Hi, so I just graduated from undergraduate and I am hoping to go to medical school. I was planning on applying in June 2021 and I was going to take the MCAT in December. My question I guess is that my academic profile is not very competitive. I graduated with a 3.25 GPA. I do have a lot of experience outside, I did a lot of volunteering, volunteering abroad, I worked as a CNA and phlebotomist, and for the past two years, I have worked as a medical scribe and I am currently the Chief Scribe in my position. I was hoping that with my experience and if I got a good MCAT score, that I would be able to apply for medical school. But now, I am starting to doubt whether my GPA would be good enough to even apply. I know post-bac programs are used to help boost your GPA, so do you think it would be better for me to just try and apply in June 2021 or try to do a post-bac program to boost my GPA before I apply for medical school?
What is your sGPA? (sGPA includes only your grades in bio, chem, physics and math.)
Are your junior-senior grades significantly better than your freshman-sophomore grades? (By better, I mean like 3.75+ GPA for your junior and senior years.)
A 3.25 GPA is just not competitive for any MD program. Even a 520+ MCAT will not make up for a subpar GPA. The median GPA of successful med school applicants is above 3.7 and the median sGPA is above 3.65.
https://www.aamc.org/system/files/2019-10/2019_FACTS_Table_A-16.pdf
Your experience isn’t going to help you because GPA and MCAT are the first screen that applicants have to get past. If you don’t make it through that automated screening, no human being is even going to read your application.
How do you feel about DO programs? You may have some success with DO schools if your sGPA is the same or better than your overall GPA and your MCAT is good (508+), particularly if you apply broadly and include all of the newer DO schools on your list.
Be aware that all DO schools require a letter of recommendation from a physician; many specifically require a LOR from an osteopathic doctor.
If you absolutely, positively have to have a MD, then you are going to need to complete grade enhancing post bacc. You need to raise your sGPA at least into 3.5+ range if you want get a look from MD schools. The post bacc can be either a formal programs ($$$) or a do-it-yourself one.
Based on your earlier post, you are an Oregon resident.
OHSU admission stats:
average GPA: 3.65
average sGPA: 3.58
average MCAT: 509
https://www.ohsu.edu/school-of-medicine/md-program/admissions
Since one’s home state public med school is always an applicant’s best chance for admission, I’d say you definitely need to do a post bacc.
The closest DO schools are:
Pacific Northwestern COM (Yakima, WA)
average GPA : 3.44
average sGPA 3.35
https://www.pnwu.edu/inside-pnwu/fast-facts
COMP–Northwestern campus (Lebanon, OR)
average GPA: 3.65
average sGPA: 3.58
https://prospective.westernu.edu/osteopathic/do-nw/competitive/
(NOTE; COMP has a very small enrollment. There are only 103 students in the program. COMP typically accepts only 25 students/year.)
To be competitive for any of these schools, you really do need a post-bacc to raise your GPA/sGPA.
Additional note: PCOM and COMP both strongly favor regional applicants (OR, WA) and also favor applicants from rural communities or federally designated Healthcare Shortage Areas (HSA).
Please search for DO school SMP programs, they are a lot easier than SMP for MD programs, if you don’t mind DO programs. If admitted, you will be attending the school with the first-year DO students and if you do well, some program will admit you without going through another application season. Perhaps its the most direct way to become a physician. You won’t have a chance with any MD programs without an over-haul post bacc process.
I know of a student from a top UG with your stats that attended the Georgetown SMP program upon graduation and got into a private MD school, now he is a psych resident. He was the lucky few that got in. But the risk and reward are too high to try that route.