What you should do if you want to go to med school but your GPA is way below 3.0:
1. Best option, not kidding: find another career. Without a doubt, another career is a much, much better idea than pursuing medicine. You can't imagine how much work you have to do to get through med school at this point, and no, it's probably not worth it.
2. Assuming you're going to ignore #1: hold onto your fanny, this is going to get ragged.
3. Honest question: seriously, what, exactly, has you thinking you will survive med school, and that it will not suck for you? If watching House is your motivation, don't get anywhere near me because I will slap you: you have a basic fact vs. fiction problem and you are wasting everybody's time. If, however, your interest in being a doctor is based on some knowledge of what doctors have to be responsible for, and some knowledge of what it takes to make it through med school and residency, then read on. What have you done to change your study habits? Your work ethic? Your ability to tolerate profound levels of bullsh*t that are between you and a goal? Your ability to withstand debilitating life events without getting debilitated at your job which is school? Your use of mind altering substances? Whatever prevented you from getting good grades in college simply must be addressed. This is not optional. Figure it out. Don't find a med school that will let you in: you will fail and have a few hundred thousand dollars of federal debt that is not discharged in a bankruptcy. Getting a residency is never going to be your biggest problem.
4. You must get an A, in one class, math or science, at a community college or wherever you can take a class, before you do anything remotely like a postbac. If you get one A in one class, now get two A's taking two classes at a time. Now three. What's that? You are worried about some detail here? Shut up. Do it. What's that? You did it and you got all A's? Great! Proceed.
5. Your cumulative GPA is never, ever getting fixed. (Unless you invest about a decade, and move to Texas, see 5a). You will never be a competitive applicant for medical school compared to 90% of medical school applicants. If you get into medical school, it will be because you have an incredibly compelling story that makes adcoms want to take a risk with you. You have to make your cumulative GPA a small detail. If you get into medical school, it will be because you did multiple consecutive fresh very full time years of hard science at some university that let you in, and you got a killer 3.7+ in those years, and you got an above average MCAT (28+ for DO, 32+ for MD). You also did every last thing you possibly could to demonstrate that you're in this for the duration: you volunteered, you were a leader, you are employable, you earned the approval of faculty and bosses, possibly you published.
5a. Texas has an academic fresh start, where for established TX residents, you can have a college record that is 10 years old wiped out so you can start over. Valid only in Texas: you have to stay there for med school.
6. Make no mistakes in the above. No withdrawals, no C's, no incompletes, no incidents.
Still reading? If you get the above right, then you've invested at least 3 years, you're broke, you can't borrow any more federal money for undergrad, your significant other is long gone, your parents are trying to get you to stop, and you can't remember why you wanted to do this. And you still have no guarantee of getting into med school.
If this all sounds like what you want to do, more power to you.
Best of luck to you.
