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Your quickest road to redeem your GPA is to pursue osteopathic medicine which allows grade replacement. You do not necessarily have to retake the course at the same school but it is helpful if you can.
The courses are one semester.You would have to check the guidelines for how to do the conversion but I believe 1 year long course will be equivalent to another.
Anyone else? And thanks again.
You have multiple challenges, but there is a route IF you can avoid digging yourself deeper and start filling in the hole! Summarizing much of what is stated above and adding a bit:
1. You need to get your overall gpa up. For MD that's ~3.7+ without any retakes (I don't necessarily think this is worth the effort and years required and the SMP route could end your med career when going DO would be more possible). For DO ~3.25+ with retakes. You should aim for at least a 3.4 sgpa.
2. You MUST do well on all future coursework and MCAT to show you have overcame your issues.
3. Neurological raises a huge red flag, BUT if you can use it to your advantage as a reason for medicine and support how you overcame it then you might get through. Don't make it an excuse for the poor performance!! and focus on overcoming it and be able to answer how if problems arose in med school you'd deal with them. Adcoms love reinvention stories (impo DO more than MD), so frame it as that.
4. You need to get your foundation sciences down solid (Take Biochem as well) and that will enable you to hopefully do well on the MCAT DO - 504+. MD probably 515+ in your case to really demonstrate you have it.
5. You sincerely need to evaluate your medical condition and make sure that you can put in what is required to be successful. Med school is almost as physically as cognitively demanding, so speak with your physicians and make sure.
6. Figure out if medicine is your passion. Shadow a DO and MD and see for sure. Get a job as a psych tech in a public hospital and make sure anything in psychiatry is what you want as it's not often what people think it is.
DO with grade forgiveness (pretty sure you can make that work, but as mentioned above do your leg work to see, all else fails email AACOM and ask if YX will replace XY and give them an example.) is really your best chance for being a physician. Do you really want to do dental or podiatry? If so then do them or be a PA or NP if that excites you. BUT if you are sincerely passionate about being a physician the road is there. It's just a marathon getting to the finish line, so be ready to invest in preparing for such.
Do some reading on the AACOM site and ask more questions when you've decided what route you want.
Best of Luck!
One that matriculates a disproportionate number of IS applicants (e.g. W VA, Puerto Rico, S Carolina, Louisiana, AL, AR...)How do you define favorable state? Thanks,
Biochemistry does very well, not sure about others.Cool, and thank you. Best to you, as well.
If you ever get time, could you (or anyone) brief me on the extent to which science courses beyond standard pre-req classes translate to higher MCAT scores? I don't know how well the correlation-causation question's been teased out....I'm looking into it, but I want to check my understanding.