<p>So I’ve been reading the forums and I believe many posts have been informative and I decided to join hoping to find some advice.</p>
<p>So I went to UCR biological science major. At the beginning of my 4th year I hovered around a 3.3, I was pre med track and figured I never get into med school and didn’t want to study the MCAT and seeing it was 4th I wanted to have fun and stopped caring. I dramatically faltered to a 2.9 by the end of 4th year. I decided to take a 5th and repeat classes I botched and respectively had a D replaced with a B+ and a C- shown as an A, but the C- gpa was not replaced. I also minored in environmental science, 5th year first quarter 3.4, 2nd quarter 3.6 and 3rd quarter 3.3 but my gpa ended up with a 3.017 cumulative. But here’s the thing, my 5th year my mom was in the hospital due to her heart condition on and off the whole year, I was the only person who took of her and was even awakened on school nights at 4am to pick her up and bring her back to my apt. On top of this I was in a medical health community service club and volunteered as research lab assistant. My drive to do better was inflamed because I honestly thought my mom was going to die and she asked me to try my best. I literally turned over a new leaf and really want to do well and good in life and I know will never falter again. I know in my history statement I can write all of this but do you think grad schools will understand and see that I took on more responsibility but did better?</p>
<p>I really want to go to UCI MS in environmental toxicology or MPH in environmental health
I have four letter of recommendation. Other schools include UCR’s MS in entox and SDSU MPH school for env. health</p>
<p>Work experience: 2 years in a microbiology lab and medical health community service. Even went on a trip to El Salvador to work at a medical clinic and got rid of vectors of Dengue Fever in the community.</p>
<p>Just took the new GRE, 153/156 scores are about 500 verbal and 720 quantitative compared to the old. I was pretty disappointed; esp the math part because somehow I ran out of time before I finished one section. On the practice I got a 1400 =(</p>