Ask Dr. Gray: Premed Q&A: Is This GPA Really THAT Bad?

Session 98

What is the GPA cut-off at most medical schools? And what can you do if you’re worried about a low GPA number from your past holding back YOUR application?

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[00:23] Question of the Day

“I have a very nontraditional path to med school. I am a professionally trained chef. I started cooking back in high school when I was 14. And I graduated high school early. I went to culinary school, came back home after that, cooked for a few more years, and realized I needed to do more with my life. If I was going to work 90 hours a week, I wanted to make a bigger difference.

And so I went back to school, and I completed a second bachelor’s degree. I’ve done a postbac. I’m actually a Ph.D. student right now. I’m applying to med schools and I was actually applying for MD/Ph.D.

My undergraduate GPA is horrible. It’s about 3.08. And that’s because when I was in culinary school if you didn’t want to finish a class and you wanted to retake and try, you just failed it and took it again the next try. And so and it wasn’t a big deal in culinary school.

And that’s coming back to me on my applications. So I’m trying to get schools to look at me because my Ph.D. GPA is a 4.0 and I did well during my postbac. But it only brought my GPA up to like a 3.18 or 3.2. And so I’m afraid I’m just going to get filtered out whenever I apply. And no one’s even going to see that I’ve done a Ph.D. and I’m trying to prove myself academically. So I was wondering if you had any advice for that.”

[01:58] A Little Background About Our Student

3.0 is not a horrible GPA. Your undergrad GPA is even above what a lot of schools have set as their cutoff, which is around 3.0. And this is the general rule of thumb that we’d like to go with.

'The final number is not the number to look at. It's the trends that go into making that number.'Click To Tweet

According to this student, her second bachelor’s and postbac grades are good. That being said, she had to relearn how to be a student since culinary school is very different from organic chemistry.

Then she was still cooking full-time when she went back to school and started at a community college and then switched to the four-year college in New Mexico. She did well, but then OChem came along and she got a C. She retook both and ended up with an A and a B, for I and II respectively.

She didn’t do well in immunology and got a D. She retook it at the graduate level and got a B, but there’s no grade replacement so it doesn’t matter.

Immunology isn’t a prereq so it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But a D for a prereq, you would have to retake because a D isn’t passing for medical schools. But you have to talk about the trends of your second bachelor’s and your postbac. Most of her second bachelor’s will be categorized as senior level classes, just the way that the hours work and the true postbac classes will be listed as postbac.

Her science came out to 3.18 and 3.25 is her postbac undergrad GPA. She had pulled these numbers the last time he applied to med school under the MD/Ph.D. program. It’s not a huge increase if you look at undergrad. But then graduate level and Ph.D. level, she’s at 4.0. And she was able to accelerate her Ph.D. due to her postbac. Then on the next application, she’s going to apply to an MD only program.

[08:00] What You Need to Do

At this point, you have to just reach out to schools and tell them where you struggled and where you’re at now. Tell the story that when you started, you didn’t want to be a doctor and that you didn’t have to work hard because it didn’t matter. Then when you went back to scool and did your postbac, you didn’t know that you wanted to be a doctor. And that goes with the story that had to relearn to be a student.

Tell them that you just had your normal undergraduate growing pains in your second bachelor’s and postbac. And now you’ve finally hit your stride with your Ph.D. So talk to schools before you apply.

That being said, do well on the MCAT to make sure the rest of your application is just as solid with everything else with your extracurriculars, volunteering, shadowing, clinical experience, and all of that stuff. That proves that you’re not just a career student, but you actually want to be a doctor.

'Let the trends speak for themselves.'Click To Tweet

There will be some schools that are going to filter you out. But having above a 3.0 will definitely keep you out of a lot of digital shredders. So you will have the opportunity to be reviewed. As low as your GPA is, you will have a harder time getting to the point in the application cycle where they are reviewing your application with enough time and enough seats still available. So try to improve that situation by having a much higher, much more competitive MCAT score to maybe cut the line a little bit.

Also, be sure to do a lot of networking, communicating, and storytellling when it comes to the application.

[12:04] Shadowing and Clinical Experiences

In terms of shadowing, you can project out hours and time so having all the shadowing this student has now is great. They’re not going to ding you for shadowing orthopedic surgeons if it’s a primary care-focused school.

'Schools understand that it's really hard to get shadowing and you get what you get.'Click To Tweet

Additionally, shadowing does not count as a clinical experience. So when you’re filling out your AMCAS application, shadowing is one category from a drop-down. And clinical experience whether paid or volunteer is another category.

Examples of clinical experience would be being an EMT, phlebotomist, a nurse, physical therapy assistant, a CNA, or a medical assistant, or a scribe. It’s any sort of interaction with the patients.

You may be doing a lot of interaction with the patients when you were shadowing, but that’s not technically shadowing, maybe it’s clinical experience. Because shadowing, in its strictest definition is just observing – hands off, mouth shut – what the physician is doing day in and day out. Your goal is to see what their job is like and what they do outside of the patient room.

Clinical experience, on the other hand, is making sure you enjoy working with patients. You’re talking with patients and being with the patients and enjoying that interaction.

'Shadowing and clinical experience are two completely different activities with two completely different goals.'Click To Tweet

[11:43] How to Reach Out to Schools

If you can start with a phone call, great. If they say no, we don’t have time for phone calls, then lay it all out in an email. But if you can get someone on the phone and explain your story, then that’s more powerful.

[15:28] Can You Have Both of Them in the Same Area?

But if you gained both of those goals from the same area, or the same clinic, that’s okay. Just split them on the application and just estimate hours for each.

For example, a clinical research coordinator has a lot of different roles, both shadowing clinical experience, and potentially, research. So on an application. I wouldn’t just put one activity in because then you’re not able to appropriately flag and categorize the activity as all three of those. Depending on what it is, you can mark one activity as two different things by putting in two activities for that same activity.

The one thing I don’t want you to do is, let’s say you’ve done it for a year and you have 500 hours, don’t put 500 hours for each shadowing and clinical experience. Really separate them out and estimate so that it’s a total of 500 between the two.

[17:00] Will Medical Schools Frown Upon a Ph.D.?

This student is also concerned that schools won’t look at her application because she’s still in her Ph.D. And this is what she heard from the Ph.D. committees. And she doesn’t want to seem like she’s just jumping ship.

Now, a lot of schools will say that because they don’t want you to not finish their degree. And so it’s a scare tactic. Just make sure you’re done and then apply.

But from the medical school perspective, they really don’t care. A lot of secondary prompts will say if you’re out of school, if you’ve graduated, what are you doing now? So you will have that opportunity to explain yourself there.