can't get into med school?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>*You don’t get a pass because your lower GPA is from an Ivy. Besides, some elites have a rep for grade inflation. </p>

<p>I’ve seen that “low” GPAs (3.6) can get into top-tier medical schools when candidates present sky-high MCATs and elite undergrads. *</p>

<p>I wasn’t calling a 3.6 “low”… I consider that about medium. I consider anything 3.7+ as high. And, I wasn’t addressing the issue if the person presents with a killer MCAT. </p>

<p>I was addressing a post when a person asked about lower GPAs. I would call a 3.2/3.3 “a low GPA”. </p>

<p>And, perhaps, nearly anyone with a 3.6 and a “sky high MCAT” can get into med school.</p>

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<p>Dead people get into medical school too, as cadavers :D</p>

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<p>I wasn’t just referring to medical school in general. I’ve seen 3.6’s get into HMS, Hopkins, Penn, WUSTL, etc. They need really high MCAT scores, that’s true – but usually a 3.6/40 won’t get you into those programs. A 3.6/40/Yale probably will get you into at least one.</p>

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<p>@ BDM: Just to clarify, I didn’t actually mean die as in to cease living in this process. I just meant that metaphorically to illustrate that with enough drive, you can do whatever you want too in case you were confused.</p>

<p>Btw, a 3.6 isn’t low, in case your confused about that too, which I guess you are because a 3.6/40 getting into HMS isn’t as impressive as a 3.3/40 getting in. Oh a 3.3 is lower than a 3.6 - just to let you know.</p>

<p>@ kristin: Thanks a lot. Your advice is always helpful as usual. I have taken steps to start working at my hospital, get into certain labs for the semester, and join more clubs. I still want to work for a medical non-profit but there aren’t any around here. I also have started to work on my project in public health that I want to do in India after a I graduate - I haven’t crystallized it yet but the gist of it is Increasing access to Urban Health Care Centers from Rural India. Ive been talking to doctors about it and they tell me that its very promising. Of course im going to focus more on my academics, and I certainly am not under the impression that the best case scenario from all of this will just magically unfold, but its a start in the right direction I suppose.</p>

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<p>KS thank you for the unifying summary of your culture. Succeed or perish. You can destroy everything in your path and fail due to circumstances beyond your control. Have enough wisdom to plan for contingency. Please spare us your projections on future contentment. It works against your plan.</p>

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<p>BDM, your knowledge of top schools has been called into question. Your years of advice giving are clearly flawed by your lack of direct experience with top schools. Oh wait, what med schools did you get into again? A ####load you say? Oh, nm then.</p>

<p>Kama:pick your battles wisely. Your chances of besting bdm in this topic are nil.</p>

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<p>Im not battling here nor did I say that the advice was wrong. My point is that 3.6/40 isn’t that low. There are people who apply to top schools with gpa’s lower than that who get in. </p>

<p>That is what is truly impressive, im just making BDM understand how numbers work, like how there are numbers such as 3.3, 3.2 etc which are lower than 3.6.</p>

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<p>KS</p>

<p>Since you are the one who has brought up cultural differences, let me point out an old adage from the “other” cultures represented here: “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”</p>

<p>You’re relatively new here but are taking shots at the collective advice/help of many people who are either already finished with Med school and in their residencies, already in Med school, have kids who are already in Med school, or in the case of BDM has finished Med school and is now in Law school…</p>

<p>It is getting harder for many here to offer help/advice or be sympathetic to your cause when you continue to be so argumentative about everything that anyone offers up.</p>

<p>You have a plan to try to correct the errors you’ve made along the way and that is both admirable and a sign that you have grown and matured. No one has said you are not intelligent enough for Med school but you must understand that every year many people with high GPAs, good MCATs and ECs fail to get admitted to any Med Schools…just like every year thousands of kids with 4.0s and 2400 SATs fail to be admitted to HYPS undergrad. As I previously said, Med school admissions can be a crap shoot even for highly qualified candidates…change the parameters slightly and the odds go up significantly.</p>

<p>Someone earlier (maybe Kristin?) gave you some very good advice about trying to be more well rounded…I too think that could be your hook.</p>

<p>I was at a meeting out of state recently and at a luncheon sat with a person who heads the admissions committee at a top 20 Med school. He told me that he and his committee were looking for kids who “stood out” from the pack and were real human beings who had empathy and passion, who could converse freely about multiple topics and had figured out that college is about more than studying 24/7 or building a resume. He very bluntly said they could fill a class with Asians who did nothing but study, had zero social skills and for entertainment as an undergrad had played video games and were so socially awkward that interviewing was a real challenge. He came right out and said that those admission decisions were the hardest for them because in their view they had produced too many Doctors who while brilliant were robots without patient skills. I found it a most interesting discussion to say the least.</p>

<p>Interestingly, I spoke to my son last night who is now in his third year clinical rotations. He called to share the evaluations he had gotten from his last rotation. While talking about things he told me about an Asian classmate who had recently complained to him that he had had no trouble getting an A in classes the first two years but had been unable to get anything above a 3 on any of his clinical evaluations (they are scored on a 1-5 basis with 5 being honors) while my son has averaged an A-/B+ his first two years but has never gotten below a 4 and mostly all 5s on all his evaluations thus far. He was and is VERY well rounded, has managed to achieve some balance between study and recreation and has remained very mentally healthy…something that not all Med students can do, especially those that are driven to never be anything but the best.</p>

<p>You’ve already stated that you know you have an uphill climb and I doubt that anyone here wishes you anything but the best but you need to stop arguing with everyone and being so defensive…no one is attacking you or deriding your past academic shortfall…it happens to many kids along the way and not all have the persistence or will that you have to try to carry on the quest. </p>

<p>However, as I and others have said, somewhere along the way you need to at the very least develop a contingency plan…I sincerely hope that you don’t need it but it will serve your continued mental health well to develop one.</p>

<p>Again, good luck and remember…we’re trying to help you…please, for your own sake, stop being so defensive and critical of those trying to offer you sound advice based on real world, personal experience…not theory or statistics.</p>

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<p>

This statement reminds me of a recent WSJ article about a Chinese mom (who is a Yale Law School professor), Amy Chua (she was actually from Phillipine, but is of Chinese ethnic) about how to bring up the best out of the children. Quite a controversal topic.</p>

<p>Because medicine is a job in the service inductry afterall, I suspect that whoever sppends all of their efforts/energy on academics may place their emphasis on a wrong thing. This is just my guess though. They could be in the acdemic medicine (Like Amy Chua’s sister, who is a professor at Stanfor Medical School.) But for the doctors who are on front line (most medical schools produce these), you only need to be good enough at academics; there is no need to be the “best”. Maybe other quality besides what can be evaluated in a traditional (written) test room (e.g., orgo or chem final) is more important. I think this is one of the reasons why medical school adcoms put so much emphasis on club activities/ECs. For most academic research in medicine, I think they are mostly done by those post-docs (likely most of them were originally from other country – e.g., U of Michigan medical school boasts they have over one thousand researchers who are of Chinese nationality, i.e, hold Chineses passport rather than US passports.) whose personality may be unfit for a doctor (e.g., have not been in this country long enough, don’t like football even though he is a male? :slight_smile: )</p>

<p>Some journalist (David Brooks? from New York Times) wrote that skills obtained by being very active in clubs or other group activities since childhood are much more important than the “best” achievements Amy Chua referred to in her article/book. (unless you want to a researcher like her sister.) Guys, go out and play football! Otherwise, you run the risk of not being able to relate to 50 percents of your patients when you are a doctor. :)</p>

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<p>Making Mike understand how numbers work?</p>

<p>You must have some big ■■■■■■■. And clearly you have no clue who you’re talking to.</p>

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<p>If you go to the following website you will see the partial results for UC Berkeley pre-med students who applied to U.S. allopathic medical schools in the 2009 cycle. UC Berkeley is not an Ivy but it is the highest ranked and most prestigious Public University in the country. </p>

<p>You will notice that a fair number of students graduating from Berkeley with GPAs of less than 3.4 applied to medical schools, some with respectable MCAT scores(5 applicants with MCAT scores in the 30-34 range). You will also see that not a single pre-med graduate from Berkeley with a GPA of less than 3.4 gained admission to even one medical school of any tier. </p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2009seniors.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2009seniors.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>*You will also see that not a single pre-med graduate from Berkeley with a GPA of less than 3.4 gained admission to even one medical school of any tier. </p>

<p>*</p>

<p>Good point…and wouldn’t those stats include male URMs which seem to be given a little leeway? </p>

<p>I like the 3.90+ GPA and 30-34 MCAT having a 100% admit rate. </p>

<p>I’m guessing that the one student with the 35+ MCAT and 3.90+ GPA that didn’t get accepted to any, only applied to elites, didn’t apply to enough schools, didn’t have ECs, had crappy LORs, or was a total social moron during the interview. Or, maybe didn’t report info.</p>

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<p>Not only are the results, partial, they are self-reported and thus, by definition incomplete. (Career Services has no way – or need – to track pre-professional students.) And, according to what is taught in AP Stats, self-reported numbers are not data, but just anecdotes.</p>

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<p>It is not self-reported data, the data went directly from AMCAS to UC Berkeley after the students agreed to allow AMCAS to provide their data to UC Berkeley. The data is partial in that there is no way of knowing if all UC Berkeley pre-med graduates agreed to have their official data released to UC Berkeley by AMCAS. The information on that chart may not be complete but what is there is certainly not anecdotal, it represents AMCAS confirmed outcomes for those that agreed to allow AMCAS to release their data to UC Berkeley.</p>

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<p>You are being much too subtle Kristen. I’d say he has some massive boulders.</p>

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<p>@ eadad: Your advice is wise and sound, and I am sorry if I had offended you. I will certainly take all that you have said into consideration.</p>

<p>@ Lemaitre1: That doesn’t mean anything. All that shows is that </p>

<p>A) They must not have had unique enough ECs, high enough MCATs, good enough personal statements etc. There are many things that could have been deficient in addition to the GPA. Suffice to say that while the low GPA does hurt a lot, there could have also been other factors precluding them from admission.</p>

<p>B) Go to AAMCAS and find me the statistics that shows that not even a single APPLICANT (not just Berkely applicants) with a sub 3.4 GPA didn’t get in, then Ill be willing to admit defeat.</p>

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<p>110 anecdotes can be real and accurate (numbers), but unless you have a big chunk of the universe, or a statistically valid sample, I would not draw too many conclusions from self-released numbers. For example, Emory reports 3+ times the number of applicant-outcomes to med school with a class size that is one quarter the size of Cal. Unless you believe that Emory is a premed factory, a majority of Cal students refused to release their outcomes.</p>

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<p>There were 772 applicants to medical school from UCB who identified themselves as being from a particular race. (I think anybody who omitted that data is not included in that total.)</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>492 of them (63.7%) reported being Asian. Why they self-identified is beyond me.</p>

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<p>Wow, that 1/7 with 25-29 must be DD…I don’t know whether she allowed AMCAS to self-report, but if so that’s her. I honestly don’t recall her GPA, 3.59 or 3.69 ish, not sure which was science & total & not sure of the total…guess that number did not matter all that much to us;)</p>

<p>I am sure glad we ignored the career center, seeing that graph is scarier than SDN for a 29 MCAT! :eek:</p>

<p>Why was DD successful with an average GPA & MCAT? Because she is a real person with real interests and is social. She is the self-appointed social chair of her class, they are all extremely studious and she is blessed that she already learned how to study effectively due to her LD. Kids who are brilliant and never had to work hard are not sure when to stop studying…sometimes a bit obsessive about it, afraid to stop too soon as they have not been challenged like this before.</p>

<p>DD is acing her exams and labs and clinicals; the numbers don’t lie, but they are not all that accurate a predictor. Her roomie had 25% higher MCAT, DD has consistently scored higher in real life med school.</p>

<p>Kama, okay you started out poorly, okay you’re Indian, so what, break the mold, be the interesting non-study obsessive Indian applicant, be interesting, be involved, be fun, be able to relate to patients.</p>

<p>DD is attending a “top ranked” (hey, it’s USNWR, who knows how valid the rankings are, but she is there and she is successful) In her junior year her GPA was just under 3.5, she took hard core bio upper division classes and aced them, she got great LORs(at a huge school like Cal she found profs with whom she could connect), she made herself stand out from the crowd.</p>

<p>Find your identity, other than an Indian kid with a GPA he regrets, find the positives and show them your stuff. But also, take from the hints you get here, you have managed to annoy a good many old timer posters, people who have done what you hope to do, people who know a great deal more about the process and reality than you do. Kill the attitude which comes across as snotty, work on that so your interviewers don’t notice it and cut you for that reason. Just a thought!</p>

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<p>@ somemom: Thank you for the advice, it is certainly sound. </p>

<p>All animosity aside, I am looking for any summer internships that I could be eligible for with a 2.99 gpa (the GPA I would have at the end of this semester if I get all A’s). Where could I apply?</p>