Hello everyone! I'm usually a lurker, but I wanted to make a post to rant/get some advice about my situation because I'm feeling really hopeless right now and don't know what to do next.
For context, I graduated as Psych major / Bio minor from a renowned public university with a 3.6 cGPA and a 2.9 sGPA. I took a BCPM course from an extension of the same school recently and it went up to a 3.0. Honestly, I did not really start school fully committed to pre-med. I was only "pre-med" because my parents were very very adamant about me going down the med path (there's a loooot more to do with them but that's too much to unpack :). I didn't have a true interest at the time, but I, for some reason, thought it was good idea to start taking pre-requisites anyways lol. I really didn't know how to handle the rigor of the science classes at this school and that + having no motivation: I did really bad in my classes. It's not that I didn't try because I definitely did; I remember pulling all-nighters for ochem just to get a C...It was really depressing considering I was always a straight A student before and I lost so much confidence in all my BCPM related courses. I got two C's (physics, chem) my freshmen year, 1 C my sophomore year (ochem) and pretty much all the other BCPM were B's / B+. Once I started joining orgs though, learning more about different branches of medicine, meeting health professionals, (and many many other things) I genuinely felt a calling and it was not only until the end of my junior year that I re-evaluated my studying for BCPM courses and my grades started going up. But that's obviously a bit late. Honestly the only reason why I was able to graduate with that cGPA is because of my Psych GPA which was like a 3.9. As for my extracurriculars, I have decent hours from a clinical job + a research role (no pubs, but had a lot of patient interaction) and I have a lot of hours for a leadership role I held. Compared to what I have seen from others, it's not the most amazing, but I am already preparing for lots of clinical /volunteering/shadowing hours for my next gap year. I had a pretty crazy past couple of months personally and have done a lot of self reflection esp after realizing how low my sGPA is, but because of that I feel ready and fully committed to doing whatever I can to make it to medicine.
I guess after all that rambling, I wanted to ask for advice on what you all think might be best for me given the context? I feel that my GPA is the most damaging part right now, and I am not sure if it's worth it to either pursue an SMP or continue the DIY postbacc that I recently started. And for people that were psyc majors, what was your path like to medicine?
Summary: Have a 2.9 undergrad sGPA and decent extracurriculars. Would love to hear general advice on what to do next, whether to pursue an SMP or continue DIY postbacc, and how other psyc majors made it to medicine.