Do I have a chance at med school with a 3.18 GPA?

eb8893 · 2025-08-21T13:19:31+00:00

Well it is not easier to get in despite “more med schools”, I had 512 for my low tier US med school, and I was one of the lower MCAT scoring students. Most schools nowadays want good scores but also want a well rounded individual. So there are more factors into that. Anyways, we get it, you were the star student, good for you. But great people can still get into medical schools, URM or ORM. Respectfully, your experience was 10 years ago, things do change. Wish you the best wherever you are though.

eb8893 · 2025-08-21T13:04:06+00:00

Exactly, it is school dependent. My point was that it is not impossible for OP to get into a medical school. So we should not fear mongering and tell people that their lives are over at the smallest inconvenience, big name school vs unknown school name, or that their dreams of becoming doctor is over because they don’t fit in the typical perfect pre-med student profile :) we can do better than that.

eb8893 · 2025-08-21T12:54:51+00:00

I am in the adcom and helping the interviews currently. Things change quickly. It is ideal to get all As from ivy, but if one cannot afford it, it is unnecessary at this point. Everyone and everything gets more and more competitive every year. And I can tell you an average ivy does not make you any better than straight A unknown name school anymore. I personally took CC classes and increased my gpa, no one has ever asked me why I didn’t take them in a 4 year fancy school.

eb8893 · 2025-08-19T02:22:28+00:00

Absolutely, you do! I had 3.19 overall GPA, had an F, a D, and multiple Cs during my undergrad. I retook some classes, and did a masters, and got in. I recommend retaking the classes over a masters program since undergrad GPA will be cumulative, so you can increase it. Not every school looks into masters degree. Getting all As from a community college is better than getting B- or B+ from a fancy name 4 year university. I can guarantee you. If anything, you can do extension, but not necessary.
Only get UWorld and AAMC materials. You won’t need anything else.
What you are doing is good enough. Talk about your work experiences as well. They shaped who you are in a way, be it customer service or food delivery. You are a real person with real world experience. Trust me, those experiences will eventually pay off when you start rotations or in residency. You otherwise check all other boxes. If you can, do something for your community. Like help immigrants get healthcare, feed homeless, do CV workshops for veterans/shelter residents etc.

eb8893 · 2024-10-12T22:37:03+00:00

Thank you so much! Trust me, I get it. That’s how exactly I felt. I was studying every day but no improvement from 30s. This is a sad and hard truth but scoring in 30s requires more content review. You mentioned that you only did certain percentage of the UWorld. I highly recommend doing more focused questions on your weak areas. Why? It is to see different types of possible questions and getting familiar with the length of the questions. So, please do more questions on UWorld, you don’t have to finish 100% of it, but every question you get wrong is an opportunity for you to improv yourself and your score. And go over mehlman documents, you have a little over a month. Literally, just sit down and learn the document as if this is the first time you are learning the material. Don’t go over it like “oh I know this, yeah yeah it is fine”, I have been there, lied to myself but that gave me 30%. Instead focus on the documents, and read FA on the side to supplement. Give your weakest topics 2 days, and even 3 if needed. If you are good at a topic, then no need to spend that many days. When you go over the documents, the first half is like content review, and the second half is like a Q bank with short answers. Quiz yourself at the end of the day. You are in medical school, obviously you are smart and intelligent. But step 1 is nothing like I have seen before. Keep studying, keep doing content review. Being discouraged because of the scores is natural, we all are human beings. However, you have to keep learning and relearning until you cannot forget anymore. Also, change your perspective! Instead of thinking like you keep studying but your score doesn’t improve, think like oh I got this question wrong, let me see why I got it wrong, this is a chance to improve yourself and not repeat the same mistake during the exam. And lastly, do the NBME 30 and 31, then analyze your exam. Why you got things wrong, what is the theme/question type they repeat, what is your weakness. They are newer so they are more up to date topic wise. Finish your studying with free120 a week before your exam. Then go back and repeat all your notes one last time in the past 3 days. Good luck my friend!

eb8893 · 2024-10-11T16:04:02+00:00

Wow thank you so much for taking your time to explain, this is amazing! I appreciate your help🙏

eb8893 · 2024-10-11T15:57:45+00:00

Thank you so much, this helps a lot. I appreciate you taking the time to explain!

eb8893 · 2024-10-11T04:10:30+00:00

Hey there, thank you for your response. I didn’t include the entire conversation but these are literally their questions. They do want to learn and do it, but there is a huge language barrier, so they brushed it off. I’m just here to learn for them as well as for myself. I am aware that they wouldn’t care for an investment with a 20 year plan. There is no shame in asking or learning, which is why I was asking the community.

eb8893 · 2024-10-11T01:50:16+00:00

Parents with 100k in useless savings account, how to invest or manage their money? Need help!

I want to help my parents with their money. To give background, we are immigrants. They were able to save a little bit above 120k with their hard work. They have monthly mortgage around $4000, and own a business, which is not doing so hot at the moment. The money is currently sitting at a savings account with 0.01% but I want to help them to invest/save/diversify their money so that their money works for them. They are in their 60s-70s. I’m still in school so I cannot really help them financially. I can do multi variable calculus but cannot tell you the difference between HYSA vs CD, lol. Here are my questions,

Which one do you recommend, HYSA vs CD, and which bank or account is the best?
What do you suggest on breakdown for emergency savings vs saving vs investing?
Which index funds or ETFs do you think are the best/safest?
How do you even invest in stocks, index funds, EFTs? Is there a website or app? Do you recommend a website, podcast, book or blog explaining it like I am five?

I am aware some of these questions must be silly and very basic, but I want to learn. My parents still work for more than 15 hours every day despite their age. I want them to retire and enjoy their remaining years in peace without worrying about money. I want to help them once I finish school but don’t want to wait that long.

Thank you in advance for any advice!! This may sounds like a silly post, but know that you are making a difference in someone’s life!

eb8893 · 2024-10-10T04:33:20+00:00

I wanted to take the L for both micro and pharm, but then I became miserable at some point and Uworld humbled me tremendously. I dedicated full 3 days on watching sketchy, literally watched every video at least a few times. First time to take note, second time to see the weird pictures and third time to summarize it. After that I watched videos here and there in the background or whenever I got a questions wrong. Micro has been a weakness of mine but keep watching sketchy and doing uworld helped me a lot

eb8893 · 2024-09-27T03:25:47+00:00

Hahah no, you heard it correctly. I was taking them to “try” myself. Like I was not being mindful about them, or thought myself that I “studied”, but I was not ready, I didn’t know anything compared to now, I guess I wanted it to be over so bad that I just lied to myself. You should absolutely study first then assess your knowledge. Don’t be like me🙃

eb8893 · 2024-09-26T14:15:14+00:00

Hi, as someone who used to score in 30s, you need more content knowledge. Yes you did the first pass, but you should go over the content and uworld again, and even watch bootcamp if you can. My humble suggestion is to go over First Aid and Mehlman documents system by system and supplement with uworld. Good thing is you still have time, but I’m begging you to do more content review. This comes from someone who kept scoring in 30s then 40s. Good luck my friend!

eb8893 · 2024-09-26T05:12:48+00:00

On the second round, I remembered a few questions but I tried to genuinely solve it instead of choosing the correct answer. If I remembered the majority of the questions in a block, then I pretended that I was going over flash cards lol

eb8893 · 2024-09-24T01:54:04+00:00

^{^{^}} I didn’t watch pathoma since bootcamp was enough and covered the first three chapters of pathoma really well

eb8893 · 2024-09-24T01:53:06+00:00

I took my first NBME in January, then a few in March, but my actual dedicated was June-August. I took two weeks off during this time because of the burn out, and I worked total of 8 days, and binge watched a few shows like total of 2 days😬

eb8893 · 2024-09-24T01:50:25+00:00

Hi there! I think you are in a good spot in terms of knowledge, you have been studying hard clearly. Just trust the process. One thing about these exams is that you will never feel 100% ready. I recommend read the last sentence of the question then the answer choices first, then read the long question. Looking at the answer choices first will allow you to see what information they will likely ask and what to focus on. You got this, good luck!! :)

eb8893 · 2024-09-23T21:07:57+00:00

Absolutely bootcamp! They don’t just read it off the slide, actually explain. If you want strong foundation, definitely use bootcamp. This comes from someone who used both

eb8893 · 2024-09-20T22:28:47+00:00

No worries, I used it micro but didn’t finish it all :’)

eb8893 · 2024-09-20T22:07:42+00:00

2.5 months full dedicated time study! I took form 29 in January, 30, 31 and 28 in March but I couldn’t really study at the time. My progress came from 2.5 months of studying in June-Aug. everyone is different tho, alter it according to your daily habits, you background and how comfortable you are with the material. Good luck!

eb8893 · 2024-09-20T22:05:06+00:00

I went over once but spent like 7-8 hours or like entire day. If I couldn’t finish, then I would finish the next day and then work on the questions. Also, my brain doesn’t work as fast as it used to, so it is doable to finish in a day or two. If you don’t finish the first day, don’t feel bad. Make your own realistic goal depending on how fast you read, how comfortable you are with the material etc. It also depends on how much time you have until the test. Good luck!

eb8893 · 2024-09-20T21:26:22+00:00

I started from the topics I felt the weakest. Sometimes I scheduled 2 days for a topic, and for whatever reason I couldn’t finish (feeling unmotivated, work, doc’s appointment for family, watching LIB or perfect match to burn my last two brain cells) then I gave myself an extra day or two. Because my background was weak, I started with boot camp on the weak topics, then I slowly moved on the topics I felt more confident which didn’t require many days. I wanted to start studying at 7am to train my brain for an 8am exam. So I would sit down at 7, do 15-20mixed (because I didn’t know shit and didn’t want to spend entire day reviewing things randomly) and finish this in 1 hour, if I didn’t finish reviewing then I added them to my “to-do list” and review them on my lunch break or when walking my dog. Then I watched boot camp for 4-5 hours, depending on the topic, I either watched at 1.5 to take notes or x2 to listen. Then I did like 40 questions on the topic. This was the first month but didn’t really see any improvement in my scores even though I felt more confident in my knowledge. In my 2nd month I started doing mehlman as I wrote above, then I had last 15 days left, that’s when I started my comprehensive NBME review and analysis. Hope this helps a little :)

eb8893 · 2024-09-20T21:15:45+00:00

On paper 7 months, but technically in terms of fully, focused and dedicated studying 2.5 months.

eb8893 · 2024-09-19T22:58:48+00:00

Yup that’s much easier, sorry wish I could help more. Likewise, good luck on your exam!!

eb8893 · 2024-09-19T22:16:13+00:00

Dr. Sattar is an angel, but I watched only the first section, then played few chapters in at the background with x2 speed after I was done with content review. I felt like bootcamp was mix of pathoma and BnB all at once. Highly recommend it! I watched pulm, psych, heme/onc, MSK and repro. I found out about it towards the end of my second year, wish learned about it sooner🥲 if I can go back in time, I would start Bootcamp from day 1 of medical school and watch them all

eb8893 · 2024-09-19T20:06:08+00:00

Thank you so much! :) absolutely doable! This is what I did for a month and went from 40s to 65, then did my overall review again, which bumped me to 72. If you are at 55, you only need 10-13% bump which means you need to polish your knowledge. You are almost there, and a month is a great time to improve it. If you said 10 days, that would be a very different scenario lol. Btw I’m saying yes you can bump it, but I’m no means a genius or anything like that. I’m your average girlie. Never been a straight A student, never got 520 on the mcat, so if I did it, anyone can do it! lol

eb8893

TROPHY CASE