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Poor GPA and what to do!?

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(@Anonymous)
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I finished school recently with a B.S. in Psychology. Though I finished, I have a poor GPA, the result of early immaturity in college which seems to keep me out of graduate programs, let alone medical school. What do you suggest I do if I want to attend medical school, have the brains to do it, but not the record? Are there any programs that help students who are capable but screwed up earlier in life? Are we merely doomed from our college fr./soph. youth?


   
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 mgm
(@mgm)
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As someone who was in the same situation when graduating from college and now a PhD - let me share my journey. I went back to undergraduate school and took education and biology courses and brought up my GPA. I also worked in a lab and managed to become 2nd author on several publications(8 articles). This helped me get into a Master's prgram. The Master's degree provided evidence of my capabilities in academics. I also studied very hard for my GRE exam.

It was definately the longer route, but the only way to get into a doctoral program or medical school is to do the extra work to prove that you are capable. Why should a school invest their time and money in what appears to be a long shot? You have to show them you are a sure thing and that you extremely dedicated, and are now mature enough to put in the extra time & effort to get to your goal. They can't take your word for it - you must provide proof.

(extra hint: I am now the Director of Academic Support in a School of Medicine and having an outstanding score on your MCAT will really help your application. Also, doing research at a teaching hospital that has medical school will help you network - it always helps to have recommendations from faculty that the admissions committee knows).

[ Edited by mgm on 2004/1/5 9:58 ]


   
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(@drdave)
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I agree with the suggestions MGM gives above. I think med schools will also look at your science vs. non-science GPA. Did you take mostly science classes your first 2 years, and those are the ones you did poorly on? If so, it will be more difficult to convince an admissions committee that you can handle the tough science classes, which is necessary to manage medical school.

I think that if you did really well your last 2 years, you can possibly get away with the excuse that you didn't take college seriously enough initially, but that you did later on. Also, it depends on just how bad your GPA is. You could consider repeating those classes that you did very poorly in, just to show that you can get a good grade in the class, now that your heart is into it.

I think there are a few programs (Chicago Medical School comes to mind) that offer these weird 1 year programs with titles like "applied physiology" where you basically do 1 year of medical school classes, but at a slower pace. If you do well, then the school will typically accept you into their medical school class, and then your first year of medical school you do only the classes you didn't complete in the "applied physiology" program. It basically is like a conditional acceptance into medical school, but it makes the program a 5 year deal instead of 4. I don't think there is a very high success rate for people who enter these programs though, so I'd think carefully before committing the resources.


   
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(@corpsman-up)
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Joined: 20 years ago
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Boston University has a similar deal to what Doc Admin mentioned in his post -- they offer a master's degree in "medical sciences" in which you essentially take a bunch of medical school courses to prove that you are up to the task.

Two of the guys in my medical school class completed this MS program at BU, and they are enjoying a pretty cake first year, since they have taken most of the classes already!

Neither of these two guys stayed at BU for med school (several do each year, apparently), but they seemed to enjoy the program, and hey... it got them into med school.

There are also a good number of "post-bac" programs which offer the medical school pre-reqs to students who are coming back to school. Actually, I applied to one of these and was rejected (due to some similar issues to the ones you mentioned), so I did it on my own and was accepted anyway. I occasionally, when I take the time to think about it, draw a good deal of satisfaction from that at this point!

Good luck! 🙂

Curtis Nordstrom
___________________________________
"Unum nihil, duos plurimum posse..."


   
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