Hopeless Case?

[Guest Maria]

Hi!

 

If anyone could give me sme advice I would greatly appreciate it. I have just completed my B.Sc. at McGill. Unfortunately I have a less than stellar GPA. My cumalative GPA for all three years (bachelor in Quebec is only 3 years) is a 3.05, however my GPA for my final year is 3.9. I wrote the MCAT last summer and received a 39 (13 in each category) and an R on the writing sample. I really want to do medicine, and after two bad years I think that I have finally got my act together. My question is, does anyone know of anybody who got into a med school with similar bad marks, and what exactly did they do (ex.: grad school, extra years as an undergraduate) in order to get accepted? Any help would be apreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Maria

[Guest medicator007]

Hey Maria,

 

Some schools in ontario have formulae of assessing GPA whereby certain years are excluded from the formula in order to assess for the cutoffs, so this may help your case, though I dont really know exactly how this works.

 

As I am sure you know, McGill works with the CGPA where ALL of your years go towards the GPA in order to hand out interviews.

 

That being said, you MCAT is stellar and so if you could boost the GPA I see no reason why you wouldnt get an interview. Doing a graduate degree as a "Back-door" has been thouroughly covered in another thread on this board. I do know of someone from McGill who had a poor GPA after his first degree and so went on to do a second bachelors to boost his GPA and is currently in medical school. It can be done!

 

Good Luck,

Medicator007

[Guest Liana]

It depends on if you have a preference as to where you study medicine.

 

BUT, if you're open to it, you could always do a 5th year of undergrad (at McGill or elsewhere - you could always try out a different university in a different city and just take whathever courses you think would be interesting). Western only looks at your 2 best years (including your last year), so you could cut out the marks from your poorer years. However, if you have another year aside from your last year where your GPA was strong, then you don't even need to do a 5th year. Last year the cutoff was ~3.65, so given your 3.9 in last year, all you would need would be a 3.4 in one other year, and you could reasonably apply.

 

You can also apply to McMaster, where you need a 3.0, but there's a LOT of competition at that school, and you'd have to compensate for just meeting the cutoff by having a STELLAR autobiographical submission, which would be hard coming right from undergrad, but if you perhaps did some interesting work for a couple of years (especially anything humanitarian) you could make a strong applicant.

 

There are other schools that don't use all of your marks in calculating your GPA. If you have another year with a reasonable GPA (whether it's a 5th year, or one of your earlier years) then you stand a good chance of being competitive.

[Guest Maria]

Hey Liana,

 

Do you go to McGill? The reason I ask is because I had a TA with that name for an anatomy course.

[Guest Liana]

No, I don't.

 

But thanks for asking.

[Guest Beaver]

Just to clarify I think Western requires a 3.65 in your best year AND a 3.65 in your last year. Therefore they do not average the two years (ie you mentioned a 3.9 in one year requires only a 3.4 to average to 3.65)

 

Again Mr. Rader can clarify on this point

 

So bottom line you could do a 4th year and if you achieve a 3.65 you will be called for an interview at Western.

[Guest UWOMED2005]

Mr. Rader here -

 

Yep, you are absolutely correct Beaver. BOTH years must be above the cutoff (3.65 this year, 3.60 last year) And yes, it is an option to do a 5th year for admission to Western - I know of at least one classmate of mine who did just that (barring changes to that policy that I don't know about!)

 

Can't remember the name of the person who started this thread. . . but having read your case I would DEFINITELY suggest enrolling in a 5th year of undergrad and APPLYING TO WESTERN FOR THIS ADMISSIONS CYCLE (ie by October 15th, 2002 - apps will be available in late July, I believe.) With your gpa from your last year (aka BEST year - BTW it has to be a FULL year with 5 full courses in each term) and your MCAT, I can come just short of guaranteeing that you will be given an interview (unless they completely revamp the admissions procedure.) If you can maintain a gpa above the cutoff next year (unlikely to be above 3.7, but I can't guarantee that) and nail the interview you could be in the class of 2007.