4th Year Student Who Wants To Puruse Med but low grades, advice?

[UBCguy96]

Hi guys I'm a BA student at UBC who recently got  interested in medicine and would like to pursue it instead of going to grad school which was my original plan. At UBC we have an average system and mine is 81%. Have not taken a full course load or written the MCAT yet but I have some EC's and research. Also I guess I have taken a full course load in my 3rd year according to the university of Calgary standards which requires 24 credits and my GPA in that year was 3.76. 

 

Any general advice on what my next steps should be or if this is even doable? Looking at the stats and all the posts here it seems like it's near impossible..

[frenchpress]

3 hours ago, UBCguy96 said:

Hi guys I'm a BA student at UBC who recently got  interested in medicine and would like to pursue it instead of going to grad school which was my original plan. At UBC we have an average system and mine is 81%. Have not taken a full course load or written the MCAT yet but I have some EC's and research. Also I guess I have taken a full course load in my 3rd year according to the university of Calgary standards which requires 24 credits and my GPA in that year was 3.76. 

 

Any general advice on what my next steps should be or if this is even doable? Looking at the stats and all the posts here it seems like it's near impossible..

Take a look at the UBC admission statistics. It’s likely doable as an in province applicant at UBC, but I have no idea about other schools.. You very likely need a few more years of school or some really stellar ECs. 81% is not really ‘competitive’, but usually about a quarter of the class will be admitted with grades between 80-85%. UBC puts equal weight on GPA and non-academic criteria when determining who is invited for an interview — so a strong, well-rounded applicant with great non-academic experiences can make up for a GPA on the lower end.

UBC doesn’t explicitly require full course loads. But they are looking for evidence that you can handle a heavy course load. What have you been doing instead of taking a full course load? Working? Sports? Something else? If you can spin it that you’ve simply spent time on other equally important things, that can help.

Another thing you can do is start taking a heavier course load now for your remaining terms — if you haven’t been taking a full course load so far, I assume you’re not set to graduate at the end of this year? If so, there’s still time to demonstrate you can handle a heavier schedule. But you’ll need to really keep your GPA up.

Lastly, if you were genuinely interested in the master’s, you may want to still consider pursuing it. Lots of people on this forum will tell you that a Master’s is useless for GPA boosting — but it can help in some cases, particularly at UBC. There are lots of master’s programs at UBC where it’s very possible to get well over 90% in all your courses. Combined with the UBC policy of dropping your worst year, that can boost you another 1-2%. Which in your case might be enough. A master’s can provide opportunities to boost your publications, awards, etc, and sometimes your ECs as well. And it’s really just a good idea to continue pursuing another career path in case medicine doesn’t work out or you change your mind.

I was in a similar boat to you and was admitted, so I know it’s doable. But it did take several years post-degree to make it happen. Feel free to PM me if you want to chat about it.

Edited December 5, 2018 by frenchpress