Hello!
I am a rising sophomore in the Commonwealth Honors College at UMass Amherst. I currently have a very low GPA (2.5) and would like to know if UMass Amherst allows people to repeat a year of schooling. I am not sure if they allow students to do this; however, I picked the wrong classes the first and second semesters and my GPA fell drastically. Not to mention, I am currently on the Pre-Med track and am a Biology major, therefore, I need to keep my GPA above a 3.5 for any chance of admission to a medical school. Can anyone help me with this?
You do not “repeat” a year of college. Your record is your record and freshmen grades will not disappear. Even if you repeat a course medical schools will see both grades. You need to work hard the next three years.
A 2.5 is a low GPA, and for pre-med, it is very low. I’m not sure how many credits you have completed nor how many more credits you need to complete for your program, but if you took 30 credits your first year and have 90 credits remaining (this is based on the assumption that you have taken and will be taking 15 credits per semester on a 4 year plan), you would need a 3.8333+ gpa for your remaining semesters to get an overall gpa of 3.5+, meaning you need a near-straight A record for now on.
I think you should consider other options besides going to medical school. Even if you think you can improve your gpa to 3.5+, it still wouldn’t hurt to have a backup plan. Is there’s anything you can do with your biology major besides go to medical school? Is biology really the right major for you? These are some questions to explore, and I think it would be a good idea to discuss with an advisor your options.
There are threads here about how to improve your scores for medical school. Some people on this forum are premed experts or seem to be at least. You may want to try putting up a new post that specifies in the header something about your situation. Something like “Premed: 2.5 average and want to recover. Help?” And the premed advice people should come out of the woodwork.
What I THINK they may advise is basically to improve grades as much as possible and then suggest that you do a post-bac program specializing in grade recovery. They exist, apparently. But also do what @CompEngGirl123 suggests and look at other areas of the health profession that may interest you. Keeping your options open is always a good idea. Nursing, for example, is a wide and varied field and some areas of nursing (to this lay-persons eyes) are almost as highly trained as physicians and with about as much responsibility.
This is the beginning of a journey that will prove as interesting as it is challenging, I’m sure. Best of luck to you.
First of all, re-post your question in “Pre-med Topics” so pre-med people can see your post.
Second, what science classes you took in your freshman year and what’re the grades? 3.5 GPA is not high enough these days for med school admission, it is more like 3.7+… unless you belong to URM (under-represented minority, like native American Indian) then 3.5 might be ok.