Will Medical Withdrawal Hurt My Chances?

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I am a type 1 diabetic, and I also have severe gastroparesis which causes chronic nausea and vomiting. I ended up taking medical withdrawal my first semester of college due to having 9 hospital trips in 6 months from undiagnosed gastroparesis.

The following semester I had to stay at home, and spend my semester at a local community college, mostly to keep my medical insurance. I only got a 3.0 GPA that semester.

I am an Electrical Engineering major at a four year college right now, and I have an overall 3.36 GPA. I have about 56 credits right now, and I know I need to boost my GPA.

Does anyone think my chances will be lessened by having a bunch of Ws from taking medical withdrawal?

I'm not even sure if I want to be a doctor. I know what it takes to become a doctor, because I went to a camp full of premedical students every summer for about 10 years.

I just want your opinions regarding this issue.

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I am a type 1 diabetic, and I also have severe gastroparesis which causes chronic nausea and vomiting. I ended up taking medical withdrawal my first semester of college due to having 9 hospital trips in 6 months from undiagnosed gastroparesis.

The following semester I had to stay at home, and spend my semester at a local community college, mostly to keep my medical insurance. I only got a 3.0 GPA that semester.

I am an Electrical Engineering major at a four year college right now, and I have an overall 3.36 GPA. I have about 56 credits right now, and I know I need to boost my GPA.

Does anyone think my chances will be lessened by having a bunch of Ws from taking medical withdrawal?

I'm not even sure if I want to be a doctor. I know what it takes to become a doctor, because I went to a camp full of premedical students every summer for about 10 years.

I just want your opinions regarding this issue.

I don't think the medical withdrawal will hurt you. Just be prepared to discuss it in an interview if it comes up. You need to focus your energy on raising your GPA, which it sounds like you already know. You want to get it to a 3.5+.

On a side note, that camp sounds incredibly depressing :). You're an engineer, didn't you want to go to space camp or somewhere more fun?
 
I don't think the medical withdrawal will hurt you. Just be prepared to discuss it in an interview if it comes up. You need to focus your energy on raising your GPA, which it sounds like you already know. You want to get it to a 3.5+.

On a side note, that camp sounds incredibly depressing :). You're an engineer, didn't you want to go to space camp or somewhere more fun?


I went to diabetes camp every summer for 10 years. The camp was completely normal, except for the fact that it was designed for children with diabetes! They tend to recruit pre-med students from Notre Dame and from Texas schools.

Here's the camp http://www.campsweeney.org

Here's some videos from the camp http://www.youtube.com/user/CampSweeneyPFC

But thanks, I will raise my GPA, and try to work on shadowing and community service.
 
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My primary concern is that the admissions review team may view me as a weaker candidate, because I have chronic health issues.

I am concerned that it may be a wasted venture for me to even try to become a doctor, since I will likely have to disclose some of my personal health issues in some sort of fashion or form.

For the most part, I am afraid of being written off by admission teams over personal problems.
 
I had two semesters of medical withdrawal and I got accepted. It came up in every interview but was discussed in one or two sentences and that was the end of it. Don't sweat it.
 
Just focus on how you do in classes and activities when actually in school. The application process provides more than enough chances to write something about how your medical issues may have impacted your performance. But if you can prove to the schools that you can perform reasonably good when the medical issues are under control, then everything will be fine.
 
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