Overcoming a bad GPA?

[Maeby Funke]

My first two years of college were really rough, and I had a lot of personal distractions from school. By the end of my sophomore year I had a 2.8 GPA and decided to transfer to a school that was closer to home. At the time I'd mostly just taken various GE courses as an undeclared major. The only health-related courses I took were calculus (got a C in) and principles of biology (got B's in).

After transferring I declared myself as a biology major and for the past year and a half have maintained a 3.8 GPA while taking many upper division biology courses. I've also gotten solid A's in all of the pre-med pre-reqs so far (I just need O chem now). I have one more year of school left and hopefully can keep my GPA up during that time. However, averaging my current GPA with my transfer GPA, I still have less than a 3.5. I've only recently been considering med school so I don't have a great feel for how admissions tends to weigh things. Do you think my poor transfer GPA is gonna kill my chances at most schools?

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[akwizeguy]

No it wont kill your chances, plus you've yet to take the MCAT.

 

[Barcu]

Upward trends are good. Your gpa is split up by year, so adcoms will see it.

A good MCAT score + an upward trend would be really good.

If you are thinking of applying DO, you may consider retaking some classes and doing grade-replacement, but it doesn't seem like you are at that point right now if you were thinking MD only.

 

[Ignatius M.D.]

Upward trends are good. Your gpa is split up by year, so adcoms will see it.

A good MCAT score + an upward trend would be really good.

If you are thinking of applying DO, you may consider retaking some classes and doing grade-replacement, but it doesn't seem like you are at that point right now if you were thinking MD only.

I've often wondered, do they see it by semester as well?