There are only a handful of schools that will not accept community college credits for med school applicants. (VCU, Creighton, maybe 1 or 2 others). Even Johns Hopkins will now accept CC credits.
What med schools will NOT accept is online coursework, particularly for courses that have a laboratory component.
Additionally, you need to take face-to-face science classes so that you are able to develop relationships with your instructors so they can write you the strong recommendation letters needed for your med school application.
Do med schools prefer applicants take pre-reqs at a 4 year universities? Absolutely. Will med schools refuse to consider you because you took your pre-reqs at a community college? Absolutely not. Will your application be considered “weak” because you took your pre-reqs at a CC? It depends on your CC grades and your MCAT score. (A strong MCAT can go a long way toward easing concerns about an inadequate science preparation for a CC attendee.)
Med school admission committees evaluate non-trads differently than they do traditional applicants. For traditional applicants, taking pre-reqs at a CC without taking additional upper level science coursework at a 4 year college is a red flag; for non-trads–it may not be. Adcomm members are human beings who do understand about financial necessity and family obligations.
Right now your larger issue is that your sGPA probably is too low for a successful med school application. (Unless you’re willing to do retakes and apply to osteopathic programs–and Philly has some very good DO programs.)
If you don’t want to take the rest of your credits at a CC (and you probably won’t be able to take biochem at a CC anyway), there are literally hundreds of colleges in greater Philadelphia area. (I grew up in suburban Philly and still have family members who live in Philadelphia proper so I’m quite aware of what’s available there.) Find one that offers evening or weekend classes and enroll in one or two courses at time–whatever you can afford-- until you’ve completed all your pre-reqs. Slow and steady wins the race.
And now comes the lecture:
- Temple is only one of the dozens of medical schools you’ll need to apply to should you get to that point. Pennsylvania does not have a strong in-state bias in med school admissions. (Probably because all the PA med schools are either private or a public-private hybrid that only get limited state funding.) There is no guarantee you’ll be accepted to one of the Philly area med schools. In fact all of them (Drexel, Jefferson, Temple, Penn) are extremely competitive–the first 3 because they receive over well 15,000 applications each every year.
Are you prepared to move away from Philadelphia and your obligations to your grandparents? If the honest answer is “no”, then don’t waste your time & money on completing your pre-med requirements.
It’s an unfortunate truth that med students need to be selfish when it comes to family obligations. Your medical education and career must come first.
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prepping for and applying to med school is an expensive process no matter how you slice it. It’s not fair, but then most things in life aren’t fair. You need to decide how badly you want to pursue your dream. If you want it badly enough, you will do literally whatever it takes even if takes longer than what you consider ideal or if you must go into debt to do so.
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you need to realize that applying for med school–even if you have a “perfect” application–comes with ZERO guarantee of success. Sixty percent of those who persist to the point of application get rejected at every single school they apply to. Every year hundreds of students with exceptional grades and top MCAT scores get rejected at every single school they apply to.
If you can’t deal with the idea of you may end up broke/in debt, having wasted 3 or so years of your time, don’t continue with your pre-med studies. This is true for everyone, not just you.
(FWIW, D1 was a non-trad. She had a science degree but had not taken any bio or chem pre-reqs. She busted her butt working multiple part-time jobs and taking out the max in fed student loans every year so she could take her pre-reqs part-time, mostly at a state U. It probably took her longer than she would have liked, but she succeeded, was accepted to med school, graduated and is now a resident in a specialty she loves.)