About me:
I'm a CA ORM with a bachelor’s in biochem BS at a uni. I'm an Asian Indian male with a low GPA. I graduated undergrad last year with aamc cgpa 2.8 and aamc sgpa 2.6. I got an mcat score last year of 519.
ECs:
I went to emt school 3 years ago but never took the nremt so i never got licensed in time. However, i retook emt school last year before graduating, got licensed, and have been working as an EMT for this past year, and part time research assistant. I have some shadowing experience (like 40 hours) and an additional 24 hours clinical emt experience from 3 years ago. i worked as a behavior interventionist last year during school and have about 600 hours of that. I have 300 hours experience as a delivery driver from last year (not really relevant). I started a club at my uni two years, its a boxing club and i became the president for two years, it was about promoting health and wellness through boxing. We expanded this club, raised club funding by doing fundraising, volunteered and did community activities for the second year.
Main clinical experience: 1 year of EMT
Non-medical clinical: behavior intervenionist
Shadowing: 40 hours
Research: no publications, research assistant
Other: boxing club, driver
My Story:
Bad study habits, lots of procrastination for exams. I also had issues come up during my second year of college (my parents went bankrupt). They have trouble speaking english so i had to help with a lot of the bankruptcy filing stuff, which was super stressful alongside school. Since this was a stressful time, I started avoiding stressful things altogether and didn’t pay attention in school. At the time, I felt like I had enough stress from home and didn’t think about how damaging my GPA will damage my future. Then, my third year i got into a skating accident resulting in a traumatic brain injury and I broke my collarbone. This affected my grades and I got a lot of Ws on my transcript. After this, I found myself procrastinating more and not studying consistently and my gpa went down pretty bad. I continued on a downward trend. My fourth year grades were basically all Fs or Ds because I faced financial difficulty and struggled to focus on both school and work (i worked part time as a delivery driver), and consistently lacked good study habits. A lot of my bad grades had to do with my horrible study habits and lack of focus towards academics. For example, I retook Organic chem lab in my senior year because I failed it previously. I failed it the second time too for the same reason: I always missed my assignment due dates and didn’t stay on top of deadlines.
I knew I had to change things. I took some months off before taking a fifth year at my uni for my degree. I took 42 quarter units of upperdiv biochemistry classes last year. I got straight As and two A-. This raised my GPA up to what it is now, which is sadly still terrible because I graduated with a total of 210 quarter units. I took the MCAT after that and scored 519. Despite the decent mcat score and upward trend, I feel like my recent efforts aren't really going anywhere because I'm a CA ORM and my overall gpa is still low. Plus, my upward trend is only recent for one year whereas I’ve had a downward trend for 4 whole years. After a 1.5 year DIY post bacc with all A’s in upper division science classes (60 quarter units/40 semester credits), I crawled my way back up to 3.02 sGPA and 3.1 cGPA. This leaves me with a ~2 year upward trend.
What should I do from here? Should I apply for accredited post bacc programs to further raise my overall GPA? Should I apply for SMPs? Do I even stand a chance since I got low grades on medical prerequisites early on? (Even though I retook them in my post bacc)? My MCAT score expires in a little over a year. Is it impossible for me to get into an MD since I’m a California ORM?
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