I’m a freshman at a top US school for undergrad and I want to study medicine. However school is much more challenging than I anticipated. I’m going to soldier on but if after my first year my grades are average and my friend at local cc is getting all A’s. If you equal out MCAT
I’m sorry. I hit the enter by mistake. Let me finish. If you equal out MCAT scores does he have a much better shot of getting into a good med school than me. How does an average student at a good school compare with a top student at average school? Sorry for splitting the question?
Your friend can’t get into med school from a cc, he/she will have to transfer for the last 2 years, so that might impact grades. But, in general, admissions is all about GPA and MCAT. If you can’t pull the grades, you probably are not going to pull the MCAT scores either, so start to consider other options. Sorry to be blunt, but honest.
If you’ve just started then there is a period of adjustment to the standards of the college. If you can successfully adjust in your first year or two then being able to achieve to higher standards will be of benefit to you for the rest of your life. Medical schools know that a 3.7 from Stanford, Cornell or Tufts is harder to achieve than a 3.7 from a less rigorous school.
I’m not sure how much that matters though. Doing well in school and getting into medical school are important, but learning from failures and growing are more important. You might be able to achieve all of them though.
You have plenty of time ahead of you to improve your grades. Give yourself time to adjust. Not everyone transitions smoothly between high school and college. But a rocky transition does not put med school out of reach (assuming, of course, you aren’t actually failing your classes).
When it comes to med school applications, the MCAT is the great equalizer. Standardized test scores allow adcomms to quickly compare performance across various schools and their different grading schemes. So unless your GPA is so low that it screens you out of consideration, it really doesn’t matter very much where you go to undergrad. You won’t get bonus points for attending a “top school,” nor will your friend get penalized for attending a CC to start their academic career. (Likewise, you won’t get penalized or boosted for having an “easy” major or a “tough” major, or for having double majors/multiple minors.)
Past that, med school admission is nuanced. Your stats only put you in or out of consideration for admission. It’s the “everything else” that gets you invited to interview.
If by average, you mean a 3.0 GPA–then an average student won’t do well do in med school admissions. That GPA is low enough to get automatically screened out early in the application process.
If by average you mean a 3.5 GPA–then it depends on other factors, like MCAT score, ECs, LORs etc. just like a student coming from a “average school” with a the same 3.5 GPA.
I personally know of a number of students who were top students at an “average school” who are now at top medical programs. In fact, I know average students from average schools who are now at top medical programs. Grades & MCAT scores, while important, are not the end-all be-all in med school admission. If you look at AAMC data, you’ll see that every year students with GPAs >3.9 and MCATs in the 99th percentile get rejected from med school. (I know one of those too.)
You have med schools with 1000s, perhaps 10k+ applicants trying to fill class sizes of 100, 200, 250… Grades and MCAT can get you to point where a real person will look at your app, but then they will look for qualities In ECs, LORs, PS that they believe makes for a good MD (eg altruism, compassion, etc). And even with all that, you may get an interview offer. Then be rude, arrogant to an admission officer, interviewer, or staff and you can say adios to your hope at an acceptance. So although very important, admissions are not generally all about grades and MCATs, definitely nuanced. In last app cycle over 50k applied, only 20k started, meaning over 60% failed to get in. I suspect many of the 60% had competitive grades and MCATs.
If it offers some hope S finished first year with GPAs below 3.2 and he’s an MD. Maybe consider slowing down with plan to apply at end of senior year as it would offer more time to boost GPA, participate in ECs, have a college life, etc. I also agree that all premeds should have a Plan B in mind. Good luck.