Nurse interested in medicine? But I have a unique obstacle.

[Inquisitive]

Hi all, this is a long post and I would appreciate any advice.

So I have completed nursing school here in Ontario. It has taken me nearly 7 years due to circumstances that were beyond my control. Long story short, the university cancelled one of the courses that I was supposed to start for no reason so I started a human rights battle with them. I won. It was pure hell and several lawyer even remarked that the situation was “unprecentended”. But time was lost and my status was shifted to part-time from full-time from the second year and onwards. That’s when I decided that it would be a good idea to start a second undergraduate degree to raise my GPA and take a full-time course load.

Would this be a good idea? I would like to take a 1-year break and in the meantime I can work as a registered nurse. Or should I go back to school in September? If I ever apply to medicine, how can I explain that a course was cancelled and postponed all because it was the university’s huge mistake? Thanks so much. 

 

PS I can’t really provide any more details to maintain my anonymity.

[Rahvin13]

Can you share how many courses you’ve taken in each year and your gpa for those years? It’s hard to give advice about doing a 2nd undergrad without that.

Some med schools allow you to explain your grades or why you didn’t have a full course load and may accommodate that depending on the reason. Based on what you said you may have a legit reason for not having a full course load or they might say “well why didn’t you just take electives to round out a full course load.” It’s hard to say, and depends on the overall context I’d think.

[Inquisitive]

Year 1: 3/5 courses. cGPA: 3.64 Part time due to illness. 

Year 2: 3/5 courses. cGPA: 3.73. That's when the battle started. 

Year 3: 4/5 courses. cGPA: 3.55. The lowest marks. 

Year 4: 4/5 courses. cGPA: 3.82 The highest marks. 

Year 5 and 6 = years off due to human rights battle.

Year 7: 5/5 = c3.72. All electives. 

In all the first four years, I took one 1 Pass/Fail course in each semester so I don't know if that will make a huge impact or not. I should note that I did not do engage in any extracurricular activities or research activities. 

Thanks so much.  

 

[Rahvin13]

For an Ontario applicant I’d say take a 2nd undergrad. You may be able to get into Mac, Queens, or NOSM (depending on where you live) with that gpa but would either be ineligible or very non-competitive for UWO, Ottawa, and UofT. For Mac and Queens you’d need a good mcat (specifically CARS) and Casper and would definitely need ECs (especially for Queens). Queens doesn’t post cut offs but people with a 2 year gpa of ~3.75 have been accepted there, and same with your cumulative of ~3.7 for Mac although both are on the low end. You could apply for UofT too although 3.7 is really on the low end for there. 

2 more years of undergrad with a full course load and 3.9+ in each year would open up UWO and make you more competitive for Queens, UofT and Mac. Just read all the course/degree requirements for the different schools and make sure you’re meeting them.

And and some point do your mcat and try to get a 129+ in CARS.

[Inquisitive]

Hi Rahvin, thanks so much. I plan to take MCAT sometime this year or next year. I have a couple of questions:

1) Are 2 years in undergraduate education sufficient or do I need to take full 4 years of school?

2) Does working as a RN count as a EC?

Thanks. 

[Rahvin13]

1) I would start with 2 years and go from there. Because you took reduced course load and had pass/fail courses, 2 years at full course load with 3.9+ gpa could make a decent change in your cumulative gpa for Mac and UofT , and there are several schools (Western, Queens, Dal) that will only look at your most recent/best 2 years.  Just make sure you check the 2nd degree policies for the different schools and make sure you meet the course level requirements (at UWO for example).

2) Absolutely. It’s employment and employment is an EC.

 

[Inquisitive]

Thank you so much. I’ll go back to get a second degree probably this year or next September. 

[Kiki-Mora]

On 5/24/2018 at 6:43 PM, Inquisitive said:

Hi Rahvin, thanks so much. I plan to take MCAT sometime this year or next year. I have a couple of questions:

1) Are 2 years in undergraduate education sufficient or do I need to take full 4 years of school?

2) Does working as a RN count as a EC?

Thanks. 

I applied to McGill,  working as an RN with experience in hospital councils  got me very poor ranking on EC. Maybe in Ontario evaluation criteria differs.

[Rahvin13]

22 hours ago, Kiki-Mora said:

I applied to McGill,  working as an RN with experience in hospital councils  got me very poor ranking on EC. Maybe in Ontario evaluation criteria differs.

Different schools absolutely evaluate ECs differently. Some don’t look at or care about them at all. I’m from Nova Scotia and at Dal ECs are 20 points out of 100 and broken up into 4 areas with 5 points for each area. Employment is only one of those areas so if all you did was work as a RN and did very little or nothing else then you would pretty much only get points for the employment section and your overall score would be bad. Perhaps McGill evaluates in a similar way?

Working as a nurse or doing related things is a great employment EC but you’re still expected to do volunteering and other activities, and shouldn’t be the only thing you’re doing. And I’m not saying that you didn’t do anything else, but that could be a reason based on the (very) limited info you gave.

I think the real benefit of being a RN comes in the essays/interviews where you could draw on your experience of working in direct patient care and collaborating with physicians and allied health on a daily basis.