Grades, Competitiveness, & More

First of all, there is no such thing as a “sure fire candidate” for med school. This process is very uncertain and fraught with many pitfalls along the way. (And this is why every single pre-med needs to have a Plan B career they would be fine with.)

The weeding out process to get into med school is very intense. Of all the freshmen who declare themselves pre-meds, about 75% of them never take the MCAT. Of the 90,000 or so students who do take the MCAT every year, only about 47,000 actually apply to medical school. Of those 47,000, only 22,000 get a medical school acceptance.

Right now your GPA and sGPA are suboptimal. But you have plenty of time to improve both.

Besides working on improving your grades, you need to look for activities that are meaningful to you and that give you the opportunity to:

–demonstrate your leadership
–show your compassion for the less fortunately by volunteering
–develop your understanding of what the profession of a physician entails by doing physician shadowing (in several different specialties, esp. primary care fields)
–gain exposure to bench or clinical research
–show that you are capable of and willing to spend your future dealing with the sick, injured, disabled, debilitated, demented, abused and chronically ill (and their families) by working or volunteering in clinical settings (clinical settings include hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities, stand alone free clinics, group homes for physically or mentally disabled, hospice centers, and sexual assault or suicide hot lines)