[Email abridged and edited.] A 21-year-old married woman, who is a junior at a large public
university, has always wanted to be a doctor. She had some family and mental
health problems (panic attacks, depression) which have affected her grades. She
has a current GPA of 2.8, but when recalculated by including grades in repeated
courses and deleting the poorer grades as her college allows, her GPA is 3.3.
She and her husband have a combined $24K of student loan debt.
She feels very
strongly that her family and mental health are no longer issues and is getting
A's in science courses that she previously did poorly in. She says, "I seriously
feel like a completely different person. I feel capable of getting good grades.
However, people keep telling me that I might not even make it into med school
because of my low GPA. The thing is though I don't care what I have to do. I am
so passionate about learning and helping people. My dream has been to work and
eventually have a free clinic on the side to help people who can't afford
healthcare. That's why I'm in this. But is there a chance I can even get in? I
know that's what I want, but people (peers, degree advisors, and my anatomy
professor) keep bringing me down."
This is a very difficult question to answer definitively. I
really can't speculate on your chances of being accepted to medical school.
Your level of commitment is outstanding.
There is one missing variable—your MCAT scores.
You may want to take the MCAT at the next available
opportunity. Great scores would be encouraging. Poor scores would seal the
deal. You would have to move on to something else.
Your combined debt is low and you are young, both of which
will allow you to spend a little extra time beefing up your GPA.
If you are thinking about applying to offshore medical
schools, please do some research. As US medical schools expand their classes
and new schools open, there will be fewer residency positions for offshore
graduates. If you look at Table 1 on page 2 of the 2013 match data for
International Medical Graduates (IMGs), you will see that 2420 US citizen IMGs
failed to match to a residency position. It's only going to get worse as I noted here.
Have you considered another option such as becoming a
physician assistant? The path is shorter, and PAs are becoming more and more
autonomous. It might help you to look at a post of mine from a couple of months
ago on "Ask Skepticalscalpel" called "Should I be a nurse practitioneror a doctor?"
Read the many comments because they are pertinent.
I hope this is helpful to you. Check back here for comments
as they are often more useful than what I write.
