Am I Screwed?

<p>I'm a freshman in my first semester of college. I'm a psychology pre med major and I took English, intro to psych., intro to chem., pre cal, and elementary Spanish. This semester has been the biggest struggle of my life. It was a HUGE adjustment (I still haven't fully adjusted to the newness of it all) I broke up with a long term boyfriend, illnesses and deaths have happened within my family...I've just been stressed up the wazoo (not saying it's an appropriate excuse) and depression and anxiety have caused me to not have performed my very best this semester. Now that everything is winding down I'm expecting to have 3 C's (or possibly even 2 C's and a D), a B, and an A. My GPA is going to be a mess. If I clean up the catastrophe that is myself, retake some courses, take some summer school classes, and stay on top of my **** from here on out, do you think I'd be okay by senior year in terms of applying to med school?</p>

<p>Disaster recovery possible. Definitely plan on applying after graduation in order to give yourself the maximum time to raise your GPA. And if your GPA isn’t high enough by graduation, there are GPA enhancing post-bacc programs if you’re still sure that medicine is the right path for you. Osteopathic med schools in particular value re-invention. DO programs allow grade replacement; MD programs do not. </p>

<p>Some suggestions:</p>

<p>1) get yourself to your college’s counseling office pronto, make an appointment and start learning some better coping skills. Pre med and med school are pressure cookers. Depression and anxiety will torpedo your chances to be successful at either.</p>

<p>2) you need better time management and study skills. Get yourself to your college’s academic support center or tutoring center (or whatever your school calls) first thing next semester. Take a seminar in time management and/or study skills. Schedule regular tutoring for your science & math classes.** Go to tutoring faithfully.**</p>

<p>3) find study groups for your classes next semester. Sometimes classmates are the best teachers. Study groups are especially important for math & science courses since different individuals have different skill sets and a wider variety of approaches to problems.</p>

<p>4) take a less challenging academic load next semester while you’re still adjusting to college’s more rigorous demands. **Do not take 5 classes next semester!! **Take 4–which is full time.</p>

<p>5) keep an open mind about other possible careers. Not everyone is cut out to be a physician, a scientist or an engineer. American high schools do p*** poor job of career education. There are literally hundred of jobs you’ve never even heard of yet. </p>

<p>Like WOWM said.</p>

<p>Point is where is the D might come from? Is it the chem class? If so, can you talk to the prof. try to get a W and retake? cause a solid D in science will diminish your chance at MD schools. And even if you can make up afterwards, you will most likely ended with DO schools.</p>

<p>Exactly, the potential D is in chemistry. The other two C’s are in pre cal and psych, the B in english and the A in spanish. And this is all speaking on a worse case scenario basis, I still have to take finals and see where the grades on those put me. I am retaking chemistry and pre cal next semester and I know that I will make A’s in both courses. I will catch up on Calc and Organic Chemistry over the summer and I will NEVER let these grades happen EVER again.</p>

<p>And also, will taking twelve hours (bare minimum) instead of 15+ look bad on a transcript? Or are grades more important than number of courses when considering medical school?</p>

<p>Did you read this forum about NEVER take Orgo in the summer?</p>

<p>Why shouldn’t you?</p>

<p>med school don’t care when and how you took your classes, although take the bare minimum looks like a slacker, but I believe they will forgive you for the first year. From the second year and on, you must gear up.</p>

<p>READ many postings on this PRE-med forum about not taking orgo in the summer, before asking why not.</p>

<p>I will definitely gear up to the max from here on out, I never want anything like this to happen again. And I will be sure to read the forums. Thank you so much.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>One semester with a light course load, especially during your freshman year, isn’t going to impact how med school adcomms look at your transcript. If you take light loads every semester–that’s will be an issue.</p>

<p>RE: Ochem in summer—bad idea for several reasons, but mostly because it crams a large amount of very complex material into a very short timeframe. You have less time to learn and assimilation the material and less time to recover from a one poor quiz or exam. Unless you’re a very strong science student (and you’re not), it shouldn’t be attempted.</p>

<p>Okay great. Thank you!</p>

<p>Would taking Basic Principles of Modern Chemistry over the summer be okay?</p>

<p>Summer is for premed track students to make up their EC’s such as shadowing and research as such, it is not intended for catch up science credits. It will be viewed as an easy way out to SOME adcoms and you don’t want to chance it. If you take all class in a regular session, you will win over their harts fair and square.</p>

<p>I’ve been reading this forum and from my experience, a few things run contrary to the popular opinion in this forum.</p>

<ul>
<li>My friend’s daughter took her Ochem in the summer at her Ivy and she had no problems getting into medical school. She is now attending Yale.</li>
</ul>

<p>-My niece also took Ochem in the summer and at her college adviser’s insistence, took the course at her Ivy instead of her in-state public. She was accepted to every medical school she applied and was offered 2 full-tuition scholarships.She chose Harvard. </p>

<p>My H is a physician and we know many young people attending medical school. All of them chose to attend the most rigorous undergraduate school they were accepted to without regard to the gaming of grades.</p>

<p>@cbreeze</p>

<p>I am sure those anecdotes you are referring to is true and great. Can you ask each of the principles in the story if they have a C in Chem I or did they get an A in Ochem over the summer? Or if their first semester gpa is 3.0 by amcas standards?</p>

<p>@artloversplus,
I can’t tell you about my friend’s daughter but I can tell you about my niece.
She was elected Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year, that means she had a minimum of 3.85 or higher in her junior year. I doubt she ever got a C because she was also a Rhodes Scholar finalist.
When I initially heard that her college adviser discouraged her from taking Ochem in her public state U, I was really surprised because I didn’t think it mattered.</p>

<p>@cbreeze</p>

<p>A top student will always be a top student wherever he/she be. The youngest Doctor in the USA was only 18 years old. There are students who can accelerate their medical program anytime and be successful in it.</p>

<p>However, for the average majority, it is still not advisable to take hard science courses during the summer. A PBK recipient is entirely different and above the means of a 3.0 student. </p>

<p>^Indeed. People forget that the application is looked at and evaluated in its entirety. Other than things like a felony conviction, assaulting/insulting an interviewer, or a GPA/MCAT low enough to be screened out automatically, there’s little you can have on an application that results in an automatic rejection regardless of the rest of your app. Taking summer pre req courses - even at a community college - therefore is only ever going to be one nail in a coffin that takes multiple nails to close. Almost every application is going to have at least one or two weak spots, the question is how many weak spots do you have and at any given point going forward: how many weak spots can you avoid.</p>

<p>“Taking summer courses” is one of the easiest nails to avoid - that’s why students are advised against doing it. Unlike say: “doing well on the MCAT” which requires studying and performing on test day, not taking summer classes literally just requires not taking summer classes. Add to that the fact that taking summer courses generally means a failure to take advantage of a multiple month period where a student can devote the kind of hours to an activity that being in school prohibits (as previously mentioned, volunteering, research, etc) and you’ve got a double whammy against the application in that you’ve not only done something detrimental, but probably missed out on the opportunity to do something beneficial.</p>

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<p>Yes, this alone is all the reason you need to not take summer classes. </p>