Engineer UG to Medical School

Pre-Med & Medical School Careers in Medicine
1

Some background information:

I am currently about to start my 3rd year of engineering school. My specific major is Civil Engineering. My current CGPA is 3.35 and my “in-major” GPA is a 3.875; this is all the classes that pertained to my major. Some high school information; I graduated a year early (16 y/o) with a 4.00 CGPA (weighted). I am currently 20 y/o and have a new passion for the field of medicine. I just ordered my MCAT study guide and seem to be doing well in all the topics.

I want to apply to Harvard Med School and the rest of the Ivy Leagues (plus some private/public schools as well; but I want to finish my Masters in Engineering first.

What can I do to better my chances of getting in? Yes I know my GPA is below average of what they want. I see my Masters will fix most of that. A lot of people have this ambition to join an Ivy League, and I guess I am another one of the endless many who wish, but I will work myself to death if I have to.

Wishful thinking? Yes.

2
  1. Med schools will not care that you graduated early from high school or college.
  2. Med school applications don’t even ask about your high school record.
  3. Master’s degrees do not compensate for a below par undergraduate GPA.
  4. Med schools will dismiss an engineering master’s as irrelevant.
  5. Even a perfect MCAT score will not compensate for a below par undergrad GPA.
  6. Unless you have the necessary ECs for med school, don’t bother applying because your application will get round filed.

Med school ECS: leadership positions, physician shadowing, clinical volunteering, public health or bench research, community service.

3

  1. I know they do not care. I wrote that as background information just in-case anyone cared to know about high school.

  2. Again, I know.

  3. SMP: (special masters program) these do. I know many highly esteemed doctors who did this.

  4. Why on earth would they dismiss it? It covers almost everything a pre-med major covers, except 2 bio and 2 organic chem courses that I am taking this semester (1 of each). I doubt they would dismiss it.

  5. I could care less, cause either way I will pass that exam with high marks. I will also be retaking the needed courses to get 3.9.

  6. Trust me I have more EC’s than most people applying, you can be sure of that.

Thank you for taking the time to go over my post.

4

You said you were going to get a MS in engineering. (CivE, I assume?) You did not say you were planning on entering a SMP–which is entirely different situation.

Graduate and undergrad GPAs are calculated and reported separately on your AMCAS application. Many med schools use undergrad cGPA to auto-screen out applicants. This is true even if the applicant has a master’s or PhD.

Because there is widespread grade inflation at the graduate level, med schools devalue graduate GPAs. This is true even for SMPs.

Engineering courses are not included in sGPA calculations. Only courses with departmental designators for bio, chem, physics and math.

AMCAS does not allow a re-taken course grade to replace an original course grade. All grades–both the original and retake–will be included in GPA calculations. (This means it’s going to take an awfully, awfully lot of As to raise a 3.35 GPA to a 3.9 GPA. Assuming you have approx 90 credits currently, you’d need over 400 additional credits to improve your GPA to 3.9.)

5

Well, there’s some compensation. For example if (assuming OP is white) OP scores in the med student average range (30-32 or 85th-90th percentile), his GPA puts his acceptance rate into a medical school (forget about Harvard) at 34.7%. If he can get into the 39+ range (top 1% of MCAT test takers, a stronger pool that SAT takers), then he’ll have a 54.1% chance. https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/mcat-gpa-grid-by-selected-race-ethnicity.html