<p>I just finished my freshman year at Notre Dame. I am a mechanical engineering major (don't necessarily want to be an engineer, but I know this degree will set me up for a multitude of future careers that fit my interests, including engineering, business, and medicine). My freshman year cumulative GPA is not so good. I am wondering if I should bother filling my future electives with premed prerequisites, on top of an already rigorous engineering curriculum--or if my poor grades this year have already basically excluded me from being accepted into a decent med school, and I should just focus on doing well in my engineering courses.</p>
<p>Freshman GPA: 2.82</p>
<p>Foundations of Theology: A-
Intro to Engineering I: B
Honors Seminar I: B-
Calculus III: B-
Intro to Chemistry: C+</p>
<p>Physics I: B+
Intro to Engineering II: C+
Honors Seminar II: B
Intro to Linear Algebra/Diff Equations: C</p>
<p>...Not my best work. However, I am not an idiot and I am well aware that I didn't put nearly enough effort into my studies this year. </p>
<p>Assume I actually put in the time & effort, and get good grades (mostly A's) in my classes from here on out (coincidentally, this is the same exact thing that happened to me in high school, and I managed to succeed at pulling up my grades)...do I have a chance of being accepted into a good med school?</p>
<p>I am in a special engineering honors program that only 20 engineering students from my class were accepted into (based on high school performance). I currently work at an on-campus caf</p>
<p>Engineering is not a good pre med majors because med schools have three criteria the first one being GPA and engineering has notoriously low GPA’s. Your program sounds great if for example you wish to go to grad school in engineering. Can you imagine doing that instead of med school?</p>
<p>I don’t think his problem is being an eng’g major. His problem was focus. Even if he wasn’t an eng’g major, he didn’t do well in Gen Chem or Calc III or DifEq (he probably shouldn’t have used his AP credits and got some easy A’s in lower Calc). </p>
<p>Some of the premed prereqs are already req’d for your major, so proceed with those. You probably would have to do a Glide Year even if you did a lot better from now on…just to get your GPA up. </p>
<p>Right now, his BCMP is very low. That’s a problem. He’s got to do some calculations to see how he can dilute those grades to emerge with a better BCMP GPA. </p>
<p>*from being accepted into a decent med school, *</p>
<p>A common mistake. ALL US MD schools are very good. They’re all more than “decent”. There aren’t any that aren’t “decent” no matter which one you attend.</p>
<p>BCMP…bio, chem, math, physics…med schools look at your BCMP GPA closely, as well as your cum GPA.</p>
<p>A Glide year is the year after undergrad graduation. Many students apply to med school then rather than after junior year…especially if they have had to improve their GPAs.</p>
<p>Since your BCMP needs major repair, and eng’g classes don’t count for BCMP, maybe you should major in a science so that you can more easily dilute those first year grades. It may be risky to change your major IF you still don’t end up in med school. At least with eng’g you’d have a fall back career. </p>
<p>when did you plan on taking bio? </p>
<p>BTW…is that chem class you took the ND version of Gen Chem at other schools? Is that the chem for science/eng’g majors?</p>
<p>It’s difficult to fulfill the engineering requirements and the pre requisites for medical school. I would switch your major to something science related. If I were you, I would have double majored with bio and business, so that way you still would have had plenty of opportunities if you decided not to go to med school. First thing for sure, your going to need to raise your GPA, if you even want to have a shot of getting into med school.</p>
<p>Where is Biology? How can you do into PreMed w/out Biology?</p>
<p>Both me and my husband studied abroad. Our grades were not so great. However, my husband had great rec letters from the lab, where he was working. Guess what? He was accepted to PhD/MD with poor grades … because his Prof. wanted to have him in his lab. His Prof. walked to the admission office, and basically said “I need this guy, I have NIH grant to support him”. Done. Accepted.</p>
<p>I don’t think engineering is the right major because a 3.3 is fine for engineering not for medical school, because it will be very hard to add the premed classes and with the 2015MCATand changes in course requirements with a bigger emphasis on Humanities and Social Sciences you’ll just be missing too many courses. Add to this that the type of research you’ll be doing for engineering isn’t the same as what you’d need for medicine and that engineering is so hard without all there added courses that the majority engineering majors graduate in 5 or more years .( in greater proportion than other majors) . You are obviously excellent since you were chosen for that program and with engineering you can go into business or different sciences so if I were you I’d quick to that program and focus on classes next semester.</p>
<p>I’d stick not quick
oh and I took 3.3 as an example because it’s a decent GPA for engineering and one you could get if next year and junior year you keep your grades up to B+ or A- overall.</p>
<p>OP is in her first year. Presumably if she stuck with pre-med she’d take the bio requirements later. You only need two semesters of bio for pre-med, as opposed to four of chem.</p>
<p>that kind of situation may have been more the norm when your husband was a student and is still somewhat the case for straight PhD students but no one can get into an MSTP program anymore without the numbers as well as the phenomenal rec letters.</p>
<p>At this point, do you all think it would be better if I just focus on engineering, and maybe explore my business interest with any free electives? Premed is obviously a big commitment, and a major in itself, and I don’t know that I have the time or dedication to pursue something I don’t feel 100% passionate about.</p>
<p>I’m not so passionate about premed…I’m definitely interested in the medical field, but I’m not sure I’m willing to devote my life, and forgo raising my kids, to it</p>
<p>Does your school have a biomedical engineering program? Something along those lines might allow you to pursue both engineering and something medically related. I imagine you can get most of your med school pre-reqs done with that major as well, though you might need to take a couple of more advanced bio classes. Check with your school about this.</p>
<p>You certainly made it hard for yourself to get into med school, but it’s not impossible to recover from. I think if you do extremely well the rest of your UG time you can pull your GPA up to a 3.5, which is probably the minimum GPA to be competitive at some of the “lesser” schools. mom2 made a good point that ALL US MED SCHOOLS ARE VERY GOOD ALREADY. Keep that in mind because it’s not really what school you go to. What you do in med school and the connections you make there are the most important. And unless you’re in a very time intensive specialty (a specialty that has extremely high demands) like surgery, you won’t be devoting your whole life or messing up your kids to become a doctor. </p>
