this is a tough one... many many things to discuss
first, i think jslo was mostly correct in that med schools don't care how many or what type of degrees you've accumulated, but care more about what you have done with the degrees. a BSN is all well and good, but without it being used a med school may interpreting it as you wasting the school's time, and thus could end up wasting the med schools time. i do know that part of bsn training does involve significant clinical work, so this is a positive, but again, the act that you got a career-specific degree and never bothered to try and use it does not look good.
also, mba... if you are serious about med i wouldn't bother doing that, unless you are planning on a health management/hospital administration type of career. its just more time/money away from your goal and it will be difficult to convince adcoms that your goal was medicine at this point when you intentionally sidestepped it to study business.
like jslo said, a more detailed description of grades would help as your description is a tad convoluted and hard to follow. real numbers and names make it a ton easier to advise. also, based on your self-admittance that family obligations have prevented you from performing at your best, why do you feel this will change now. also, how do you feel you can explain this to adcoms without giving them the impression that you will not be able to focus enough to succeed in their school. they don't want someone who has not showed any clear evidence that they are able to succeed under current circumstances.
despite your optimisim, a 3.15 will put you at the bottom of the pile for md schools and in my opinion is not worth the time and money to apply. as for DO schools, if you repeated your core sciences right now, or after you get your bsn, you can replace those grades through aacomas (not amcas) and you could apply with a decent mcat. a 3.1 is not ideal, but like jslo said, DO schools like well-rounded applicants and a BSN and 6 years of EMT work is definitely beneficial. i am not aware of the differences of premed reqs and nursing courses, so yeah, check that out, because if they don't qualify this may be a blessing as you have a new opportunity to 4.0 them.
jslo's advice to start working and get those pre-reqs done simultaneously is very good, albeit time consuming with your already stressed life. it may sound like too much time but its important to convince adcoms that you have thought about this and have taken the necessary measures to achieve it, rather than just a spur of the moment realization one day in a nursing class.
depending on the regulations and how many credits you have you could try to transfer to a nearby school's ugrad science program. which would essentially allow you start new without losing all your credits. with heavy courseloads and some summer classes you could complete a new major in 3 years and get those prereqs done and get a BSc instead of a BSN. this is complicated though as i am not sure how transferring out of a Bsn program into a regular Bsc works.
finally, before you make any decisions, how do you know you do not want to do nursing. you are halfway through your degree. you should take a hard look at it and decide if switching careers again is really in the cards. nurses do well, they work hard, they have a lot of responsibility, and they have stable careers. anyway, your response will undoubtedly provide us with a bit more information so we can help you out further.
Wow, that's a hell of a post. Let me try and address the different point's, as you made quite a few.
As for the BSN program, I don't want to switch from it since it will give me some earning potential until I do end up matriculating to med school. Another reason for not wanting to switch is, I don't want to not finish it and give the adcoms the idea that I don't finish what I start. I don't know, call me a completionist. I wouldn't mind working for a year or 2 as an RN to pick up some experience while finishing up some prerequisites or doing an SMP.
As far as the MBA, I have some time to nickle and dime those credits. It would only be a year or so to finish up. I see it as more of a builder degree that tends to suppliment many other degree's to give you a better understanding of management. Having worked in Engineering management prior, I have a lot of experience but nothing academic to show for it, this would be a great fit for my prior experience.Besides, MD/MBA is a pretty powerful combination.
Specifics:
From the community college a few years ago I took Chem 1, AP1 & 2, Bio 1 and Micro. Most of them were B- and C grades. This summer I am doing Physics 1. This fall I am registered for Genetics. In the coming spring and summer I will need to take Chem 2 and Organic 1 and 2.
It is sounding like an SMP is going to be in order based on the advice I have received thus far. I would like to keep it local so maybe Drexel's DPMS program would be worth looking into. As far as the DO route, please don't label me as a hater on this. Trust me, I'm not. That being said however, at this point I feel that the MD program is a better fit as I would prefer to devote my time to allopathic studies. I will certainly keep the options open along the way and will probably submit apps to the DO schools as well when the time comes, but I am still going to keep MD as a first choice route.
In response to your one comment. I can tell you that this certainly was not a spur of the moment decision. I have found with each passing clinical experience that I am more interested in the diagnosis and treatment process that the docs go through than the nursing process of providing and managing care. Once again, I am not hating on nursing, it's an extremely important profession and I have the utmost respect for it. Nevertheless, I want to go further than it's scope of practice allows as I would like to specialize in (I know its a bit early but based on my prior experience) radiology or emergency medicine.
In closing I wanted to say that for my family, I'm a first generation college student, for that matter I'm a first gen high school grad if you were to look back a few generations. Pile on top of that that I was laid off and needed work to support my family and you'll soon find that I didn't really choose going to college, it was more of a necessity. To expand on that statement further, and I hate to say it, when I started off at the CC, I didn't have a major picked and just started taking general courses in the sciences since it seemed like a good idea at the time. Ice the cake with a disgruntled care free attitude, some poor decisions and a lack of general advice from family pointing me in the right direction and you've got a recipe for that train-wreck I call a transcript from the CC. You should see a theme of unwise jaded decision making in my CC years. Stupid? Yes, but it's done now and there isn't a thing I can do about it.
Since that time, I started to really care about what I was doing, selected a field I would like to work in (medical), transferred to a university & got serious about my studies. Unfortunately the damage is already done. Regretting it won't get me anywhere, I just have to pick my head up and keep driving on. It is only now that I have realized that I will not be content If I just finish my BSN and call it a day. I now know that medicine is for me and I am coming to the realization that I will have to work really hard to make it happen. My most recent discovery is the way AMCAS computed the GPA, boy what a dark cloud settling over my head that was when I saw that. Hopefully upward trends count for something as my progress now is going to be way better than my AMCAS GPA will suggest. At this point I know I'm going to have to work harder than someone who got it right the first time, and I'm ok with that. All of this just makes me more determined to buckle down, turn things around and show the adcoms that I am capable of successfully making it through medical school. Damage control and progress, where would you suggest I go from here?
