Advice to a Med School Applicant with a 2.85 GPA | Application Renovation (S2 E2)

Today I'm doing a full med school application review for a student who applied late in the 2018 application cycle. Along with a low GPA (2.85 cGPA and 2.53 sGPA), she believes her MCAT score and applying late in the cycle held her back. Let's walk through her full TMDSAS application to identify what she needs to improve.

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So, our student is a Texas resident who applied to AMCAS and TMDSAS. She applied in October, which is quite late in the cycle, which really matters because of the rolling admissions that medical schools use.

One of the first things I notice when looking at her TMDSAS application is that she applied to a bunch of public out-of-state schools. Unless she had close ties to those states or those schools, this is likely a mistake, as a lot of these schools are going to heavily bias toward in-state applicants.

Our student is active-duty military now, and we talked a little about her getting permission to apply to medical school from that position and how that process went for her.

We also look at her personal statement. She mentions that one of the first meaningful experiences that led her to pursue this path was a premed meeting she attended. I mention that listing a meeting before actual healthcare experiences with patients could make admissions committees wonder if she has the experiences to really let her know what she's getting into.

I also have concerns with the focus in her personal statement on excitement, adrenaline, and war stories she heard from an ENT physician, as well as the mentions of respect and gratitude that physicians receive. Both of these things could suggest that she may not know how medicine actually is, and she could get bored, disappointed, or burned out when it doesn't deliver these things.

We touch on her Personal Characteristics Essay and her Optional Essay on a Unique Experience, which are both part of the TMDSAS application.

Looking at her activities, she doesn't have any research experience, which may be a weakness, but in my opinion, it's not a major issue. With her activity descriptions, she needs to focus more on the clinical side of what she did for each position—the patient interactions, not cleaning hospital rooms.

Based on her 2.85 cGPA and 2.53 sGPA, her application was likely filtered out by many of the schools she applied to. Her grades just hadn't yet shown that she is capable of handling the academic rigor of med school. Likewise with her MCAT: She had two MCAT attempts, a 493 and a 498, so those are also holding her back.

Steps forward for her:
• Postbac, SMP, or a Master's degree in the hard sciences with as close to a 4.0 GPA as possible.
• Improving her MCAT score
• Applying to a better list of schools for her—not so many public out-of-state schools.
• Getting more clinical experiences that reinforce why she wants to do this, so she can tell her story better.

She already retook some of her med school prereqs, and she's considering a Master's program.
To overcome her earlier grades, she'll probably want to get 20, 30, or even 40 credit hours of postbac or graduate classes with better grades to show that upward trend.

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