College Counselor Sick of Reading about Golden Kids Getting into Harvard

[Data10]

“After “graduating with a 3.0 from Yale”, the one who is inspired to attend the USA SOM, will have to forget about his/her dreams and try to focus on some other career. He will have no chance at any American Med. School. Now, do not know anything about Law school and other Grad. schools. To have any reasonable expectations for acceptance to ANYr American Med. School, including the lowest ranked, one must have college GPA 3.6+ with decent MCAT score …”

These tables use the old MCAT scores, but one can see that one is not doomed to a life of failure with a GPA of 3.0

If you look at school specific stats, rather than overall stats for all colleges; a good portion of <3.0 undergrad GPA applicants from HYPSM… type colleges do attend medical school. For example, WUSTL publishes acceptances rates by GPA and MCAT score. First time applicants with a 2.8-2.99 GPA have a 33% acceptance rate. Re-applicants have a 46% acceptance rate. The original post mentioned needing a 3.6. First time applicants from WUSTL with a 3.4-3.59 have 78% acceptance rate. However, those who are accepted with a sub 3.0 GPA undergrad usually are not a typical applicants and instead often fall in one or more of the groups below:

1. Did a post-bacc or other advanced degree after undergrad, where they achieved a near 4.0 GPA
2. Are part of underrepresented group, including both URMs and those with special life experiences
3. Achieved an exceptional MCAT score

As an example, the MD Applicants member at https://www.mdapplicants.com/profile/605/user-605?id=605&refname=Search%20Results&refuri=search,search_undergraduate:Stanford%20University,psr:0,orderby:OverallGPA,order:asc had a 2.8 science GPA at Stanford and 2.9 overall GPA. After graduating he did a post-bacc where he had a 3.9 GPA, did well on the MCAT (although much below average for Stanford students), and had great life experience with 7+ years as a U.S. Army Medical Service Corps Officer. He received 4 acceptances before he started withdrawing applications.

Law and other grad schools are a different story. All med schools in the US are selective, such that there are many kids who get shut out every year. However, there are law schools and grad schools in nearly every field that are not especially selective. For example, I live near Thomas Jefferson Law School and know many people who have attended. They have an 84% acceptance rate and median undergrad GPA of 2.7. They offer guaranteed scholarships for applicants with a 2.0 GPA and 140 LSAT. It is obviously not difficult to get accepted with a sub 3.0 GPA. Of course, there are other law schools, that are far more selective and have different expectations among applicants.