Can I get into Medical School with a LOW GPA or LOW MCAT? | Super Simple Step by Step Guide

hey what's going on guys welcome back to another video if this is the first time we're meeting my name is Michael I am a fourth year medical student currently applying for emergency medicine residency programs now this is a topic that I talk a lot about with the preed students that I do advising sessions with and if you guys didn't know I do offer Premed advising if you guys want to book a time to talk with me check out my Facebook link down in the description below but for some reason there are so many of you out there myself included that struggle through the Premed curriculum during your undergraduate years I don't know why it's so difficult I guess it's just to kind of weed out the people that aren't maybe as serious about going to medical school but if you aren't doing well like don't worry it has literally nothing to do with medical school or with medicine in general unfortunately these are the classes that you have to take in order to go to medical school as of right now but hopefully that will change in the near future so if you have a low GPA or low MCAT I'm going to be touching on both of those different subjects and what you should do if you are in any one of these situations so let's start with the people that have a low GPA and when I say low GPA I'm more so talking about your science GPA so biology chemistry physics and math the first thing that you guys want to acknowledge is if you have failed a class in one of those subjects um and a failing class in college includes a c minus so if you got a C minus that is a failing grade as far as medical schools are concerned so once you've identified if you failed a class if you did you just need to retake it now when you retake that class when you submit your transcript and input your grades into your med school application it's going to take the average of the two grades that you got in that particular course so then once we establish that you have all passing grades even if you still have a low uh GPA we need to kind of determine how low that GPA is are we talking about like a competitive low GPA like a 3. 3 or are we talking about something like a 2. 9 2. 5 in that range because it's very important to kind of distinguish which category you're in are you competitive low or are you actually like really low GPA because there's two different Pathways that will apply to you depending on which group you're in so if you're a competitive low so we're talking about 3. 4 3. 3 maybe 3. 2 then something you might want to consider is taking additional upper level classes in order to help boost that science GPA you can do this basically by just adding more classes and postponing your graduation in that case you'll still be able to qualify for financial aid so if you're getting some sort of financial aid some sort of Grant or scholarship you know through the government through the school through whoever usually as long as you haven't graduated yet you'll still be able to qualify for those things so like I said you can take these additional classes just by picking them up yourself or you can actually enroll into a postback program which generally requires you to have graduated so I only recommend postback programs for students that only need maybe a 0. 1 boost in their GPA so if you just want to go from 3. 3 to a 3. 4 then a postback may be the best option for you now let's switch gears and go to the people that have a very low GPA so essentially right around a 3. 2 and Below you're going to be kind of categorized into that very low GPA now without thinking about the MCAT and we'll get to the MCAT in just a second let's just focus on the grades because you guys are going to need such a big boost in your GPA a postback program is not going to do it for you so in this case I'm going to have to recommend AAL special Masters program which is what you guys have heard me talk about quite a bit in the past essentially what a special Masters program is a one-year master's program offered at a medical school so you're going to be doing the master's program at a medical school that's kind of like the big key the big kicker Behind These s SMP programs essentially what you're going to be doing is getting a separate GPA you're not going to be boosting your undergraduate GPA that is locked in that's done let's kind of push that to the side and forget about it um and now we're going to focus on your Master's level GPA normally at these special masters programs as long as you hit a certain threshold so for a lot of them it's like around a 3. 5 a 3. 6 your first semester of that program and if you do that then they'll offer you a medical school interview during the spring semester usually these programs will kind of overlook your MCAT score so if that's also low you can kind of rest assur sure that they aren't going to

care too much about your MCAT but we're going to talk about that a little bit more in just a second so just to kind of recap if you're a competitive low GPA then do a postback program because you just need a little bit of a bump in your GPA and that's going to bump up your undergraduate GPA if you have an extremely low GPA then you're probably going to need to do a special master's program it's not going to affect your undergraduate GPA but you're going to now get a master's level GPA which hopefully holds a little bit more weight than your undergraduate GPA kind of the idea behind these special masters programs is you're taking very similar classes to the ones that you'll take your first year med school so if you do really well in these programs they kind of already know that you're going to do very well in medical school all right so let's now talk about the MCAT because the MCAT is a lot of people's Achilles heel it gives a lot of people so many problems and even though you may have maybe really good GPA you may not do very well on the MCAT and that could also hurt your chances of getting into a medical school so in this situation there are two categories once again so there's people with really high GPA and a low MCAT and then there's also people with a low GPA and a low MCAT so we'll talk about both of those groups so if you fall into the group of a high competitive GPA I'm talking about 3. 5 and above we'll say and these numbers aren't concrete and everyone's situation is different and then if you have a low MCAT score the average MCAT score is right around a 502 I would say the average MCAT score of an accepted Premed student is probably around a 506 to 508 and that's accepted so let's just say if your MCAT is you know right around a 503 502 and Below we'll kind of consider that a lower uh MCAT score so if this is the case you have a high GPA and kind of a lower MCAT score what should you do in this situation this is one of the hardest categories to be in because there's not like a special Masters program for the MCAT you know the special Masters program helps you know prove that you're you can improve your grades but there's nothing to really show that you can improve your MCAT score without actually retaking the MCAT so in this situation it's definitely case dependent but I would probably recommend retaking the MCAT I know this is a very unpopular piece of advice because nobody wants to restudy for the MCAT nobody wants to take you know an 8 hour long test again but at the end of the day if you apply to medical school and you just don't get accepted anywhere you don't get interviews then it kind of leaves you no choice but to retake the MCAT and to try and improve that score which brings me to the sponsor of today's video exam crackers if you guys didn't know exam crackers just rolled out its allnew mcap Prep course called crack you or crack University this is supposed to be an all-inclusive mcap Prep course and I think the best thing 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course so let's get back to the video now if you retake the mcap and you do worse or do about the same as your first try then there kind of is a little bit of a loophole I don't always recommend it um because it is costly and it's not guaranteed but you can go and do a special Masters program at that point because they don't really care too much about the MCAT and so as long as you do well in the SMP program which you probably will since you did well in your Premed classes then you have a good chance of being accepted into that particular medical school or maybe a different medical school at that point again this is because through the S SMP program you're going to get a master's level GPA and so medical schools aren't going to weigh your MCAT score as heavily okay so let's talk about people with a low MCAT and a low GPA what do you do in this scenario well with a low MCAT and a low GPA um you kind of have to worry about the GPA first so we already talked about those options um and like I said if you do a special master's program they might Overlook the lower MCAT score that you have if your MCAT score is below a 495 and you're in one of these special masters programs then you're going to need to retake your MCAT to get at least above a495 now I don't want it to sound like going and doing one of these SNP programs is going to get you in a medical school because that's not always the case and you definitely shouldn't rely on that to get in a medical school it's going to be much easier for you guys to do as well as you can during your Premed years than to go through one of these s SMP programs one they're very time consuming so it's an extra year wasted and two they're very expensive so it's equivalent to a year of medical school so if you do end up doing one of these s SMP programs which a lot of you probably will you kind of have two options at that point you do really well you get an interview and then you hopefully get into medical school or you don't actually hit the threshold that you need um you don't get an interview and then what do you do from there at that point I think kind of your only other option is to do a Caribbean medical school which is not a bad option if you have an open mind and becoming a physician is really what you want to do I know a lot of doctors and I have friends that are actually in Caribbean schools right now the students are doing well and then the doctors you know they made it they're Physicians so it's definitely possible but it is just another speed bump you know in this long journey towards becoming a doctor now there is the option of not doing an S SMP program if you have trouble taking the MCAT and doing well and you have a low GPA you can forgo the S SMP program and go straight to a Caribbean medical school for some of you this may be a good option because you'll get the title of MD um after your name which is important to a lot of people especially when you're trying to go into specific Specialties that cater more towards MDS and these will include Subs Specialties in surgery like Orthopedics it includes Dermatology and essentially any other very hyperco competitive specialty the reason I mentioned this is the majority of these s SMP programs are at do medical schools there are SMP programs at MD schools but in order to get into those schools you have to already have kind of a higher GPA and a decent mcap which kind of defeats the point of the S SMP program that's why I really only recommend going to some of these do programs because that's kind of the programs where um a lower GPA and a lower mcap will allow you to get into them so clearly guys there's other things that you need to do in order to get into Medical School you need patient care experience you need volunteering you need a Shadow Physicians you may even do some research which isn't always required and I don't always recommend if you're not interested in research but there's all of these other things components to your application that are required to get accepted to medical school the reason we focus on the MCAT and GPA so much is because those are the two things that will open the door for these admission committees to actually look at your application if you have a low GPA and a low MCAT score they're not going to bother looking at essentially the rest of your application so guys that's essentially the pathway that I like to use with the Premed students that I do advising sessions with like I said everyone has a different situation and so this is kind of just like a general road map that you guys can use when kind of determining um how to get in a medical school with like these different stat combinations I made some videos on like the easiest Doo medical schools to get into I made a recent video on the newest medical schools that are opening up um so these are all videos that may

assist you in determining where to apply for medical school so definitely check out some of those videos I'll put some of those links in the description below if you guys have any questions drop them in the comments be happy to answer those for you guys and I hope to see you guys in another one of my videos