Medical What should my plan be?

[AlteredScale]

So I need some guidance here gpa wise, I have not taken the MCAT yet, I have an EMT-B license, I am currently working on volunteer hours, I have ~ 1500 ish research hours, and I just got a job as a medical assistant. I still have some buffering to do and a long ways to go!

Long story short, I was originally Pre-Vet at my university with a major in animal science, while on course to doing that the relationship I was in ended taking a turn for the worst and got abusive (emotionally & started to get physical, I’ll spare the intricate details). Basically, cops were called, dean of my college was informed, worked with the university and filed a restraining order on him. I did everything I could legally do at that point in time.

During the time I sought help from my university, the psychiatrist I saw suspected I had bipolar 2 and threw me on lithium. Found once everything was said and done, turns out I just had intense anxiety from everything that was going on around me. I haven’t had any problems since all of these issues have been cleared up ( I double checked with more than one psychiatrist on the whole bipolar thing since I don’t want to screw myself over if I actually was before anyone says anything about that).

As you can probably assume, yeah this messed with my gpa. If I could go back, I would’ve medically withdrew and returned the next year.

I was impressed with myself that I managed to keep my gpa above a 3.0 while all of this was going on. The stuff that happened to me with the bipolar misdiagnoses is what made me realize I wanted to be a physician. Sucky part is, my cgpa is incredibly average/ low end now (3.49ish) and my sgpa was oddly around the same. My final semester of undergrad I took 18 credits of pure science (biochem, orgo lab, etc) and got a 4.0 in all of them. I thought about going to PA school, so I took the human version of classes I needed (I only say this because I had to take animal anatomy / physio and animal genetics at my university) at community college because I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on classes just yet and I’m paying for them myself. I 4.0 everything I took at the community college.

I did learn a lot about myself during this time, I really grew as a person and learned a great deal about patience/ other things I’d write in a personal statement.

My question here is, should I do another semester of upper level science at a 4 year university to show more grade improvement? I plan on applying to DO schools, but my first step is some gpa repair before I even get to the mcat.

if there are any other suggestions on things to do as well that would be great!

Sounds like you’ve already started a post-bacc process. Which is good and you’ve obviously shown a strong positive trend. What’s holding you back from applying from your state MD schools?

Keep doing what you are doing academic wise. Focus on establishing good EC including volunteering in a healthcare setting to show that you’ve truly committed to that transition from vet to human medicine. Shadow DO and MD doctor and prepare as hard as you can for the MCAT. It is not an easy test by any means.

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[TheBoneDoctah]

Thank you for replying! I think it’s that my gpa seems low and I fear I won’t have a chance compared to those with higher gpas. I live in Michigan btw. My fear is I will get denied for doing post bacc at community college or it won’t look as great even though I took most of my science classes at a university and did alright in them

Your GPA isn’t THAT low. It is low for MD, but you would be fine for DO now. If you want MD, you basically will need a year of courses with high marks (seems like you already have a semester) and crush the MCAT.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Thank you! This is where I’ve been confused on if I need another year or just a handful of classes. I still do need to take chem 2 because somehow I managed to weasel my way out of it in undergrad, but since it’s “lower level” I’m unsure if I should just save money and finish it at community college or take it at a 4 year university

So the recommendation is if you need GPA repair, one year of post bac classes should be sufficient. If you are taking your other courses at a 4-year, I would just take it there.