<p>I was wondering if this scenario was possible:</p>
<p>i'm in my spring semester of sophmore year
graduate undergrad in 3 years (it works out)
taking the MCAT august 15th 2008
(hopefully i score 35+ on the mcat, bc i have been taking prep courses since last summer and im good at standardized testing, got a 1590/1600 on old sat, 2360/2400 on new sat, three 800s in sat iis)</p>
<p>i have lots of research, abstracts published, and clinical experience
i also come from a family of physicians</p>
<p>BUT my gpa took some hits during freshman year: 3.4
it will prob go up or stay the same this semester and in my 3rd year</p>
<p>is it possible for me to fill out the amcas this summer (after my soph year) and send it, even though i'm taking the mcat in august?
also, is it possible for me to go to med school after only 3 years of undergrad? i have only taken lower division courses, no biochem or genetics yet (those will be taken in my 3rd year)</p>
<p>is this possible? can i do 3 years of undegrad and then get into a descent med school? (i go to berkeley right now and ive been hearing horror stories about how hard it is to get into med school from here)</p>
<p>If I were you, I'd take a year off and work on improving my app. It is very hard to do what you're doing since you will only have 4 semesters of coursework when you apply (I'm not even sure AMCAS will even verify your app with so few credits). Secondly, your application with a 3.4 GPA is not strong, especially for California. My friend with a 3.4/38 this year only received 1 secondary and 0 interviews from the UC's. It's perfectly okay to graduate in 3 years but take a year off and apply during that year. You will have more time for interviews and filling out secondaries and you will have 3 years' of coursework on your transcript.</p>
<p>^ agree .</p>
<p>Problems with your application:
1.) 3.4 GPA is noticeably below average, especially in California.
2.) August MCAT will delay your application by several months, crippling you at several schools
3.) Two years of coursework, even if it were very strong, is not a very established track record. A 3.8 after three years is probably "really" somewhere between a 3.6 and a 4.0. A 3.8 after two years is probably between a 3.4 and a 4.0. And a 3.4 after two years... well, that could really be anything.
4.) No upper-division coursework to establish academic strengths
5.) It's true that I've seen (anecdotally) a lot of difficulties coming out of UCB. NCG found a site and did some math. From that analysis, it seems that about 13 UCB kids each year end up at a top-ten research school. (Not that ending up at a top-ten is important, but it does help discuss the selectivity of the schools in question.) Compare to about 40 a year from Duke, a school which is (if memory serves) less than 1/5th the size.</p>