I'm a nontrad student, CA applicant, graduated already with a cgpa=3.4, sci gpa = 3.0. My first mcat score was 23S, second mcat score was 25T (verbal holding me back :\). ECs are decent, with volunteering, research and a publication.
I wasn't successful this cycle for MD.
You're probably 2-3 years from a successful MD app cycle. Your stats are what's keeping you from succeeding.
In California, in particular, you're more than 2 standard deviations below the matriculant average for science GPA, and about 2 standard deviations below the MCAT average. See
https://www.aamc.org/download/161700/data/table21.pdf
You're acing the writing section but verbal is killing you? I don't get it. Also, verbal isn't killing you (unless you're saying you got a 3 and then a 5). You need to be getting 10+ on each section.
Unfortunately the writing section has no correlation with board scores, so it's largely ignored. Unfortunately the verbal section
does correlate with board scores, so you have to at least break an 8.
Should I:
1) retake the mcat and apply next cycle?
Definitely you'll need to retake the MCAT, but not before you go back and do more coursework. A 3.0 science GPA says you don't have the material down. Until you have the material down, your MCAT scores won't go up much.
2) apply for any postbacc, then reapply- If so does it matter where I do postbacc?
It doesn't really matter where you do more undergrad, but generally you'll want to avoid doing community college or online study.
Paying for more undergrad is really difficult. You might want to look into something like Berkeley Extension on top of a part time job, or doing a 2nd bachelors so you can get partial funding.
Depending on how much coursework is in that 3.0 science GPA, you may or may not be able to improve it much. In your shoes I'd be looking at this:
1. Do at least one full time undergrad year, mostly science, at a 3.7+. If you got less than a B in a prereq, retake it.
2. Do rigorous MCAT prep and get over the average of 31+. (California average is higher.)
(2a. Applying DO could be done here.)
3. Do an SMP, which is a one year masters where you do most of the first year of med school as an audition for med school.
4. Then apply MD.
3) Apply for SMP with linkage?
Not before you show a much stronger performance in undergrad science. From a 3.0 science GPA & a sub-30 MCAT, you'd get killed in an SMP.
Meanwhile, doing an SMP with "linkage" generally means you're paying out of state tuition, so your cost of attendance for med school will be well over $300k. That's on top of what it costs to do more undergrad and an SMP. Better to not be in a hurry and focus on getting into a UC. Which will take a few years.
4)Caribbean? (Don't believe in DO philosophy)
If the DO philosophy you're not believing is the "treat the whole patient, treat the patient not the disease, etc", that's no different from MD philosophy. If you're talking about the spinal manipulation part, you don't have to believe in it - only something like 3% of DOs do the "osteopathic" part. You need a better reason to not do DO than not believing in "the philosophy".
You have the option to get into med school faster, get into medical practice faster, get out of debt faster, if you go DO. Any path you want to take as a doctor you can take as a DO - you can do surgery, you can do "MD" residencies, you can do military, you can do Doctors Without Borders, you can be
on the cover of Newsweek, you can be
Stephen Colbert's orthopedic surgeon, you can be faculty at an MD med school, you can be the team doctor for an MLB/NFL/NBA/MLS team. You could be the first DO surgeon general.
As for the Carib, they would LOVE to have you, because they can take your tuition dollars for 2 years and then make you remediate, and then fail you out, leaving you on the hook for about $200k in student loans that aren't discharged in a bankruptcy. Or, if you're so lucky as to be successful in a Carib school despite your undergrad GPA & MCAT, and your Carib school lets you take the boards and do rotations and graduate, you have less than a 50% chance of getting a residency, and those are mostly family practice & psych. See the table on page 11 here:
http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2012.pdf.
One last thing: there's no guarantee that you'll ever get in. Not even if you do everything right. You have to want it bad enough to do years of GPA comeback work even if it doesn't pay off.
Best of luck to you.
