Advice to a Premed Mom Reapplying to Medical School | Application Renovation (S2 E6)

Today we're looking through the full AMCAS application for a nontraditional premed who applied to only one school last year and didn't get in. From her 497 MCAT score to her bumpy past grades, there's a lot to discuss—as always!

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When asked to identify her own weaknesses, our student mentions that she had a low MCAT score, she applied late in the cycle (September 30th), and she made some other random little mistakes on her application.

She's a nontraditional student with college transcripts going back to 2004! She got several Ds and Fs back in college, along with plenty of Cs. She also had an F in her graduate program.

If you look at her postbac GPA, she had a 3.35 science GPA and a 3.02 cumulative GPA. However, if you look at her overall undergrad, the science GPA is 2.18 and the cumulative GPA is 2.73.

What's more concerning than the low final numbers is that it wasn't just one year of bad science grades—it's more of an ongoing trend.

For the MCAT, she was scoring around 510 on her practice tests. Then she had to delay her MCAT due to family illness issues, she lost her practice, and she ended up only getting a 497.

I look through her activities section and personal statement and give some tips about how to tell her story better, including a tip about why I don't like dialog in personal statements.

She only applied to one medical school because of family constraints and knowing that her application was weak at this point anyway.

Luckily, she got feedback from the one school she did apply to. That school said her grades have been on a good upward trend, so those don't worry them too much. They said the MCAT score was too low—specifically, the bio/biochem section—and that was the main thing holding her back.

At the end of the video, we talk about her plans for moving forward. The main thing for her is likely going to be retaking the MCAT. She may not need to take more classes since her local school (top choice) said she could get in there just with a better MCAT.

For more full medical school application reviews, be sure to check out the full playlist of Application Renovation episodes at http://applicationrenovation.com.