Hi I know you talked about numbers in the financial sense, but going through this process, how important do you think numbers (grade-wise) are for medical schools? Some schools preach that, did you find that it is true? If so for which schools?
In my opinion, you should always try to aim for at least the average gpa that a medical school says the incoming classes have.
Your grades are important. BUT if you have a 3.5 gpa and want to apply to a school that says their avg gpa is a 3.6 or 3.7 - I say definitely go for it! You still have a chance to be accepted with other stronger parts of your application.
Also if you’re GPA is lower than your goal GPA , make sure that when you look at all of your grades they have an overall trend upwards. So you may have gotten a few Cs your freshman and sophomore year in chemistry but then in junior year you got an A in Organic chemistry. (Yes this happened to me). Then you can at least show that you’ve learned from your mistakes and continued to improve and can apply your lessons to medical school as well.
You don’t have to be a cookie cutter perfect GPA and MCAT applicant. I wouldn’t be able to tell you specific schools that are more strict with the grades you apply with. In my opinion, most schools are looking at the applicant as an entire person and not just their grades.
If anyone has been surprised that they have been accepted to medical school with a lower than average GPA please comment on this to show others that it is possible.
