My daughter graduated from college last summer. She finished the pre-med course in her T20 private university and got 513 on MCAT. But her GPA is 3.48. In the first year, it was 2.7 and she got C in organic chemistry, so it was kind of an upward trend. She applied to 27 medical schools last summer and got just one interview which was 2 months ago.
So, I asked her plan for the new year, and she said she’s thinking of applying again. But she does not want to retake MCAT nor plans to apply to osteopathic schools. After graduation, she has worked in the lab for free and taught high school students as a part-time job. Since she is living in an expensive city with her friend, we have supported her financially.
I suggested that she find a proper job since her getting into medical school without a drastic change in her resume will be quite difficult, but, then she said she needs to go to graduate school to get a proper job since she didn’t prepare for it during the four years of college.
We have decided to stop sending her money in two months, but I am worried about her well-being and wonder if I am right when I consider her re-application as pointless.
Your daughter can find a job. Stop supporting her. She has a bachelors degree and it’s her choice to work part time.
I’m not sure what applying again will do unless she is changing the medical schools to which she is applying…AND has done some significant medically related work and volunteer work. Has she?
If she wants to attend grad school…fine. She can fund that on her own.
This is tough.
Most premed students do not get into any medical school. It is relatively common for students to not get in anywhere the first time around. Some do get accepted the second or third time around. I do not think that a 3.48 or a C in organic chemistry will help, but I do not think that these are show stoppers either.
How much experience does she have in a medical environment? If she can improve in this area it might make a difference.
Her lab experience might help her get a paying job at this point. One daughter was a biology major (but NOT premed – her classes did overlap a lot with premed classes). While still an undergraduate student (as a sophomore) she discovered that she really likes lab work. The result was that she had a lot of lab experience as a student. Upon graduating she discovered that biotech is booming in some parts of the US right now (biotech in Massachusetts for example is doing well), and that there were quite a few relatively well paying lab jobs in biotech. She is supporting herself now with a lab job, and is putting some money in the bank as well.
Specifically what types of lab experience your daughter has might have some impact on how easy or hard it is to find a job.
I do think that in order for it to make sense to re-apply to medical schools, something has to be better this time around. The amount of experience that a person has in a medical environment is one thing that can be improved after graduating with a B.Sc.
Exactly. Many students take a year or two after undergrad to beef up their ECs for medical school applications. Important to have some kind of patient related work (scribe, EMS, MA, something ). And volunteer work with disadvantaged folks too. This is important. This year would have been a good time to get some experience to add to her applications. Is she shadowing a doctor this year also?
I also think she is being very close minded NOT to at least consider some of the excellent DO schools. These are not easy to get into either.
I will add…there is nothing wrong with her applying again. There are students who get accepted on the second or third application cycle.
I think she has some volunteer experience and did shadowing till last year. Thank you very much for the advice. I will keep that in mind.
She did shadowing at the doctor’s office which was offered by the school for the pre-med student and did some volunteer work. ( I am not sure whether it was related to medicine, though.)
Thank you very much for sharing your experience.
All of the advice you got above is sound.
If she reapplies this year, she will be applying with basically the same resume she had last year plus some shadowing and a few more hours of volunteer work. That won’t cut it.
She needs to show some substantial improvement over her previous app if she wants med schools to take her application seriously. Every secondary application from med schools will ask if she has applied to med school previously and what she has done to improve her application.
And, to be honest, she has not improved her application where she most needs to show improvement–that is in her GPA. (BTW, do you know what her sGPA is? Or if her science classes showed a strong upward trend?) 15-18 credits of upper level bio classes with A grades will do wonders for her application competitiveness.
if she applies for second round–remind her beggars can’t be choosers and she needs to expand her med school application list to include DO programs. Once she finishes her medical education, no one–and I do mean no one–in medicine cares one bit what initials are after her name. MDs and DOs work side-by-side every day in the same clinic or hospital department.
As for finding a job with bio degree–she doesn’t need to go to grad school unless she wants to. There are entry level jobs where she can be self-supporting with just a BA/BS degree. Research lab tech, teaching science in private schools (which don’t require a state teacher’s certification), entry level public health, medical scribing, AmeriCorp, Teach for America, pharmaceutical or medical equipment sales, QC tech for food or pharmacy companies, environmental science tech, case managers, health educators, health communications specialist, medical service manager, blood bank tech, community healthcare worker, forensic lab analyst, science writer, grant writer, forest service ranger, physical therapy assistant, etc.
She might find these websites useful:
Explore Health Careers
15 Highest Paying Biology Jobs
Although she’s graduated from college, she should still have access to the career placement office at her college. Has she reached to them to get help spiffing up her resume or find job openings?
How self directed is she? Would she feel comfortable writing cold contact emails to potential employers? (D2 did that and ended up with job interviews at two different research labs that weren’t advertising any openings. One of those interviews led to a full time job.)
Would she be willing to get some minimal job training like a phlebotomy, MA or EMT certificate? All of those jobs don’t pay big bucks, but will give her enough to live on if she budgets carefully and will give her tons of hands on patient exposure which will help improve her CV for med school.
One comment on reapplying. There is nothing wrong with reapplying, but reapplying without substantially changing her resume or her school list or both is a waste of time and money.
There’s essentially no change in her qualifications, so she probably won’t see any different result.
She might want to consider becoming a Nurse Practitioner. She could apply for and do a bachelor’s to BSN degree, in as little as 15 months, at a public school close to home. This can be done very cheaply while living at home. Then a brief stint working while she applies for NP or nurse anesthetist or “doctor” of nursing practice programs, and poof, in a relatively short period of time and for a relatively small amount of money, she’s a newly minted NP and can hang out her shingle in many states to practice unsupervised, in almost any area she likes. No pesky board exams or specialty boards, either.
Organic chemistry is a bellwether course for medical schools. Not because the curriculum is similar, but because it gauges how well the student can memorize. Lot of the two years of med school involves rote memorization. Overcoming a C can be difficult.
Medical school will always be there. She needs to improve her application. Take grad level courses, perhaps even consider a masters or PhD program. She can always apply again in the future. But I wouldn’t apply again without a substantial change in her application.
Avoid the temptation to go to Carribean schools, they are not worth it IMHO.
When she applies to medical schools again, they will be looking for current experiences, not ones that are over a year old. She needs to be doing these things now…right up until she gets an acceptance to medical school. Doing something as an undergrad, and then NOT doing it for at least a year or more is not going to help her application.
She needs to find some significant volunteering work with the disadvantaged now…and needs to be shadowing …now…and needs hands on patient experience…now.
Or her application the second time will actually look worse, in my opinion.
It will be hard to say this in the balanced way that I mean it, but the students I know who have been successful in getting into medical / vet school despite some hiccups (often pre-req classes in the first 2 years of UG) have shown a serious determination and bluntly really put their backs into building their apps.
As examples, I currently know two 2022 grads who are applying for 2023 entry. One is working full-time at a clinic (where she has done summer volunteering for 2 years) and the other qualified as an EMT during college and is working as an EMT. Both are living at home and taking upper level classes at local uni to offset some weak 1st or 2nd year grades.
Both would love to have be living in a cool city in an apartment with a friend, but neither set of parents are prepared to finance that (though one could easily).
If your daughter did a ‘pre-med’ program at a T20, but only has “some volunteer experience” and shadowing what did she do with her holidays? especially her summers? She would have been given good info on what med schools expect, and she would have seen what the go-getters in her cohort were doing.
I think what I am dancing around is: how badly does she really want this, and what is she willing to do to achieve it?
My daughter was premed, biology. She had a very competitive application, but after graduation she wasn’t sure about medical school, so she worked. She had a lot of job offers with her biology degree.
She was accepted to a gap year position (actually 3 years) where she taught science in the inner city public schools in a high COL area. She supported herself financially and lived independently. She also taught yoga to the homeless, remotely, following graduation. Your daughter can do something like this and earn enough money to support herself.
She decided against med school, applied to direct entry NP programs, and was accepted. She changed her mind a week before starting because she realized she was not a nurse (she was right, she isn’t). While she respects the nursing profession, she really did not enjoy the type of work that this degree leads to.
She is now working in clinical research (with her biology degree) and applied to graduate programs that align perfectly with her interests. She loves it and supports herself financially.
My point is that your daughter needs time to mature and strengthen her application. She also needs to work full time. If she applies again now, she likely will not get in. Where is the money coming from to reapply to all of these schools? She needs time to strengthen her application, volunteer, retake classes (not sure how this works) etc. She also needs a full time job.
Medical school is not going anywhere. I have a family member who started at 28. He taught for a few years first (full time).
There is nothing wrong with applying again, but now is not the time. She isn’t ready.
Does she plan to apply to the same medical schools…again. Or is she tweaking her list?
NP’s and CRNA’s do have to take and pass board exams. NP’s have to take specialty-specific board exams (family, peds, neonatal, etc) in order to apply to their state board for licensure in order to practice. At least that’s how it works in my state.
Honestly, with a pre-med degree already in hand, the easier route would be to try for admittance to a physician assistant program. No need to obtain another bachelor’s degree if she did all the pre-reqs for medical school. She would definitely need to get more patient care experience, though, before applying.
PA programs are very competitive and this student’s gpa might be on the low side relative to other applicants. In addition, applicants need a LOT of direct volunteer hours.
She can certainly apply, but she isn’t ready.
IIRC, these need to be direct patient hours, don’t they! @twogirls
I totally agree. That’s why I said she needs a lot more patient care experience. My dd is currently working on her Bio degree to become eligible to apply to PA programs and started working as a MA last summer.
Yes. There are different “levels” of hours which the programs weight differently. Some involve shadowing and others involve direct patient care which makes up the bulk of the hours.
And unless I’m misunderstanding….this student is doing neither of these now. That needs to change.