Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

advice please?


Recommended Posts

Just wanting some suggestions on improvements

 

1st yr- 3.07

 

year off to work and travel

 

new school

2nd yr- 2.67 due to illness diagnosed too late

3rd yr- 3.57/3.26

4th yr- 1st sem- 3.84

summer sem- 3.85 2 correspondence courses missed time due to illness again

5th yr-3.86/3.88 completed honors project

 

doing MSc research, have 4.0

 

ECs:

Worked most of way through school, various jobs plus lab work

last 2 yrs-vol at elementary helping with homework

last 4 months- vol at hospital

planning on adding one more activity

 

have 2 publications, 2 more coming

 

MCAT- got 27P, re writing

 

Will my crazy transcript be good enough with grad degree? are ECs enough?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

too much damage control, mcat too low

 

i wouldnt waste time for canada, unless u wanna spend another 3-4 years doing undergrad and mcat

 

US MD too low

US DO, maybe but getting competitive for canadians

 

Id put those 3-4 yrs in the medical community and go IMG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think for Western, you can be competitive if you do a special year.

 

Assuming that your fifth year consisted of 30 units with 3/5 courses being level 3 or above and you write your MCAT this summer and meet the cutoff, you can apply for this application cycle while being enrolled in a non-degree year and possibly get a conditional acceptance (your special year must meet the GPA cutoff).

 

I think that would be the shortest route.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i will tell you this, there is a ton of MSc students taking advantage of MSc GPA- my yr we had a bunch doing that (n it was a small lab)

 

i was always under the impression that the MSc yr was a scam created by schools to get cheap labor for research.

 

:D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

even with a masters gpa is too low? i was shooting for schools that look at the last 2 years of undergrad and will count MSc gpa.

i thought overseas schools were a money hole, otherwise I'd be more in it.

 

No schools really take your MSc GPA except for UofT where you have lower GPA cut-offs for those with a grad degree. However, Ottawa, Queens, Western and Mac still take your undergrad GPA. Queens has a more holistic review these days so there is a slight benefit of having a MSc, but its negligible compared to the importance of GPA.

 

Basically, you're grad school GPA is useless for almost all the Ontario schools. If you TRULY want to pursue an MD you need to look into going back and doing AT LEAST two years of undergrad with a full course load (5 courses/semester). A GPA over 3.8 in each of those two years will make you competitive for Western, Queens and Ottawa.

 

You also need to rewrite the MCAT as your score is too low. Even U of T, which uses the MCAT as a flag has a minimum of around 9/9/9 N (if I remember correctly). Ideally, you'd want to get 11/11/11 (no more writing sample anymore so no writing score!) to be competitive for all the schools.

 

Right now your chances of getting in are fairly slim. If you are truly serious, then the best option is more undergrad and redoing the MCAT. The MSc has not given you any advantage as undergrad marks are still the main form of evaluation for most if not all Canadian medical schools. The MSc serves almost as an "extracurricular" since it has given you research experience and something to talk about during the interview. But to actually GET the interview you need to upgrade your marks. Good luck!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...