GPA is the most important factor, though. You must have made it up with a killer MCAT score and EC's.
I had a semester of 18 units of E. I was bummed over a girl and I was working full time. I fought my way back to the U of A and now I'm on my way to the university of Oregon for my Ph.D. in chemistry. Its all about how you finish.
I got a 2.7 undergrad gpa while graduating a year early (retaking classes is for newbs), and did research for 2 years during my undergrad and got my name on a few publications. Ended up getting accepted to 5 out of the 10 grad schools I applied to, with 2 of the acceptances from the nation's top 10 grad schools in chemistry. Now I'm happily chasing my PhD. Most importantly, every single application said that the minimum gpa for acceptance was 3.0. If I gave up and settled for applying to crappy schools because I assumed the stated minimum was a hard limit, then, well, I'd be somewhere crappy right now. Shoot for the moon and land in the stars.
nope never had a low GPA.. 4.5 in high school and 3.8 something in college. Good luck with raising your GPA. It's tough though once you have some bad grades since it will always be accounted into your average.
<br> I kind of find this hard to believe. That must have been some hell of research that your name was put on...
My situation seems to be the opposite of everyone else here. My 1st semester was my worst by far. Partied hard, rushed a fraternity, away from parents for 1st time just having the time of my life. Then I got my grades and had a 2.2....Let's just say that mommy and daddy weren't to happy about that. Since then every semester my GPA has improved. Last Semester I made a 3.6 so I'm happy with the direction that I'm going. Also, it looks better on resume's and transcripts when they see that your grades are steadily inclining instead of declining. It shows that you're doing better in your classes that are more focused on your major.
wtf how is this possible? I gave up on med school after my freshman year cuz i got a B in calc 1,2 and 3 so my science GPA after organic chem and everything would not be over the 3.6 threshold for med school? Whatever too late now i already changed but i know i will be jealous of doctors my whole life all cuz i was not great at calc damn
Assuming you got pretty good grades (mainly As with a few Bs) from their on and got high enough on your MCATS you would've been fine going for med school. and my god I hated Cal 2. One of my biggest regrets was not taking Cal 1 and 2 online. The in class lectures at UH are a huge time waster. Online Cal 3 was a piece of cake.
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I had a 0.9 my 1st year (1978) at Iowa State which is a pretty easy school. Of course they gave me the boot after that. It would have been lower but some profs gave me an Incomplete instead of the classic F. No worries - I have $425 in parking tickets that keep my IA State transcripts from being exposed. Good times.
I'm gonna graduate with a 2.8. It depends on the grad program you enter into... UT only looks at your upper division scores, so 300 and 400 level courses. Furthermore, if you have a strong personal statement and you finish strong it's gonna be ok. While my GPA was weak, I have averaged a 3.5 in the passed three years of my degree. One God awful semester dragged my GPA down under the 3.0 line, but a lot of grad schools told me to apply anyways. I got into Oregon and now I'm just finishing up my degree here at Arizona. However, my GRE scores were decent too (1300 combined score). However, his comment about retaking classes is asinine. Most graduate programs I contacted told me that retaking classes shows that you are committed to the material and that you've learned from your mistakes. Case in point, if you get straight B's and C's in your chem courses and you're applying into a Chem Ph. D. they won't accept you. If you turn some of those C's into A's and B's it goes to show that you actually get the material. All I can say is hard work and determination (especially when everyone around you doubts you can do it) will get you through it.
I'm sorry to hear that you didn't go for it but it is never too late. I've been on interviews and had people interviewing along with me who were more than 30 years old, had kids, the whole nine yards. One of my mentors was a working police officer when he decided to become a doctor. It is a huge misconception that if your gpa isn't 3.99999 you're not going to get into med school. Especially in your case, where you messed up early in your academic career. The average gpa is 3.6, that means there are a bunch of people above 3.6 AND a bunch of people below 3.6. If you are really interested in going for it send me an email, q.a.allen@gmail.com and I can put you in contact with some people that may be able to help.
I find it hard to believe myself. I had 4 publications when I applied for grad school, with a first author JACS and a second author Angewandte. There's no doubt about it, I was incredibly lucky. I thought about retaking classes, but ended up deciding that doing well on the Chem GRE would be a better use of my time. I scored an 80th percentile and in my application essays told my story as... 1) I was done with enough classes to graduate after 3 years so I could have spent my 4th year retaking for higher grades 2) But since I scored relatively high on the chem GRE it shows that I'm proficient enough 3) Thus, I spent that extra 4th year doing full time research (and netting publications) instead of repeating classes whose material I've proven I am good with Of course it's a lot easier to make the argument that you're amazing at research and thus amazing at grad school if you have several papers with your name on them as an undergraduate.
I'm curious QdoubleA, did you end up doing a postbac to raise your GPA? Did you live in a state with a heavy in-state residency favoring, e.g., Texas? I definitely don't think anyone with a low GPA should give up on their dreams of being a doctor, but it all depends on the context i.e., did poorly freshman year of college then 8 years later went to do a postbac and went onto medical school versus someone who just did poorly throughout everything, which would make it nearly impossible unless they're a URM or something.
Texas born and raised, no post bac, graduated from UH last month. When I started college due to family reasons I had to work about 60 hours a week (not an excuse for a bad gpa but I wasn't use to it) and my gpa tanked. During my junior and senior semesters as I became accustomed to balancing work, school and everything else my gpa trended up to the point I was making the deans list. I also did a couple of years of research with Baylor. I agree with you, someone who does poorly all throughout college has no chance, but messing up just a few times especially early on isn't a killer.
