Well.
If you can stand to take a year off, do it, and do something good with it. Volunteer at a hospice a couple times a week, and get a full-time job either in a hospital doing patient care (phlebotomy, ED assistant/tech, etc) or do something in a research lab (research assistant, lab tech, etc, etc).
With borderline stats, your application experience is going to have to be all about you PROVING how much you want this. Adcoms want to see that you've made an effort to be around sick/dying people and been okay with it; they want to see that you want to serve others, they want to see you've considered this decision through and through; they want to hear explanations about why your GPA is lower than average, and they want to know that you have the personal maturity, integrity, and confidence to be a good physician.
Put together a GOOD application, well rounded, and write a great personal statement that explains who you really are and why you deserve a seat in the class. If your ECs are good, then you probably stand a good chance this year (especially if your MCAT turns out to be 33+) at some of the mid/lower tier allopathic schools or schools in your state or local consortium.
It's really not a bad thing to take a year off--it will force you to grow a little, and it'll show the adcoms that YOU really want medicine as a career, not just as a "natural progression of school" or something crappy ("well, my parents want me to be a doctor or a lawyer or something impressive...").
Given that you're right out of college, I would take the year off and reapply. You won't "lose" anything from that; in fact, you might gain a lot.
To the adcoms, the year off proves your determination to succeed," which is essentially the same concept as GPA (drive/motivation). The MCAT speaks to your critical thinking skills and basic mastery of premed material (your "smarts"). They have a tough time using GPA for the "smarts" scale, because nothing is standardized. So a lot of schools use GPA to weigh in on the "drive/motivation" scale and MCAT for "smarts." If you have a low MCAT, you have to prove your smarts other places; if you have a low GPA, you have to prove your drive/motivation other places. It's like a big balancing act, in my opinion.
The bottom line: you can make up for a low GPA with a great year off if you have good MCATS. If you get into ONE school, and it's a school you HATE (for whatever reason), just reapply. It's the next four years of YOUR life; no one else's. Don't settle for something sub-par just because your GPA wasn't stellar. Take the year, let them see your determination, and then go for it again.
Just my two cents! Good luck to you.
