yokelridesagain

[yokelridesagain]

Define lower. If by “lower” you mean 2.5-2.9 that’s a real big problem. UC Berkeley is filled with pre-meds with better GPAs. If you mean 3-3.3 that’s still a problem considering the rigorous nature of California medical school admissions, but probably can be overcome if the rest of your application is strong. 3.4 and above you’re in the competitive ballpark.

Berkeley has a great reputation both locally and nationally–definitely top 25. When dealing with well known national powerhouses, AdComs are well aware that there are differences between grading schemes at various institutions. Harvard, as you likely know, was graduating 90% of their students with honors up unitl a few years ago (of course, Harvard students reply that the extreme selectivity of their institution means that the average student there would graduate with honors at most places). Nevertheless, a Harvard A probably still doesn’t equal a Princeton A. AdComs get that. (Note to all: BEFORE you start flaming me, please consider that I attended college over a thousand miles away from either coast).

Fortunately, with a school like Berkeley (or any other large university with multiple medical school applicants), AdComs have a long history of applicants from your school. They know how you’ve done in comparison to other students from your school and probably your major. They also know how well students with your profile have done in their institutions. What you really need to find out from your advisor is, what is the profile of a “competitive” Berkeley applicant? I would guess that it’s likely to be somewhere around 3.4-3.5 GPA, 27 MCAT, but that would be a guess.

Grade inflation is a much bigger problem if you went to I Never Heard Of It Tech and AdComs are trying to guess what the heck a B+ in organic chemistry means from your school.

Physician-resident

[yokelridesagain]

Agree with above, particularly point B. The concern on the minds of AdComs will be that you will have difficulty with more rigorous work; they will not be interested in your ability to succeed in community college. Junior college work isn’t the kiss of death for a medical school application if you had a valid reason for pursuing it initially (i.e., finances, other personal circumstances). However, going back to a JC at this point would be an utter waste of your time and money.

Your best hope of attending medical school is to get into a “special Masters” program designed to facilitate admission to medical school. Georgetown has the oldest and most prominent program. The best of these have you compete directly against medical students for grades in their classes. These programs have admission standards, too, but the hump is certainly lower than it is for medical school. Research the programs, get in touch with them, and explain your personal circumstances.

Physician-resident

[yokelridesagain]

Not quite accurate.

Osteopaths have traditionally regarded themselves as somewhat more holistic practioners than their “allopathic” (MD) counterparts. In terms of actual differences in curriculum, osteopaths learn things about spinal manipulation that are outside the realm of allopathic medicine. Otherwise, the actual learning experience is fairly similar. The degree to which manipulation is emphasized varies from school to school and seems to have declined over the past several decades.

Differences:

Osteopaths can pursue osteopathic residency programs (I believe there are 60 or so…these are not open to allopathic students). The mjority of DO grads do not attend these programs.

Based on the MCAT and GPA scores of matriculated applicants, allopathic schools are frequently regarded as more rigorous. Although DO grads are theoretically open for admission to any allopathic residency in the US, there are programs in certain highly competitive specialties (particularly derm, ophtho, ortho, surgical subspecialties such as urology, neurosurgery, and plastics, and to a slightly lesser extent radiology and general surgery) that tend to be difficult for DOs to enter. DO grads with their hearts set on one of these fields often have to enter one of the limited number of osteopathic residency positions.

In general, osteopathic education tends to emphasize primary care, although there are osteopathic graduates in every conceivable field of medicine.

[yokelridesagain]

Andy–

Same caveats as mentioned above would apply–some schools have a “pre-screen” that is only based on GPA and MCAT score, and your undergraduate GPA might lead to an automatic rejection.

The primary reason that schools look at grades and MCAT scores, however, is to serve the goal of admitting people who are going to be able to graduate. US medical schools have wholly abandoned the days of “Look to your left, look to your right, one of you won’t be here at graduation.” Medical schools have a significant investment in every matriculated student and want that investment to pay off in a diploma.

The question on the AdCom’s mind is, why was your GPA low? There are two primary internal reasons why pre-med students don’t do well: motivation and underlying ability. (Obviously, there are also external factors such as health, finances, and family that can and should be addressed in an application.) Considering that you have already earned a Ph.D. in a rigorous field, if you can craft a compelling account of why you want to switch careers you should have the motivation question answered. If you didn’t take your undergraduate education seriously, I wouldn’t be afraid to admit that in interviews; emphasize that you’ve changed your approach and more importantly, why?

As to the underlying ability…a Ph.D. in the hard sciences helps more than any other degree. The intellectual rigor of a chemistry doctorate program exceeds that of medical school, except in one respect: rote memorization. There are rare individuals who legitimately seem to have a “memorization disability” despite above average intelligence, which is a fatal flaw as a medical student. Unless you know that this is a particularly weak point, I wouldn’t worry about it.

If you do well on the MCAT, would hope that you would be able to get in somewhere. If that doesn’t occur, the backup would be a special Masters program where you compete directly against medical students for grades. Satisfactory performance in such a program would answer the underlying ability question, and that plus your doctoral degree would make you very competitive.

[yokelridesagain]

Oh yes, I remember your post on another board.

All I meant to say was, if I saw substance related convictions I would ask about it. It’s not that prior substance use or abuse in particular is a bar to medical education; even if you spent two years in rehab they can’t legally hold it against you as long as you don’t have a criminal record and–most importantly–as long as you’re clean.

If all of this happened a decade ago and you have had no further run-ins with the law, the more likely it is that it isn’t going to be a major problem.

Hopefully, two MIPs in the nineties won’t make the average screener think that you’re some kind of closet alcoholic.

Whether or not you should apply is a personal decision. The major question remaining on your application is your MCAT score, which could have a substantial impact on your chances.

If you have the time and motivation to dedicate to the application process–particularly if you’re willing to do extra post-graduate work if necessary–you should stand a reasonable chance.

[yokelridesagain]

Are you applying to med school under an OMFS track, or just medical school in general?

The biggest red flag, as you note, is your undergraduate GPA. Some of the schools that screen applications initially on numbers alone will reject you out of hand.

That being said, one would think that being able to graduate from dental school would predict similar success in med school.

On numbers alone, you are less competitive than the average accepted applicant. The average accepted applicant, however, does not already have an advanced professional degree. If you can communicate why you want to change careers in a convincing fashion, you should be able to get some places to look at you.

[yokelridesagain]

The data shows that most people who retake the MCAT multiple times do not demonstrate large changes in scores. My personal experience is irrelevant, as is yours, particularly as neither one of us has taken this test more than once. n equals one.

As I stated in my original post, it is possible to DECREASE your score on the MCAT by not studying. No one would dispute that. You state that this is what happened to you, and I believe it. My point, which you have not refuted, is that beyond a certain point each individual will not be able to improve his/her score by more studying. For most people, that “certain point” is not 39. Ergo, I suggested that the original poster attempt to control her grades now while she is still a freshman.

It would be reasonable to assume that most people applying to medical school consider the MCAT to be very important and spend a considerable amount of time attempting to prepare for it.

If studying more really improved the scores of the majority of applicants, the data would be different. One would assume that people who retake the test spend more time trying to prepare for it. If that preparation made a significant difference, one would expect the data regarding individual variation in scores to be significantly different.

(If what you said was true) “Kaplan, Princeton Review, and any other MCAT prep company would have been out of business long ago. I can assure you that these companies employ people much smarter than you to assess the value of the services they provide to their students.”

No, they employ people to figure out how to make money for their companies. They make money by having people write checks for their services. They only care about the value of their services insofar as it keeps the checks coming. I certainly won’t suggest that their services do not benefit people: a few probably aren’t helped at all, a few benefit greatly, and most do a few points better than they would have otherwise. Medical school applicants are, in general, a compulsive, driven bunch, and are willing to pay for a few points.

Finally, as you chose to include personal assumptions and vulgarity in your post, I would hope that you would not be too offended by the following interpretation: if I was displeased with my performance, I would much rather feel that said performance was reflective of inadequate preparation than underlying intellectual ability.

Actually, your score is better than the mean. Take it again and prove me wrong, if necessary. Regardless, my advice remains the same: don’t stake your fortunes on a standardized test, as you might be unpleasantly surprised at the results.

[yokelridesagain]

Impact? Sure, it’s probably not going to help.

Unlike a felony conviction, however, it’s not a bar to getting a medical license. So, it’s not at the same level of problem as the situation mentioned above.

Still, if I was on a medical school admissions committee and saw two convictions related to substance use, I would certainly bring that up with the applicant.

[yokelridesagain]

Retaking is a waste of time. If you do well, they’re going to think, “Well of course you did well, it’s your second time through the course.”

If you do poorly, they’re going to think “Gee, you can’t even do well on the second chance.”

This is what we call high risk, low reward.

Take some more science classes (i.e. immunology, genetics, microbiology, biochemistry, anatomy, physiology) and prove that your chem grade was a fluke–or at least that you can do well in science fields that are closer to medicine.

Physician-resident

[yokelridesagain]

Benji hasn’t posted in quite a while, so I’ll give your questions a shot.

1. In terms of marketability, the DO degree is perfectly adequate. Some patients have the perception that it’s an “inferior” degree, or even that DOs “aren’t real doctors” but these kind of opinions aren’t common at all among people in the profession. So if you don’t mind the occasional obnoxious patient looking down their nose on your degree, it’s a viable option.

The real “marketability” question is where can you get into residency; this also depends to some extent on your specialty of choice. In some of the “ultracompetitive” specialties (i.e. derm, ortho, ophthalmology), the DO may hurt you because there are so many stellar applicants from MD schools and those schools are often perceived to be slightly more rigorous as they accept students with “better” grades and test scores on average. For a primary care field like family or internal medicine, you can certainly get a good residency with a DO.

2. There is no difference in length of study; MD and DO schools are four years.

3. Coming out of DO schools one can go into two types of residencies. Osteopathic residencies are only open to DO graduates: these are primary care and focus on the unique aspect of osteopathic care. The vast majority of DO graduates do NOT go into osteopathic programs.

The other option is allopathic programs, which admit MDs and DOs. These are the residencies that all MD and most DO graduates go into. Ob/gyn is largely an “allopathic” field, but you can certainly get an ob/gyn residency with a DO degree. That residency may not be at Mass General, but you can certainly get something unless you are the Worst Medical Student Ever.

4. The major point, though, is that you understand something about the philosophy of osteopathic medicine and be able to communicate why you’re interested in it in a meaningful fashion at your DO interview. If you walk into your DO interview with the attitude of “I’m applying here because I can’t get into regular medical school”, you’re basically telling them “I want to date your sister but she’s too good for me so I’m asking you.” They do NOT like that, and the radar screen at every DO school in America is up for candidates who don’t have the slightest interest in osteopathic medicine other than that it’s perceived to be easier to get into.

Physician-resident

[yokelridesagain]

You’ve said you’re not a great test taker–problem. Regardless of where you do your prerequisites, if you don’t do well on the MCAT you’re going to have a below average test score and a below average GPA for accepted med school applicants.

Question really is, can you get into medical school with say a 27 MCAT and whatever you can raise your GPA to with prereqs (probably not much above 3.5, I guess)?

Obviously that depends on individual circumstances, i.e. can you put together an otherwise compelling application, are you a resident of a state where med school is more or less competitive, etc?

One thing to think about is whether or not you can afford to spend a year at a “special Masters” program as at Georgetown or BU. That may well be your best chance at medical school because those programs allow you to compete directly with medical students for grades and prove you can handle the work. If yes, then maybe you should just get your pre-reqs out of the way. This approach kind of assumes that you are going to get rejected when you apply the first time and have to add on an additional educational experience to get in. It would certainly be depressing to make major sacrifices to go to a university for prereqs and then get rejected anyway–unfortunately, with your record that’s not only possible but relatively likely.

If you’re really hoping to get it directly after finishing prereqs, then the CC is probably a bad idea. You’ve got enough strikes against you as it is. Just wait until your wife has graduated and start from there. There isn’t that much difference between 29 and 31 from an application standpoint.

Physician-resident

[yokelridesagain]

You need an attorney.

She needs to get this off of her record, or at least placed in some kind of legal limbo where she doesn’t have to disclose it.

This is going to require a legal proceeding and possibly a substantial wait. And she better not EVER do anything else even slightly illegal, particularly as regards controlled substances.

Don’t mean to be harsh, but long story short there are more than enough people who want to be doctors without admitting convicted felons to medical school.

Physician-resident

[yokelridesagain]

The reason that there haven’t been any “45” scores on the MCAT in several recent administrations is that the statisticians haven’t considered the verbal reasoning test sensitive enough to make valid conclusions at the higher end of the score range. Basically, too many people miss zero or one question, and they don’t feel it’s statistically valid to give the people who miss zero a 15, one a 13, and two a 12. (Don’t interpret these as actual numbers, just an example). So, if you do really, really well on the verbal section they give you a score of “13 to 15”. Ergo, no 45.

There’s no exact answer to the question you’re asking. There is no cutoff. People get accepted to medical school every year with GPAs that would usually get the application tossed in the trash without a second thought. How? Particular circumstances. If you have a 2.9 GPA from Generic State University, a 38 on the MCAT, and no extracurriculars, forget about it. If you have a 2.9 GPA from MIT, a PhD in biomedical engineering, and dedicate every waking hour of your spare time to medically related extracurriculars, you might be in.

So, it depends on your school and the rest of your application.

The MCAT has been found to be a better predictor of success in medical school than college grades–this is partly due to grade inflation and partly due to the fact that the grades of accepted applicants all tend to be very high. So, a good performance will help out a lot.

However–you cannot study your way to a perfect, or even a good score on the MCAT. It is NOT a test of knowledge. You can utterly sabotage any chance of a good score by NOT studying as the biology and physics sections require you to have some underlying knowledge. It is fundamentally a test of your ability to read and comprehend long, complex passages in a limited amount of time: i.e., the goal of medical school. To do exceptionally well, you need knowledge AND underlying aptitude. You can game the system a little with test-taking strategies and prep courses, but none of those things are going to raise your score by 10 or 20 points. People who make 40s on the MCAT mastered the prerequisite courses, but also have exceptional reading speed and comprehension, and are good at taking standardized tests.

You may well have reason to believe that you will do very will in this kind of environment…although very imperfect, the verbal scores on the ACT or SAT can give you some sense of how good you are at this. If you made an 800, you may well be able to perform smashingly on the MCAT. If you’re bad at these kind of things, don’t think that any amount of studying is going to make you able to get a 38+ score. Your grades are your first priority because they are much more under your personal control. Aim for a 3.6+ in science and overall, know that you are less competitive with a 3.4 or lower in either of these domains, and expect a 2% or less chance of success with GPA lower than 3.

[yokelridesagain]

Really depends on what you mean by “a few gen ed credits”…if this means history, government, and college algebra, no, it shouldn’t be a problem. On the other hand, if you take all of your pre-requisites at a community college, those marks will be viewed differently than if the courses had been taken at a four year college. This would apply generally to all admissions committees.

That isn’t to say that taking Biology 101 or General Chemistry at a community college is unacceptable…it’s just one data point, and if you’re adjusting to college coursework you might do better in the smaller environment. A community college A will certainly beat a four year college F. Nor is it impossible to get into medical school if you do your first two years at a junior college. The key, though, would be to demonstrate that you can do higher level work in science–preferably the life sciences–if you do a significant portion of your prerequisites at the CC. No one on a med school admissions committee is going to expect you to take chemistry, physics, or math courses beyond the requirements, but I would expect them to be very wary of an application with prerequisities exclusively from a CC and no other higher level courses. Good examples of courses to take at the 4 year instituion would be immunology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, physiology, anatomy, etc.

Lastly, no one on any admissions committee anywhere is going to confuse U-Michigan Flint with U-Michigan Ann Arbor. That’s not meant to be a derogatory statement, btw…I don’t know anything whatsoever about the quality of the Flint campus–just a heads up that you shouldn’t expect to be evaluated in the exact same way as a student at the main campus. And yes, the school you go to does have an impact. Slightly lower grades at an institution perceived as rigorous may be forgiven more than they would be with grades from a less rigorous institution. Aim to match or beat a 3.6 overall GPA and science GPA, and you should be competitive if the rest of your application is solid.

Physician-resident

[yokelridesagain]

Um, I don’t quite get the point of this post. Is this supposed to be directed toward medical school admissions?

Medical school (the classroom years, at least) is dedicated to memorizing a morass of facts; if you do not memorize the facts, you will be incompetent and kill people. Most people would rather have a physician with a lack of creativity who knows the vast, vast number of facts required to function as a doctor than a “visionary” with “ideas” who didn’t bother to memorize which drugs cause death when mixed together, and other such minutiae.

Ninety-nine percent of success in clinical medicine is being conscientious and dilligent in learning and applying knowledge; having creative thoughts is all well and good, but plays a surprisingly small role in taking care of actual patients. Nobody wants a “visionary” appendectomy.

A good physician does not need a brain with high end processing speed in the CPU; a nice middle of the road model works quite well. What is needed is a tremendous amount of RAM; all those admittedly imperfect tests and grades are assessments of how much RAM you have.

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