What do now after so many bad grades?

[Emmet2301]

Hey y'all,

I'm a sophomore at a Top 30 college. You might remember me from my previous posts complaining about how badly my grades were.

This semester has been improving, but I've still been doing badly. I'm most likely going to have about 5 Cs on my transcript in science classes and an extra 2 Cs in non science classes TOTAL. The other grades have been As or Bs. My GPA is around a 2.7. I don't really want to do a post Basc (but will consider it), and most likely not a SMP.

Freshman year was a really hard adjustment. It's been getting better, but I think I just have a problem with endurance. I usually do ok on the first and last exams, but I do badly in the middle exams. Also, I've been either taking too many science classes or too hard science classes.

What should I do now? I've seriously been contemplating quitting as I don't think my grades can improve in time enough for applying to med school even if I apply a few years after I graduate college.

Thanks

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[DrArete]

Hey y'all,

I'm a sophomore at a Top 30 college. You might remember me from my previous posts complaining about how badly my grades were.

This semester has been improving, but I've still been doing badly. I'm most likely going to have about 5 Cs on my transcript in science classes and an extra 2 Cs in non science classes TOTAL. The other grades have been As or Bs. My GPA is around a 2.7. I don't really want to do a post Basc (but will consider it), and most likely not a SMP.

Freshman year was a really hard adjustment. It's been getting better, but I think I just have a problem with endurance. I usually do ok on the first and last exams, but I do badly in the middle exams. Also, I've been either taking too many science classes or too hard science classes.

What should I do now? I've seriously been contemplating quitting as I don't think my grades can improve in time enough for applying to med school even if I apply a few years after I graduate college.

Thanks

You have to figure that out.

But what you are doing now is not working.

Maybe you need to take a semester off. Go to the forest or something and eat some mushrooms, then do some volunteer work.

Pick a different major, or buckle down and get dramatically better grades.

Also, drop the negativity and pessimism. Your emotions are not useful to you in maintaining the sort of borderline state of psychosis that it useful in having a successful career in medicine.

 

[chibrown01]

You need to find some motivation. For me I just think about how "BADLY" i want to become a doc.

Take a deep breath and just do GREAT on your upper level bio courses. (assuming yu are a bio major).
Dont stress about things, just worry aout other parts of your future app too. Like Volunteering and shadowing and leadership stuff.
Maybe you might want to take a summer class or 2 to replace a couple C's

 

[JenniferRU]

What does your usual semester look like?

 

[alibai3ah]

I had a difficult year my first year as well. Don't give up.

First of all, you need to fix your study habits. You need to learn to get A's. That's the first step. Once you have that down, keep up the good work until you graduate. Make sure you do some EC's while you are it. With multiple years of 3.7+, most medical schools will see your improvement and will for sure take that into account. Good luck.

 

[apumic]

You're two years in w/ a 2.7. You can still turn things around but it's long past time to figure out why you're doing so poorly. Go talk to your advisor and do some troubleshooting and soul-searching. I will point out there is essentially no way you can get around doing an SMP at this point (a PB to bring your GPA up to a respectable level would take the length of your undergrad). Even w/ straight 3.7s (as another poster suggested), you'd barely be at a 3.2 by the time you graduate. That's still not going to cut it. (Even perfect grades would place you below the average applicant at a 3.35 and the average applicant gets rejected.) I'd say you're going to have to get your GPA above a 3.0 and then go do an SMP (most require GPA >3.0 w/ a good MCAT score) and do great at the SMP (many students complete SMPs with >3.5 GPAs and still get rejected by every school they apply to, so you need to be ready to do some outstanding work from here on out).

Your only other option might be to go DO after a gap year (applying DO sr yr-->gap yr after sr yr) but DO schools have been trending upward in their practical GPA and MCAT requirements, so I wouldn't count on DO schools accepting many students w/ <3.4 GPAs in 2-3 years.

Regardless, you need to figure out what's gone wrong. Talk with professors, advisors, etc. and figure that out first.

 

[Elpenor]

Hey y'all,

I'm a sophomore at a Top 30 college.

Stopped reading here.