Any suggestions or comments for a pre-med student? Should I change my career path?
Also is it possible for the next semesters, if I do well after I have remedied my studying habits, to pull off a 3.7 or 3.8 GPA cumulatively for med school?
It’s too soon to give up. Many students experience a rocky transition to college. (Including D1 who is now a physician.)
But you do need to figure out how to study more effectively.
It’s possible to recover your GPA, but you will likely need to postpone applying to med school until after graduation to give yourself additional time to remediate your GPA. Also do not rule out the possibility of osteopathic medical school. (DO programs allow for grade replacement.)
Some suggestions:
--pre-read and take notes on all assigned reading before attending lecture
--record lectures to review later, if allowed by individual professors
--do extra problem sets for all science & math classes until the skills become automatic/second nature
--take a study skills seminar offered by your college's academic support center
--use supplemental materials (study guides, additional textbooks, Khan Academy)
--form study groups for your classes
Nope! That was me freshman year (2.7 I believe was my gpa) and I got into 5 medical schools after a gap year and graduating with a 3.6. And to think my advisor freshman year even told me to give up :))
Honestly people on this forum are going to dog me for the advice I am going to give you, but you are going to need to do a combination of working your ass off and inflating your grades as much as possible.
What I did was 1) picked the easiest major electives I could if I had the choice 2) spread my prereqs out as much as possible and 3) filled my load to the brim (18-20) credit hours a semester composed of one or two major classes, one prereq, and the rest the easiest gen eds/courses offered in the university. Again people on this forum like to advise against this but they are wrong; when you have such a bad start you have to pull all the stops and game your gpa as much as possible. People who did well their freshman year may have the leeway for more B’s but you don’t. I took courses I knew I would struggle getting an A in at a cc, which ended up being both physics sequences and calc and I took orgo 1 over the summer at my home institution because the teacher during the year was notoriously bad and I thought I might get a C in that too. If you can afford it, fill your summer with as much easy online classes as possible while shadowing/doing research/w.e. Any class you take over the summer or at a cc will hurt you on the mcat a little bit, but I studied my ass off for it summer of junior year and raised my initial diagnostic score from a 22 to a 30 on the actual thing so it didn’t set me back too much. I still worked my ass off and took biochem, gen chem, psych/soc at my home college, but I knew I couldn’t afford anything lower than A’s so I pulled all the stops to raise my gpa, and it worked not only for me but most of my friends too. I still got B’s and even C’s here and there but on average I was pulling a 3.8 a semester.
@whatupdawg: glad it worked out for you but I don’t think that you’re saying anything that’s outside what’s regularly posted by others here. People do have bumpy starts, they recover and get admitted to med schools because their apps have the usual suspects (eg competitive GPAs/MCAT, ECs, LORs, etc), and as in S’s case, a CA resident, they apply strategically, ie OOS. If anything what you’re saying is that course rigor/major plays a less important role in determining whether someone gets into med school which I think most people here agree on.
Search SDN. Look for posts by Goro, LizzyM and other adcoms and you’ll see that they regularly comment about poor advice given by college premed advisors.
Yup thats exactly what i’m saying! Haha and sorry I just assumed what I was saying was unpopular opinion because I know that was the common misconception amongst people I knew.
I will second/third @whatsupdawg’s advice. It’s spot on. However, some med schools may not accept or feel uncomfortable about accepting community college credits, but you can also try summer sessions at other easier state schools. Also, don’t take two pre-reqs (chem and bio) at the same time- take it one at a time or it’s even ok to take a break for a semester for taking pre-med classes.
I am little bit concerned about your bio grade though- I know it’s “honors”, but gen bio is traditionally considered as the easier of science pre-req courses esp compared to chem, physics, biochem, etc. C is not an acceptable grade- you may want to consider going down to regular level- med school won’t care unless they are really familiar with your college since a lot of colleges don’t even have separate honors vs regular science courses.
For more bio courses, you really have to focus on memorizing a lot of details AND understanding concepts simultaneously. It’s not enough just to get “big ideas”- do whatever it takes to memorize- for me i would write/rewrite my notes over and over again until i could memorize it. For concepts, you need to be explain/teach it someone then you will know whether you had truly understood concepts or not.
For more quantitative/chem/physics courses- problems, problems, problems- do it over and over again and you really need to understand concepts instead of purely memorizing things.
I am also concerned about your grades in non science courses- sociology and intro to rome, they sound like “fluff” courses to me (i could be wrong) and if you are getting Bs in those, it’s not a good sign.
I am not saying you can’t get into med school since you are only a freshman, but if you can’t find a way to learn how to get better in these basic courses and overcome obstacles, even if you get into med school by some divine intervention, you will not do well in med school.
But overall, be strategic, take ownership of your own learning process along with help (but help from others will never substitute your own learning process), and figure out a way no matter what/how many hours you have to sacrifice. Then you will be a great fit for medicine
" but NOTHING seems to help and I don’t know why."
If you follow WayOutWestMom’s advice, that should fix it. If by the end of next semester, you still aren’t making the grades and you still don’t know why, then it’s time to find another dream.
Be aware that doing it right will require that you work many more hours than your class-mates for all 4 years of college and then you get to medical school and are still working many more hours than most of your peers in other jobs. My S bemoans the loss of his 20s compared to friends in engineering (who worked just as hard in college but are now enjoying their weekends off now) and in business (who seem to have had a lot more free time both in college and afterwards). He’s applying for residency now and is expecting to continue to work very long hours for years to come. If you can’t see yourself doing that, if you can see yourself in some other job, you might want to explore your options. There are many good ones in the health field besides being a doctor.
I finished my second semester of freshman year, also 15 hours of course work, with a 3.8. My overall GPA is now a 3.3 but science GPA is still very low. I am currently taking 14 hours (5 courses - all sciences) in my first semester of sophomore year. Any suggestion on future classes, course credits, MCAT studies, etc.? Anything that will help me raise my GPA (especially the science one)?
What are the 5 science courses? If orgo is one of them, you need to trim the science courses down to 2, or 3 (if there is a lab course). Orgo is tricky/time consuming, and is considered the top weeding course for pre-med. You could start prep’ing MCAT next summer if you finish Biochem by Spring semester.
Currently: orgo, cell bio, chem lab, research, and statistics. Technically statistics is BIOstatistics but more math based. The only classes i’m truly worried about are orgo and cell bio. I’ve asked people about both chem lab and statistics and they’ve all said it’s extremely manageable! The research lab i’m in isn’t all that bad either, condsidering I am continuing it from last semester.