<p>You can take your pre-med requirements at just about any college. With exception of a handful of top schools, the “brand name” of your undergrad has little influence on your med school application.</p>
<p>If you are happy at current college–stay there. If you want or need to re-locate, put some thought in the kind of college situation you prefer. Choose one you’ll feel comfortable at and one where you think you’ll be able to form good working relationships with your professors. (You’ll need letters of recommendation from at least 3 science or math profs for your application.)</p>
<p>As the poster above has pointed out, there is no escaping your current grades/GPA. AMCAS requires that you submit a transcript from every college you’ve ever attended (even co-enrollment classes from high school). Every college class you’ve ever taken will get included in your GPA calculations for medical school admission.</p>
<p>Your current GPA is quite low and you will need to make a considerable effort to improve it. The other complication is that as an engineering major, your probably have a substantial number of science and math credits that give you a very low sGPA (science GPA–which includes all biology, chemistry, physics and math classes). In order to raise your sGPA into a range acceptable to medical schools (~3.5), you’re going to have to take alot of science classes to dilute your current low science grades. Are you comfortable with the idea of taking a bunch of upper level bio and chem classes? Do you think you can do well enough in them to raise your sGPA? Would you be willing to consider earning a MS in a biological science field if you need even more credits to raise your sGPA?</p>
<p>You should also know that any med school pre-req class in which you’ve earned a grade of C- or lower MUST be re-taken. And both the original grade AND the re-take must be reported on your application. Both will also be included in GPA calculations.</p>
<p>One more thing–the material covered on the MCAT is changing and starting 2015, the new MCAT will have more and different content than the current exam. Because of this, med school pre-reqs may be changing. Wherever you go, you will need to stay in close contact with the health professions advisor at your college to see how these changes may affect you.</p>
<p>Would you consider a DO (Doctor of Osteopathy) degree? DO schools allow grade replacement. So any pre-req you need to take over, only the newer grade will be considered and included in GPA calculations.</p>
<p>If you think you might want to pursue a DO, you will need to shadow a DO because DO schools require a letter of recommendation from DO in order to be considered for admission.</p>
<p>As for choosing a specialty–it’s way, way, way too early to think about what medical specialty you want to pursue. (Also dermatology is probably one of the MOST difficult & competitive specialties to match into. No one who is not a 4th year medical student should count on a career in dermatology.)</p>