Surgical Assistant to MD: Advice

[nassawadox]

Just made the decision to go to medical school and am new to the forum. Wanted to see if anyone has any advice about my situation.

I'm a 24-years-old JHU graduate with a BA in Neuroscience. I had a couple personal problems (eating disorder, parents divorce, father died) while in college and ended up with a less than stellar GPA (~2.6-2.7, I believe). It's so bad, because I don't even remember my GPA because I'd rather not look at it. I did brain tumor research and had 7 or 8 abstracts and I'm working on publishing a technical note now as the first author. I went away to EVMS for two years and got a graduate certificate as a surgical assistant, which is basically a first assistant at surgery, where I first or second assist on neurosurgery cases and have no floor or clinic duties. I work in Neurosurgery here at JHU and have decided to make the jump to medical school, but am worried about my undergraduate GPA. I got a 3.85 GPA in my graduate certificate program, which included medical school gross anatomy. I also think I'm going to take a part-time master's program in biotechnology and try to boost my GPA a little. I'm going to start studying for the MCAT soon and plan to start medical school around 26-27. Do people think it's better to do a traditional post-bac program or just do the biotech masters? I didn't do too great in orgo in undergrad and I was thinking that the biotech masters, with courses such as biochemistry and the like might help and look just as good as retaking the orgo.

Just wondering what you guys think my chances are.

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[crazydiamond]

I think you've got good chances considering your higher GPA later on. But the <3.0 will still really hurt you. A masters won't do anything to your ugrad GPA, unfortunately, so I do not feel that's the best route to take. If you do not want to take a traditional post-bac program, you can do an unofficial one yourself. Just make sure the classes you take are ugrad ones, not grad. And as far as the orgo goes, I'd definitely retake that if it was a D or an F. It'll help your GPA a little, plus it'll show that you can really handle the material. Just be sure to get an A this time. 🙂

Look around these boards and do a search. . there are tons of threads focussed on rehabbing a poor ugrad GPA.