7-21-99 Advice for Non-traditional Premed Student whose GPA was low when he firest attended college ten years ago.

>I am what I think you would call a nontraditional pre-med student. I attended 2 years of college >then went on to nursing school and became a RN. I worked for a few years as a nurse and have >returned back to college to obtain my bachelor's degree and then apply for admission to medical >school. My concern is that when I first attended college my G.P.A. was less than desirable and >even though I am making good grades now, my old G.P.A. haunts me. I am concerced that what >I did 7 years ago will prevent me from getting into medical school. What are your thoughts on this >? Do you have any advice for me? Thanks >>

Obviously since GPA is so important in admissions, your lackluster performance years ago can be an issue of concern. I cannot go into specifics--they would depend on your current overall and science GPA, and that includes all classes you have taken after high school. Also how bad is your "science" and "overall" GPA will matter.

Relatively speaking 3.5 is bad compared to 3.9; 3.3 is bad compared to 3.4; and 2.5 is bad compared to 3.2. You get the point. But the difference between 3.4 and 2.5 is that you have pretty decent chance of getting in with the first and abysmal chance of getting in with the latter.

I'm sure that many schools might forgive you your poor performance seven years ago if you did well lately, BUT: I think that they can only forgive you once they are actively looking at your application, which means once you have an interview. It is my impression, and I think a correct one, that initially schools try to screen-out the applicants as much as possible so that they have a manageable number of applicants to work with. (Given that many schools get 5-7,000 applications for 100 seats it is not an unreasonable thing to do from the perspective of admissions.)

With low GPA due to some classes you took 7 years ago, your greatest problem might be getting an interview, and that is where you GPA comes into the play.

Also given your situation, and it should be obvious, when taking MCAT you should be sure you know material well to get good grades. Practice as much as possible and study the topics you get wrong. AMCAS now released a 4th real practice exam.

Obviously, you can try applying with low overall GPA and hope to get interviews so that you can at least explain that you have done well lately. But again the catch is that to explain your situation, you need to get an interview and it is harder to get an interview with low GPA.

To see what your options are, I would first calculate your science, non-science and overall GPA according to AMCAS guidelines. If you haven't done so already, you can download e-AMCAS off the www.aamc.com website which would calculate it for you. Then, if for example your science GPA is low, but non-science is good, you can make an "if-I-take more science classes" scenario. See what happens if you take more classes for a semester or two assuming you will be doing as well in them as you have done lately. If that would significantly improve your GPA say from 3.2 to 3.4 then you might want to go for safety and pull up your GPA before applying. Of course in the end, it is your life and the decision is yours--you might want to take the risk and apply to see what will happen.

You should remember that your "chances" often depend on your state of residence--so if you're from Arkansas or Mississippi, my impression is that you can get it with scores that are pretty low--but I might be wrong. In any other case, you should be forewarned that getting in may be much harder or nearly impossible with very low GPA.

In addition, there are schools that seem to thrive on "non-traditional" applicants. No matter what you decide to do now, when you apply, if I were you I would make sure that I applied to these schools (but also to others): the one's I am aware of are on the East coast: Albany, NY Medical College. You can also check schools' admissions statistics and look for an "older" average age of students. That means the school takes more people like yourself who have had many more "life" experiences and these schools may be more tolerable of a screw-up that occurred a decade ago.

Here's another point i want to emphasize, especially in your situation. You should take MCAT in April or if you take the August MCAT wait until the next year to apply. Medical schools have rolling admissions and if you take the August MCAT and apply in the same year--you will be put at a disadvantage INDEPENDENTLY of your GPA. And with less than stellar GPA this is the last thing you want to deal with.

Also, I do not want to be discouraging but from what I recall, I believe that nurses as a group have low admissions rates--which does not mean much since Biology majors (like myself) as a group also have poor admissions success rates. But in your case, I think you would have a need to articulate "why you want to be a doctor" since you're already "helping people as a nurse." So when the time comes, be prepared to tell why you decided to go to medical school--and obviously do NOT badmouth nurses! On the other hand, you will have an "insider" advantage since you know much more about medicine than I or 90% of applicants do. You clinical experience is also something medical schools look for--so you can flash it around.

Well I hope that my perspective is helpful. If you decide anything--let me know what you're up to.

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