What are my chances of getting accepted into medical school with a 3.35 GPA, C- in Gen Chem and Principles of Biology?
My score when I was in the Sophomore year was horrible, I had a 2.8 GPA with a C- in Gen Chem and Principles of Biology, the material was by no means hard for me, I just had a lot going on at home. However since then I have gotten nothing less than 3.7 in all of my classes including the remainder of my prerequisites. As well as having about 1000 hours of clinical experience, have a seat on the board of NYPIRG for my school, been part of the psych club and have done research in psychology. What are my chances of being accepted in to med school? I’d also like some feed back on what I can do to increase the odds of being accepted and what would I have to score on my MCAT test.
Without knowing your MCAT score, 16% of students with a GPA of 3.2-3.39 got accepted to medical school. That ranges from 1% for an MCAT below 486 and 53% for MCAT above 514
https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf
If you want to see it broken down by race, go here: https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/factstablea24.html
Please be aware that a number of medical schools will not accept a C- in a pre-req as fulfilling admission requirements. Check MSAR for admission requirements before you apply to schools.
@WayOutWestMom would it make a difference if I retake the class and receive a better grade?
If they don’t accept a C- you will have to. If they do accept it, not really. Take the next course in the sequence and get a better grade in that.
@iwannabe_Brown So its not impossible as long as receive a higher score than 510, considering I apply to 15-25 schools.
Nothing is impossible, but is it probable?
Here’s a newer grid (using 2015 MCAT scores) of the table IWBB posted above.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf
Matriculant GPA/MCAT grid broken by ethnicity.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321498/data/factstablea18.pdf
And here’s one broken by state of residence.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321502/data/factstablea20.pdf
Successful NY state applicants had mean MCAT score of 511.5; a mean sGPA of 3.63 and a mean overall GPA of 3.68.
Are you planning on applying to osteopathic medical schools?
I strongly suggest even if you blow the doors off on your MCAT with 515+, you still put in some applications to DO programs. Maybe 15 MD programs where your stats are competitive, including all your in-state publics, plus another 8-12 applications for osteopathic medical schools.
ETA matriculant data from AACOMAS for DO programs
Mean sGPA 3.45
Mean GPA 3.55
Mean MCAT 503
A 510-513 MCAT with your GPA means a ~67% chance you’ll wind up being rejected from everywhere you apply to.
What was your SAT score? Obviously not a perfect correlation but let’s start to think about how realistic it is you’ll score in the 514+ category (where the percentage of students who got in was higher than the percentage who didn’t) which means doing better than 92% of MCAT test takers. The MCAT pool is more competitive than the SAT pool. As an example, I was 99.9th percentile on my SAT but 97% on my MCAT (which might sound like a minuscule difference, but it’s the difference between 1/1000 test takers doing better than I did and 1/33 doing better than I did - a roughly 30 fold increase in the proportion of people outscoring me). It’s certainly more likely than not that your MCAT performance will be “weaker” than your SAT.
P.S. WOWMom, the “newer table” is literally the exact table I posted.
Yeah, I realized that after it was too late to edit…
I still think the “mean” of any score is skewed if it is not segregated. For example, amcas published the mean of GPA and MCAT is going to be skewed by the following groups:
- URM and any hooked.
- Non-trades or some one went through SMP and has a lower GPA.
That left those normal, unhooked traditionals a misconception that if you reach the published mean score, with adequate ECs can get in. The fact is that it requires lot more than the published scores to get into a med school. Of course, a student with 4.0 gpa and 97% Mcat has no problem going forward, for those boarder line applicants, they should be informed and apply broadly with MD and DO schools.
OP
With your stats, you’d better to heavily concentrated on DO schools. The Average non-hooked applicant MD school GPA should be around 3.7, your score is much too low. Besides DO schools are more forgiven on one bad year and pay more attention to upward trend.
If you do good in a DO school, like top 10%, you still will be able to get into a competitive residency and that really counts for your future employment.
What if retake a couple classes and bring my gpa up to a 3.4 or even a 3.5 @artloversplus would that make a significant difference?
You may have to retake those two C- pre-req anyway because Med schools may not accept any pre-reqs under a C. If your cGPA And sGPA can both be at 3.5, it might be good enough for DO schools, but may still short for MD schools.
Please come back here with MCAT and final GPAs prior to put in your application to see your chances. Right now we are just talking air, too many ifs.