Well, your GPA is pretty low, so this is going to take a long time, and even longer if you also have a dismissal on your record (fight that tooth and nail). Unfortunately there are no fresh starts in this process: for DO schools there is grade replacement, but that's about as good as it's going to get. Anyway I just made this really long post worth of low GPA advice, and since it applies to you I'm going to just copy and paste it into this thread.
the basics:
1) You need to figure out why you got the 2.17 in the first place. Without this, nothing else matters. Are you ADHD and need meds? Did you have a crisis that tanked your grades? Were you lazy in a fixable way? Do you have a problem with substance use? Were you taking a major (like engineering) that give terrible GPAs to bright, hard working students? Of course if the problem is that you're just a very type B personality, or that memorzing and regurgitating facts isn't your particular talent, this might be where your journey ends.
2) Once you've figured out what went wrong, you need to go get a GPA of 3.0. It's very difficult to get around this. So you need to sign up to take more college classes. You can go back to your old college and beg for a second major, or you can start taking community college classes. They key here is that QUALITY DOESN'T MATTER, all you need right now is numbers. Take easy classes with stupid people. While you're at it, pick up the pre-reqs and do very well in them. That's where you're going to prove to yourself that you CAN do this.
3) You need an MCAT score. The MCAT score is what is going to determine how long it's going to take you to turn this around. if it's really high (33+) you could theoreticcally get in withing a couple of years. At the other extreme, the MCAT is where a lot of people with great GPA run their careers aground. In the US medicine is a profession for test killers, and some otherwise very intelligent people just can't ace long, standardized tests. If you study your heart out and get a 12 maybe you shouldn't waste any more of your youth on this (surprisingly mediocre) profession. Also note that med schools do see ALL your MCAT scores and a bad score digs you a deeper hole, so don't take the test if until you get the score you want on a practice test (ideally on two)
Alright so you've got the basics, where do you go from here?
High MCAT score (>33):
Congrats, you might get into medical school only 2 years after graduting (the national average). You now need to apply to a program called a 'special masters program'. These are programs, hosted by a handful of medical schools, which allow you to take medical school classes and to be graded against medical school students. They are expensive and stressful, but students who do well in well known SMPs have almost a 100% success rate getting into medical school. SDN explains these programs further
here and rates them
here. Like medical school, SMPs turn away a lot of applicants, so you need a high MCAT and the 3.0 to get in, and you need to apply broadly to get into one program. Be aware that a program is only as good as its reputation/linkage, and some SMPs are really just money generating scams, so do your research before you apply.
Average (27-33) MCAT: This is doable, but you need a higher GPA. A 3.3 (at the minimum), followed by a broad application focused on DO schools and maybe a few low end allopathic schools. It's important to note that DO schools only look at your most recent grade from a class (grade replacement) so retake and Fs, Ds, or Cs you've gotten and watch your GPA rise twice as fast. Shadow a LOT of DOs, show a lot of interest in their lifestyle
Low (23-27) MCAT: Retake the MCAT or quit.
Really low (<23) MCAT: Seriously evaluate if this is for you before you even study for the MCAT again.
Things NOT to do:
Do NOT go to the Caribbean: The Caribbean has, over the past decade, progressed from being a legitimate last resort to being a scam. The issue is that Caribbean schools don't participate in the match, so their students get to fight for whatever is left over after all the US medical students matched. In the past that was actually a lot of residency spots, but medical schools (especially DO schools) have expanded a LOT recently and now there aren't nearly as many spots to fight over. So the Caribbean schools are taking huge amounts of money from gullible students who probably couldn't even pass the boards, and then only tell them part was through that they need to KILL the USMLE and outperform medical students on their rotations to match into anything at all. Everyone else gets failed out, or doesn't match, and is left with no career and 200K+ of nondischargable debt.
Do NOT enroll in any kind of traditional masters, JD, MPH, or PhD program: Unless you've given up on medical school, that is. The experience of posters on this board, backed up by our ADCOM members, is that any post-graduate program other than an SMP is 100% useless for redeeming a GPA as low as yours. A masters might be a good start to your new career, but it won't help at all with medicine.
For futher advice I would recommend reading through SDN's
low GPA thread. It's full of generations of SDN's premedical f- ups (like me) discussing their strategies to beat the odds.
Good luck
