Could you get into med school even though you attended a community college?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

Hey,

Just wanted to know if it’s possible for me to get into med school even though I attended a community college for a couple semesters and then transferred to a 4 year university. I’m in my junior year now and have been able to maintain a 4.0 GPA in both the CC and the 4 yr university. Thoughts? And what possible med schools would accept me if I maintained this GPA and got a good MCAT score?

thx

2
  1. You may want to post your question in the pre-med forum section ( http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/ ), but add some more detail as to what your major is and at which school you took each of the usual the pre-med science courses (see discussion below).
  2. Obviously, other factors like MCAT score, pre-med extracurriculars, etc. are relevant.

The problem you may face is that medical schools are elitist and look down on community colleges, particularly taking pre-med science courses at community colleges. However, it is often impractical to save all of the pre-med science courses for after transfer to a four year school, since that would delay graduation, presumably defeating the purpose of starting at a community college (saving money).

So students who start at community colleges need to take sufficient science course work at the four year school after transfer, but need to choose tactically which courses to take before transfer and after transfer. Courses that must in practice be taken after transfer are any upper level courses, such as biochemistry and other recommended upper level biology courses, and probably statistics suitable for science majors (community colleges usually offer statistics for business majors or non-science majors needing general education requirements).

If you are a biology or chemistry major, your upper division major course work will probably be seen as “validation” of you being able to handle medicine-relevant science course work. For other majors, taking additional upper level biology or chemistry courses is probably necessary to “validate” your ability in those subjects, in the eyes of medical schools.

For pre-meds starting in community college, it may be better to save specific lower level courses for after transfer: organic chemistry (unless major is biology or chemistry, which need it taken early) and general biology (unless major is biology which needs it taken early).

3

Lots and lots of physicians started with CC. There is nothing wrong starting with CC, if you can get mostly As in all 4 years and with a killer Mcat.