How to Get into Medical School with a Low GPA

By: Dr. Shirag Shemmassian, PhD

Medical School with a Low GPA

Becoming a doctor is no easy feat. Surviving the gauntlet of the medical school admissions process requires great undergraduate grades, a strong MCAT score, extracurricular activities that demonstrate intellectual engagement with science and personal investment in clinical care, plus that X-factor that can only be communicated through the many essays you’ll have to write.

But what if your GPA–one of the four pillars of a successful medical school application–isn’t ideal? (In the case of prospective physicians, less than a 3.7/4.0 GPA is less than ideal. Anything lower than a 3.5 will make your admissions odds very tough.)

Here are a few tips to get into medical school with a low GPA:

Consider enrolling in a post-baccalaureate program or a Special Master’s Program (SMP)

Post-baccs and SMPs are often thought of as routes to med school for people with non-traditional medical backgrounds or career-changing applicants.

But they can also be good options for applicants who need to boost their science grades or stronger letters of recommendation. Georgetown Medical Institute and the UC Postbaccalaureate Consortium are two examples of this sort of program.

There’s little financial aid available for such programs. However, if you come from a group that’s underrepresented in medicine, you can apply to programs like the Drexel Pathway to Medical School program or the Florida State University Master’s Bridge Program.

Consider addressing why your grades were weak in an essay.

There’s nothing more tiresome for admissions officers than reading an essay that presents a list of excuses for poor academic performance. Are your grades weak because you had difficulty making the transition to college? Because the classes were, well, hard? Because you partied too much? You probably shouldn’t write an essay explaining these circumstances.

But if there were extenuating circumstances that can truly explain your poor performance, you may be able to make it the subject of an essay.

What counts as extenuating? The death of a family member or personal illness are two examples. The litmus test is whether you can tell a story that truly connects to your present-day plans to become a doctor. If there’s a forward-looking, non-defensive narrative you can craft, go for it. If not, make up for your poor grades in other corners of your application.

Remember: a good narrative requires humility, growth, and change. If you grew from your difficult situation, you might have an essay worth writing.

Get a letter of recommendation from a professor who saw you improve.

Say you got a B minus in your organic chemistry class sophomore year, but you took another course with the same professor senior year and aced it. That person might be a good recommender for you if they can do what we just mentioned above: craft a narrative that suggests a continuing upward trend in your academic performance.

If they can’t do that, don’t ask them to provide a defense or an excuse for your grades.

Obtain more clinical experience.

Your academic capabilities speak to your ability to succeed during medical school. You’ll have to do a ton of studying; there’s no way around that.

But practical experience also says something about your future skills as a doctor. Using a gap year or two to spend time in clinical environments as a scribe, shadower, volunteer, EMT, or something else along those lines can improve your odds.

Remember, though, that clinical experience might convince an admissions committee that you’d be great in a hospital environment, but not automatically great as a physician. So however you write about those experiences in a personal statement, do so with the knowledge that you don’t want to be mistaken for someone who could as easily attend PA school or become a nurse. Be prepared to speak directly to the reality of being an MD, and make a case for your own qualifications to become one.

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is a medical school admissions expert who has helped hundreds of students get into schools such as Harvard, Mayo, and UCSF.

Growing up with Tourette Syndrome in a middle-class family, Dr. Shemmassian was often mocked by peers and teachers and discouraged from applying to elite colleges. Therefore, he taught himself everything he needed to know to graduate debt-free with his B.S. in Human Development from Cornell and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA.

Dr. Shemmassian has been featured in The Washington Post, US News & World Report, and NBC, as well as been invited to speak at Stanford, Yale, and UCLA. He presents on topics including writing memorable personal statements, developing a unique extracurricular profile, and acing interviews.

*** #LifeofaMedStudent and Dr. Shemmassian have no financial relationship ***

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