Low Undergrad Overall and Science GPA to MD Acceptances
Hey everyone, with application season coming to a close and soon opening up, I thought I would repost this here to this subreddit. This is my old post from the premed subreddit in 2023 and realized I never posted it here. I am a current M3 at a T50 US MD sitting in the top quartile after coming back from a crippling GPA. Wanted to give some of you the hope and confidence that you deserve while gearing up to apply with a newly finished post-bacc/SMP, or fend off the doubts you may have if you're going to be entering an SMP or post-bacc in the next couple of months. There is a lot of misinformation out there and premed reddit will make you feel like you will never become a doctor with your current stats or circumstances, but I am here to show you all they are wrong. It does make it SIGNIFICANTLY harder, but if you truly want it you will get it. Best of luck to everyone, my line is always open.
I thought I'd share a post on my success story and help give some faith to those who had a disasterous undergraduate transcript and think that it may be over for allopathic medical school or even medical school in general.
Here are the things that most people are probably curious about:
- 2 MD Acceptances: 1 State School, 1 East Coast Private
- 14 MD (1 reach, 13 all within range)
- 27, ORM (White), upper-middle class family
- T10 Public Undergrad: uGPA: 2.92 -> 3.03 after master's, usGPA 2.57 -> 2.74 after master's
- MCAT: 496 (2019), 502 (2022), 513 (127/127/130/129) (2023)
- Casper: 4th Quartile
- Master's Degree (3 Years of Coursework)
- Year 1: 4.0
- Year 2: 4.0
- Year 3*: 3.7
- Total Graduate Credits: 90 (Applied with Year 1 and Year 2 completed (53 Credits) and sent updates with Year 3)
- Research: 3300 Hours; 2 Pubs (1 middle author, 1 second author) at T10 Public Undergrad
- Clinical Experience: 1000 hours w/ involved and direct patient contact
- Leadership: 500 hours post grad, additional 4800 hours end of high school and 2 years of undergrad
- TA: 320 hours (Biochem w/ Cell Biology, Graduate level Anatomy)
- Volunteer: 120 hours
- Shadowing: 110 hours; 4 specialties (2015-2018)
Strengths:
- Post-graduate coursework addressed classes that I struggled with in undergrad and year 3 coursework was traditional M1 classes without gross anatomy. Pretty sure this sealed the deal to the schools that interviewed me (the ones I sent updates to) because I performed as well or better academically than current M1's in similar coursework.*
- Strong MCAT score
- Genuine, reflective, and took responsibility of previous mistakes
- Nothing on my application was something that I felt obligated to do because "I'm pre-med". I genuinely wanted to do the things that I had on my application.
- Unique hobbies
- Strong writing and personal statement
Weaknesses:
- Secondaries submitted end of August and most in the first two weeks of September.
- Should have sent more updates to schools with my year 3 coursework. Only sent updates to the 2 schools I was interviewed and accepted.
- Undergraduate transcript; relied on schools to be holisitic and focus on my post-graduate coursework only.
- No crazy unique story (this is minor to not even being a problem to me honestly)