- Joined
- Mar 7, 2018
- Messages
- 6
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Hello everyone.
I would appreciate some advice and feedback on my situation and academic goals. Basically, I am a nontrad who did some irreversible damage to my GPA the first time I was in school. My cGPA is 3.47, and while I have had a strong upward trend since returning to university, I have 200+ credits so any repair at this point will be very minimal. To illustrate, last term I took 16 credits and finished with a 4.0. My cGPA went up by 0.01 points. I'm hoping that by the time I graduate that it will be solidly in the 3.5 range but it won't get much higher than that. I have a strong desire to be a physician-scientist, but obviously my GPA is already low for medical school standards, much less MD/PhD programs. However, many of my professors have told me that I would be a competitive candidate for PhD programs even with my GPA.
My current plans after graduation are to pursue an MS in microbiology & immunology. My question is, would it be a better idea to try to get a PhD before applying to medical schools? Or should I work hard to perform well in my MS, do really well on the MCAT, and make my application as competitive as possible and apply to MD/PhD programs instead? Am I just being ridiculous by even entertaining the idea in the first place? Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks in advance!
I would appreciate some advice and feedback on my situation and academic goals. Basically, I am a nontrad who did some irreversible damage to my GPA the first time I was in school. My cGPA is 3.47, and while I have had a strong upward trend since returning to university, I have 200+ credits so any repair at this point will be very minimal. To illustrate, last term I took 16 credits and finished with a 4.0. My cGPA went up by 0.01 points. I'm hoping that by the time I graduate that it will be solidly in the 3.5 range but it won't get much higher than that. I have a strong desire to be a physician-scientist, but obviously my GPA is already low for medical school standards, much less MD/PhD programs. However, many of my professors have told me that I would be a competitive candidate for PhD programs even with my GPA.
My current plans after graduation are to pursue an MS in microbiology & immunology. My question is, would it be a better idea to try to get a PhD before applying to medical schools? Or should I work hard to perform well in my MS, do really well on the MCAT, and make my application as competitive as possible and apply to MD/PhD programs instead? Am I just being ridiculous by even entertaining the idea in the first place? Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks in advance!