I screwed up my first semester of premed at UC Berkeley?

[Diivio]

<p>Professor Satish Rao I heard one said in a CS170 class about Blum’s 2 Sigma problem,</p>

<p>Basically if you take the kids who scored average on an exam, give them one on tone attentions and apply mastery learning (where you stay on a concept until the student has mastered it) and then give another exam with the the same concepts thought, that student that scored average before ended up scoring two standard deviations upwards from the mean.</p>

<p>So basically good grades correlate more strongly with clever studying and is not just dependent on intelligence.</p>

<p>But having a gf in your case obviously may be too distracting…</p>

[2prepMom]

<p>Think hard about why you want to be a physician. Is this really your passion? Only 20% of students who plan to be pre-med actually apply to med school. </p>

<p>To overcome this semester you will certainly have to make courses a much higher priority, and also plan for a year or two of post-graduate research before applying to med school. </p>

<p>However, the average age of admitted med students is now 25, since maturity is valued.</p>

<p>Consider other fields where you might also be a “Dr”, like dentistry, optometry, podiatry, physical therapy and audiology. Of course you still need pretty much straight As for those too.</p>

[dragoon998]

<p>@wampatoga</p>

<p>what is this “girlfriend” you talk of? we engineering majors only have each other…
:’(</p>

[Lucyan]

<p>^ Since when was pre-med the same as engineering?</p>

<p>Anyways, the OP should dump his girlfriend and focus on what’s really important: GPA. Afterall, you only have one chance to apply to Med school. On the other hand, your girlfriend is disposable, as there are many, many chances for you to find another one.</p>

<p>If you are reluctant to give up your girlfriend because you long for a reliable source of sex, then no worries. There are plenty of Asian Massage Parlors around Berkeley/Peninsula area. Have the right money, and they’ll teach you the art of spinjutsu all night long.</p>

[somemom]

<p>Yes, it is possible to get into med school, even with a weak start. But you have made it difficult on yourself. Many schools will screen that huge pile of applications based on the numbers and no, it is not likely that you will get a 4.0 from now on, but you can aim to have 3.5+.</p>

<p>Spread your pre-med classes out and take GE classes you enjoy, do they still have that program where they have great profs doing classes which meet general ed requirements, like Astro, etc. Take some fun gen ed whilst taking the tougher science classes. </p>

<p>Have you declared a major? If not, take your time, MCB is intense, IB could be just as good. Or classics, or English, or anything else which you love, but which allows you to take the required classes.</p>

<p>I would warn you that Cal pre-med advising is spotty, you can get good people and less well trained people, you can get conflicting advice, it can be quite frustrating. Use CC pre-med board as well as SDN (carefully, they tend to be over the top there)</p>

<p>Some research sounds great, keep volunteering, keep shadowing. Do not stress Stanford, etc, focus on ANY med school. If your marks or scores are lower than you hope for, you may need to consider DO school, if being a physician it truly your dream.</p>

<p>CA med schools are rough at admissions, too many CA applicants, so you would need to apply broadly, and early, submit TX in May and the rest in June.</p>

<p>Another important part of your application is letters of recommendation. You need to find and connect with professors there and get to know them and impress them such that they can write you a “STRONG” letter of recommendation.</p>

<p>I highly suggest you plan a glide year. Take the MCAT summer of junior year, apply to med school summer after grad, get some sort of medical experience job (research is good too) and use that senior year to include all those senior class As in your GPA and use those smaller senior and even grad classes to get to know professors well. If you try to apply after junior year, that puts even more pressure on your 2nd and 3rd year marks to bring up your low beginning GPA.</p>

<p>Good luck
My kid is in med school now and CC helped much more than Cal advisers.</p>

[jontaejones]

<p>To be perfectly honest, you could probably average a 3.5 from here on out and still get into a pretty good medical school if you did well on your MCATs.</p>

<p>I went to Berkeley and a number of friends got into medical school with GPAs around there … 3.4, 3.5 or so.</p>

<p>The bigger issue at stake is if you have the work ethic to get the 3.5, let alone the 4.0.</p>

<p>Only time will tell that. </p>

<p>I also truly believe that if being a doctor is your goal, you should sacrifice those 4 years of college and just study. Live in the library and minimally socialize. It’s the only way to GUARANTEE you’ll get into a good medical school.</p>

[KevRus]

<p>Other than your grades, did you enjoy your first semester here? It sounds like you probably did - try to focus on that if you’re feeling down. Because at the end of the day, I really do believe that enjoying your college experience is more important than any grade you’ll ever receive. I know that probably goes against the beliefs of most hyper-academic CC posters. :)</p>

<p>Just put more time into your studies now that you have your bearings. You’ll be fine.</p>