Random Questions

[Sweetest Thing]

A bunch of random questions:

Do med schools look at all marks--i.e. your entire uni 'experience?' Do they cut your lowest year? Do they see marks for individual courses, or just a cumulative GPA? Or a GPA from each year? What if you've failed a course? Do they weigh things differently--i.e. half courses, full courses.....

And how important is research? I live in a very limited community where the options of participating in a research endeavour are slim to non-existant. What other ECs are they specifically looking for?

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[dr. deez]

i don't know too much about do schools... failing a course can never be good... they are not big on research. in fact i know of several people (~8) that got into do school w/o research experience.

 

[Cory]

Originally posted by Sweetest Thing
A bunch of random questions:

Do med schools look at all marks--i.e. your entire uni 'experience?' Do they cut your lowest year? Do they see marks for individual courses, or just a cumulative GPA? Or a GPA from each year? What if you've failed a course? Do they weigh things differently--i.e. half courses, full courses.....

And how important is research? I live in a very limited community where the options of participating in a research endeavour are slim to non-existant. What other ECs are they specifically looking for?

med schools do look at all your grades. when you apply with AMCAS, you enter every course you ever took, when you took it, and the grade you got in it. med schools can see each grade for each course , or gpa for single whole years, as well as your science gpa, your non-science gpa, and your cumulative gpa. they can then look at grade trends, and yes, if you did fail a course, they will see that too.

as for research, i would not say that med schools are not big on research. i think they value it highly. it is not necessary for acceptance, but it really can't hurt, and can really boost your application if you are hurting in other areas.
and though your community may be limited in terms of research opportunities, what about professors at your college/university? ask around in the bio/chem/psych departments, and see if there is any need for someone to work in a lab. and if not, look for internships online, there may be some nearby that you didn' t know about. or call your local hospital and see if they need people to conduct clinical research, or maybe they have a lab at the hospital that could use some help...

and for EC's, med schools like to see variety in experience, but also dedication to a particular activity (i'm not saying only do one thing, but they do like to see commitment). community service, volunteering at a hospital, leadership positions, etc. activities that show your selfless nature, and desire to help others around you are always good choices.

anyway, that's just my $.02