Session 22

Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan jumps into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where he pulls a question and delivers the answers right on to you.

In today's episode, Ryan tackles the topic on taking a postbac or SMP for a 32-year old science major with a lot of credits while having poor numbers. Listen in to learn more about this. 

OldPreMeds Question of the Week:

The poster is a 32-year old nontraditional premed student; graduated in 2007 with a chemistry/computer science double major; Science GPA with 3.05 and accumulative of 3.13; lots of credits to GPA's. Should they take the basic prerequisite science classes considering the not-so-stellar grades? Formal postbac program would be great but most of them specify that the applicant cannot have more than 50% science grades completed.

Here are the insights from Ryan: Two types of postbac programs:

1. Career-changers

Where you haven't taken a lot of science courses

They don't want you to have any of your sciences done or at least not a lot of them done

1. Record-enhancers

You went through school as a science major, knew you wanted to be premed, but you struggled so you need help to enhance your GPA

They have specific postbac programs for students like this poster

Out of 223 postbac programs, there are 152 record-enhancing programs

Are SMP's high risk?

SMP's are great because they're usually tied to the medical school and you're taking classes with medical students

You are performing for the school to say that you're doing just as well as their medical students and that you're building relationships

Caveat:

If you do the math to enhance the record with a lot of credits to take more science courses and get straight A's, the GPA is not going to move very much.

In this case, consider a special masters program because it will be a separate grade in the application.

Links and Other Resources:

OldPreMeds.org

AAMC List of Postbac Programs - Special Program Focus

MedEdMedia.com