Retake course or NOT?

[pathologyDO]

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Hello! I am a Senior and am going to be applying this summer/fall for entry to medical school in 2013. First off, I think D.O. is going to be my most likely route, however, if I do well enough on the MCAT June 21st (very excited to take it) I may still have good chances with some lower tier M.D. schools.I scored really low on the Kaplan MCAT Diag., a 23, but I still have faith. I need to decide whether I want to retake a summer course from a community college that is bringing down my cGPA with D.O. This is a difficult decision for four main reasons:

1. It is a non-transferrable course according to my state university, and as such will not affect my cGPA as far as my transcript

2. Retaking this course (automotive brakes course) will not improve my M.D. calculated cGPA by any significant amount

3. I would have to drop the principles of pharm course that I currently am enrolled in for this summer.

4. Importantly, I will have to wait to submit my primary application in August

My stats:

AMCAS Scale

cGPA 3.12
sGPA 3.35
non-Science 2.83

AACOMAS Scale

cGPA 3.35
sGPA 3.50
non-science 3.22

If I retake the course, my AMCAS GPA remains almost the same, going from 3.12 to 3.15, but my AACOMAS GPA will change from 3.35 to 3.47

What do you guys think??

 

[drshark]

you don't have to wait to apply in august b.c of summer school, just send in the primary app and when you get your summer grades just send it in and that won't take long to update i'm assuming. DO is looking more promising but you never know, that is a pretty big jump, 3.35-3.47, but either way I think you have a good shot wether you re-took it or not. I guess it just depends how picky you are when it comes to which DO schools you want to go to.

 

[pathologyDO]

hey thanks for the reply drshark.

I am a Missouri resident so I'm looking specifically at ATSU and KCUMB for D.O., and my sGPA is a little above average for both those schools, but cGPA a bit under. If I can kill the MCAT I think I may have a relatively high chance of getting into to one of the two.

I guess you're right on the primary application, since a cGPA of 3.35 will still get me a secondary application to many schools (I hope!) The secondary application will be the more important application in terms of cGPA probably.

 

[drshark]

I'm sure you have a great chance, especially if you send your app early! While waiting for your mcat score just work on doing the secondary prompts for both those schools (i'm sure you can find it in past forums regarding each school) and once they send u a secondary just return it within the same day so that you are ahead of the game!

 

[pathologyDO]

great tip on doing the secondary now, thanks! if you don't mind me asking about something related to applications - I wrote a pretty good personal statement for my primary, but I am worried that since its basically just a screening application, that they wont even read it. Can I use material from my primary app personal statement on my secondary??

 

[drshark]

I'm not really sure when they read your personal statement, I think they may send secondaries based of GPA/MCAT and then read it when they invite for interviews, I've heard of some schools even reading them after when they are making decisions. But they ask questions in the secondaries about their specific school and why you are interested in it and why DO. So I don't think those might be topics that you have covered in your PS? Most of the secondaries i've seen at least don't relate to what you might have in your PS. Hope this helps!

 

[pathologyDO]

"So I don't think those might be topics that you have covered in your PS?"

Not not at all, its a generic statement that I'm gunna use for both M.D. and D.O.

Yes thanks very much for your help!