Medical Should I do Drexel IHS vs DIY postbac?

[GoSpursGo]

hello! Due to personal life circumstances, I ended up with a 3.1 cGPA and 2.5 sGPA in undergrad. I'm figuring out postbac vs SMPs to work on an upward trend. I got into Drexel's IHS master's program, but im not sure if i should do a graduate level program or just do a DIY SMP at UCLA extension. Would it be better to have a separate graduate GPA or just work on getting my UG sGPA up to as close to 3.0 as possible? i really appreciate any insight or words of advice since i'm super lost in this premed process!

I generally tend to be biased towards post-bacc because it's cheaper and less high-stakes.

Furthermore, if you just graduated, then you would already need to have a clear upward trend in order for me to suggest an SMP at all. If your recent performance is still mediocre, then I think it would be very optimistic to think that you would show up and take med school level courses and suddenly start crushing them. Doing an SMP before you're ready can permanently kill your chances.

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[TheBoneDoctah]

DIY post-bac is your best friend.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Thank you for your response! I appreciate it. I definitely need to establish an upward trend and gain confidence in my studying so I'll be looking to take some postbac classes then. If you don't mind, I have a follow-up question: is it better to do a formal postbac program vs "DIY" post bac? From what I understand, the benefit of formal is advising but beyond that they function the same.

DIY gives your more flexibility so you can continue working on ECs as well.

 

[GoSpursGo]

More or less. My general understanding is that formal programs can be helpful to career-changers who have to do all of the pre-reqs and kind of have no idea what they're doing. You know what you need to do, which is just take more science courses to establish an upward trend, so I'm not sure you'll get much benefit from paying more.

 

[Goro]

Formal post-bac programs are more for career changers.