GPA. @Goro has some great guides posted on how to re-invent yourself (jacked up the font size so Goro isn't wondering why the hell I tagged them in a wall of text xD )
- As an admissions dean told me, as aforementioned, adcoms will take into consideration hardships you go through, but if they impact you academically, you need to display and prove that those hardships no longer impede you from excelling in medical school. Yes they want good people who will become empathetic, good doctors, but they need you to succeed through the rigors of the curriculum first.
- Do not consider going abroad, as I briefly contemplated.
- 26 is not old.
Sorry for the long post, but I hope this helps you, along with anyone else seeking help. I'm happy to talk more and offer any other advice that I can.
Best of luck, OP
