Medical School Questions

limabeans
Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:58:08 +0000

do you think strong internships, good letters of rec, experiences outside the country(United States), being an athlete at a D1 school, being in many clubs and societies on campus, and a deep passion to become a doctor could possibly out weigh GPA/MCAT scores that are not at the universities standards?

No/maybe. You need to have a base gpa/MCAT in order to start the process, but it also depends on how far off you are. Keep in mind there are minimums that you must first achieve before your application is even considered and that is dependent on the particular school.

Keep in mind also that your D1 athletics were a hook to get you into college, but medical schools don’t need to fill the athletic teams like college. Instead, it describes the kind of person you are (team player, able to balance school & sport, etc., etc.) and makes an interesting story.

Having said that I think your list of medical schools, UChicago, UPenn, Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, Northwestern, Duke, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, Stanford, UCLA, and USC include some of the schools with the highest standards. What are your scores? As a CA resident, you should widen your reach with a number of lesser known schools.