Naturally, getting a very high GPA in your fourth year
will be crucial to a successful application, considering the results of you last three years. If I
were to look from an admissions committee's point of
view, I would see a candidate with significant
clinical experience, but also one who has had a
downward trend in marks following a solid first year.
Therefore, aceing fourth year will help show the
admissions committee that you are fully capable of handling a difficult workload.
With that said, having two consecutive years of
not-so-great marks is going to hurt in any case. If
the schools you apply to perform a computer screen on
all incoming applications, (ie. only consider
interviewing the applicants with the top 50% GPA) then
your GPA might be lowered to such an extent that you
would fall below the threshold. In this case, you
won't receive an interview, and having clinical experience counts for nothing.
If the committee grants you an interview, it's because
your GPA is sufficiently high. You'll then have a
chance to explain those two slippery years to your
interviewers, who may bring it up to the other members
of the committee. But first, you've got to get those
fourth year marks way up. Having a strong MCAT (ie.
greater than 30), will also prove that you can stand
the academic rigors of med school.
During your interview, you'll surely be asked why you
have decided to switch from nursing to medicine. I
think there may be an unspoken bias against
professional students applying into medicine. The
rationale is firstly that you have inadvertantly taken
a spot away from someone who truly wanted to be a
nurse, and secondly that it shows that personal
commitment and job loyalty may not be very high.
I want to emphasize that this viewpoint and bias is
not fair, but I believe it may exist. It may not
exist at the schools you are interested in, but
because of that possibility, you should be absolutely
clear in your interviews why you feel nursing is not
what you want in a career, and why you believe that medicine is the right choice. If it's what you really want, I personally would love to one day work side by side with you.
As an aside, my classmates include former occupational
therapists, physiotherapists, and pharmacists.
However, I don't think there are any former nurses.
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