Home › Forums › Medical School › Admission › assessing my chances

Viewing 2 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • January 15, 2007 at 10:37 pm #23849
    meredith10
    Participant

    Hello,
    (sorry- I think I posted this in the wrong section at first).
    I am graduating from one of the top Ivy League Colleges with a 4.0 GPA. My major is literature, though I have taken a lot of cognitive neuroscience classes but other than that no hard sciences. I have worked in a hospital and lab and discovered I really passionately do want to be a doctor. I’m looking for your advice on how to best go about this. I think I will enroll in a postbac premed program but my concern is this: while I know I could be a good doctor and am willing to work very hard, I think that the premed courses might be too difficult for me. Given my excellent undergrad record and work experience, what kind of grades would I need to get in the postbac program to get into some med school? Will my undergrad record still be a credit to me? Also, is there any way to gague whether I could “handle” these classes? I’m smart and have a good memory but chemistry, physics etc. sort of baffles me (or did in high school). I think the right support and tutoring might do it, but I’m not sure. any way to find out before enrolling?

    January 16, 2007 at 12:42 am #32417
    yokelridesagain
    Participant

    The “objective” factors that go into medical school admission requirements are: overall GPA, science GPA, and MCAT scores. So, your undergraduate GPA to date will be very helpful for the first of those. Your science GPA is going to be composed primarily of your scores in pre-requisite courses. I would aim for a 3.6 or better.
    Achieve that and score in the high 20s or better on the MCAT and you probably get in to medical school.

    Post-bacc programs are nice because they have reserved class space for you and close contact with an advisor. You can just take all of the required courses on your own, but you would need to check with the individual institution that you’re interested in to make sure that there’s going to be space available in those classes for a non-degree student.

    Bluntly, many pre-meds have little aptitude for chemistry or physics. Medical school, however, primarily requires verbal memory and reading comprehension skills rather than mathematical manipulation. So–if you can do well enough in the courses it basically doesn’t matter whether you’re actually good at it.

    I wouldn’t worry so much about your aptitude. If you can excel at an Ivy League institution in coursework required of upperclassmen, you should be able to handle courses that are essentially freshman introductory sequences.

    If you were failing these courses in high school, that would be a cause for concern. I wouldn’t be concerned if you made “Bs” in chemistry and physics in high school. You’re a better student now than you were then, and you’ll be devoting all of your study time to these courses.

    Physician-resident

  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 2 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.