Can ANYONE Get Into a Med School w/ 3.3- GPA?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>ECs matter because</p>

<p>1) educating a physician is extremely expensive in terms of both time and resources. Med school want to minimze the number of people who get into med school and decide-- Oops! I hate this…</p>

<p>2) physicians need excellent interpersonal and communication skills. ECs can help demonstrate these qualities</p>

<p>3) physician have to be able to relate to their patients as human beings, not just bodies on a table. By having ECs, an applicant can demonstrate they have a range of interests beyond academics and thus may be be better able to empathize with/relate to their patients</p>

<p>4) the career of a physician is a life of service to others. Med school like to see applicants demonstrate their awareness of community needs and their willingness to serve others</p>

<p>5) like it or not physicians are often community leaders, med school like to see applicant demonstrate they have the capacity for thoughtful leadership before they begin med school.</p>

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<p>Med schools are looking for leaders and innovators in the field of medicine. Whether that is as a researcher, physician, public health or inventor of new procedures and equipment it all requires additional growth as a person, scholar and participant in the health care field.</p>

<p>They look to ECs to see if you have or have the potential to see beyond your classwork and apply working knowledge to real problems not just problem sets.</p>

<p>The MD/Phd program is for those wanting to focus on research.</p>

<p>My son, currently an MS2 had many ECs and outside interests. We teased him that he went to class in his “off” hours! As a D1 athlete, community tutor, researcher, dept. fellow, TA he had plenty to keep him busy. And come app season he had plenty of choices for med school.</p>

<p>He graduated with 280 semester units from 2 schools with 3 different degrees, 2 minors and took the hardest classes offered by both schools, one being an ivy (his thesis advisor was just awarded the nobel prize in econ-one of his majors). He did not in any way take classes that would “up” his GPA. He wanted to get the very most out of his undergrad, knowing med school would offer different opportunities. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.</p>

<p>Worked for him.</p>

<p>Kat</p>

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<p>WayOutWestMom</p>

<p>I see what you’re saying. But let’s take this scenario of the brain surgeon and see if that logic would apply:</p>

<p>Suppose we have Mr. Future Brain Surgeon A whose stats are:</p>

<p>Harvard, BA (double major in biology and chemistry)
3.9 GPA
40 MCAT
—really no extracurriculars other than volunteering two summers at a local hospital…let’s say he’s pretty much a bookworm, but VERY VERY good at it. </p>

<p>and then suppose we also have Mr. Future Brain Surgeon B:</p>

<p>Brooklyn College, BA (major in biology)
3.8 GPA
34 MCAT
—but has TONS of extracurriculars: plays violin, tutors poor kids in the inner-city in math and science every other weekend, writes for undergraduate newspaper, on the school crew team, and as even worked an internship at the local senator’s office. </p>

<p>…Mr. FBS B is a great guy…great personality and gets along well with others. But he’s genuinely not as smart as Mr. FBS A (let’s suppose). Mr. FBS A, however, is not as good with people socially and doesn’t do a whole lot outside of school. Just volunteers once in a while, but in an area WITHIN his areas of expertise and interest (the hospital). But Mr. FBS A simply has that type of personality that is introverted…and enjoys time alone or with family and friends outside of work. He just doesn’t do as much stuff that’s as diverse and/or as social as Mr. FBS B. </p>

<p>Who would you accept into your medical school if you ONLY had one slot?</p>

<p>I guess the logic I have a hard time arguing against is the line of thought I used in the Michael Jordan analogy. …Do you want Michael Jordan on your team even if he doesn’t do much extracurricular work off the court or do you want Allan Houston…great social guy…maybe involved in tons of charity…but isn’t as good as MJ?</p>

<p>OR, are you saying this is a false analogy, b/c good doctors are ones who have social skills and not just book smarts? </p>

<p>…OR perhaps you’re saying that ECs only matter as tie-breakers? Like if two applicants are academically equal (relatively)? …Or can a person with more and/or better ECs actually BEAT a person with less/weaker ECs even if that person with weaker/less ECs has better academic credentials? </p>

<p>Just wanting to clarify and learn more about the admissions though process. :slight_smile: Thanks!</p>

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<p>brownug,</p>

<p>A better analogy for the “why should ECs matter question” would be asking yourself how successful a basketball player would MJ or Kobe have been if the ONLY thing they did was practice free throws? As the previous posters have said, knowing everything in a book is not nearly enough to be a successful physician. GPA and MCAT are critical but they are not sufficient. Have you ever watched the pre-draft analysts for any major sport? Character concerns and “intangibles” are always discussed with lots of weight (coughtimtebowcough, coughjeremylincough, coughdezbryantcough). Even in sports, what you do outside the lines has an impact on your value.</p>

<p>I have also noticed that every patient who has spoken to my class or whom I have examined said that they understand doctors aren’t perfect and don’t know everything and that above all else they want to be treated with respect. In other words, they prefer the slightly less skilled surgeon who plays lots of tennis.</p>

<p>All that being said, once you’re IN medical school, the weight given to ECs when applying to residency drops precipitously.</p>

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<p>Check out my post above this one I Wanna Be Brown…</p>

<p>I see what you’re saying. But the MJ analogy you used may not be a good one (the way you wrote it)…</p>

<p>So, let’s say that being friendly and caring is a PART of being a good doctor. But would you agree that the CORE and most important part would still be the knowledge part and the application part? </p>

<p>I guess maybe the brain surgeon scenario might help exemplify this point:</p>

<p>Would you want a brain surgeon who knew 100% of the stuff he needed to know to do his job and had a 100% success rate and was a leading expert in his field…someone he was book smart and had the hands-on surgeon skills (application) to make him a great surgeon. </p>

<p>Or would you want the person operating on your brain to maybe know a bit less than the former person and have had a few unsuccessful operations under his belt and wasn’t as precise and careful and good at what he did, but was a great affable guy outside of work and was great at chatting with others and played tennis every weekend, etc.? </p>

<p>(Feel free to correct my analogy above if you feel it’s off.) </p>

<p>Again just playing a little devil’s advocate. But also I’m slightly warming up to this position too. :)</p>

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<p>What we want to see doesn’t matter a whit. What matters is what med schools want to see. </p>

<p>They don’t want kids without social skills. They don’t want “me- first, last, and only” kids. They don’t want “brain in a jar” kids. They don’t want Dexter, no matter how smart he is. :wink: </p>

<p>Med school does not require genius. Practicing medicine does not require genius. </p>

<p>Practicing medicine does require social skills.</p>

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<p>OP,
Then follow in Michael Jordan’s footsteps and become the greatest basketball player! I am confused why are you asking about medicine, while connecting medicine to basketball player. Are we in Logic free zone ???</p>

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<p>lol. </p>

<p>The MJ analogy was just to ask why extracurriculars matter if the person is a true genius and truly the best at what they do. Like why would an NBA team owner care if Michael Jordan is a well-rounded person or not if what counts is that he does his job well in basketball, which is what he’s being hired for. </p>

<p>I see what you’re saying…that social skills matter in medicine, because you’re dealing with people as patients. </p>

<p>I guess it’s different from professors, …or at least some professors…often at top research universities, what counts in how well-received a professor’s publications are. It’s his research that counts towards tenure and teaching (the part where he interacts the most with others) isn’t really even that important (if at all) in hiring and tenure. </p>

<p>That’s why you sometimes get these professors who are geniuses, but don’t care about and/or don’t teach their undergrads well. So in that profession it’s like pure book smarts that seem to count the most for research uni professors. There’s just not a very high incentive - so many ppl say - to teach well since job security is not based on that…or very little of it is. </p>

<p>Whereas I can see how a medical doctor would need to be nice to retain patients, lol. …I’ve actually left a doctor before precisely because he was rude!!! </p>

<p>But still…I wonder…if I was having brain surgery…who would I want as my brain surgeon (from the example above)?</p>

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<p>your example is fundamentally flawed because you misunderstand (or at least misrepresent) the purpose of ECs in the admissions process. ECs are not simply hobbies, they allow one to demonstrate that they have the qualities desirable in a future physician.</p>

<p>A 4.0 and a 45 tell you very little about an applicant. Sure, they are probably very smart, but if that’s literally all there is to their application (the question you are really getting at), you have no idea what drives them, whether they work well with others, whether they handle stress well, whether they are able to think about others’ needs, whether they can communicate effectively, and whether they actually care at all about medicine. Accepting such a student into medicine would be to big of a risk to be worth taking. </p>

<p>How do I know he won’t freak out if something unexpected goes wrong? How will I even know that I need surgery if he can’t communicate the diagnosis to me? How do I know that he will effectively communicate with the members of his team? How do I know he’s committed to keeping up the developments in his field? How do I know that if he and I disagree on the best course of action, he will respect my autonomy? Hell, how do I even know that his 100% success rate isn’t that he cherry picks cases because he cares more about his 100% success rate than actually helping people?</p>

<p>The fact is the person you think you are describing is not the person you set out to describe. The person who literally does nothing outside of the classroom has no chance of being admitted to medical school and most likely has no chance of succeeding even if they did.</p>

<p>With regard to the professor example, you’re skipping the part where they have to get tenure first. Student and peer evaluations of a professor’s are often used in tenure decisions, if you literally have nothing going for you but your knowledge, you won’t even get nominated.</p>

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<p>So what matters most then for applications to medical school? Recommendations? USMLE Score? GPA?</p>

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<p>AAMC conducted a survey of its member med schools about the factors they weighed most heavily in making both decisions for interview invitations and acceptance offers.</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/261106/data/aibvol11_no6.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/261106/data/aibvol11_no6.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For II, they ranked the factors this way:
cGPA
sGPA
MCAT
LORs
medical community service
personal statements
medical/clinical experience
non-medical community service
leadership
completion of pre-reqs
experience working with underserved populations</p>

<p>For admission decisions, they ranked the factors this way:
interview recommendations
letters of recommendations
sGPA
medical community service
cGPA
MCAT
personal statement
medical/clinical experience
non-medical community service
leadership
completion of pre-reqs
experience working with underserved populations</p>

<p>This seems to support the conventional wisdom: Your GPA and MCAT get your foot in the door, but it’s your interview that gets you accepted.</p>

<p>P.S. USMLE = US Medical Licensing Exam. An applicant wouldn’t have taken the USMLE. Med students take the first USMLE at the end of their second year of med school</p>

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<p>What are sGPA and cGPA…why not just GPA? lol THANKS, btw! You guys have been very helpful! :)</p>

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<p>Science (math/bio/chem/physics) and Cumulative (all courses).</p>

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<p>Does the sGPA also include math and other science courses that are not, gen bio, gen chem, gen physics or orgo?</p>

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<p>"But still…I wonder…if I was having brain surgery…who would I want as my brain surgeon (from the example above)? "
-Definitely NOT MJ!!!</p>

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<p>columbia, yes, it is essentially any course from those 4 categories, that is why whenever someone on here says they got a B- or a C and asks if they should retake an intro course we always say just take a more advanced on to “dilute it”</p>

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<p>What did you mean take another advanced course to dilute it?</p>

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<p>He means if you take additional science coursework then the impact of one class grade on the sGPA is lower because there are more classes included in the calculation.</p>

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<p>The best approach is to get straight As. Will work even with good number of easy classes (possibly in minors/other majors). Do not have to calculate too much, very straight forward.</p>

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<p>Oh. I got a b- in gen bio lab 1 my first semester but I took gen bio lab 2 and got an A. I don’t even go to that school anymore. Is it okay?</p>