Best Way to Boost GPA and overall application?

[themanonthemoon]

I was originally going to apply to PA school this summer, but I don't believe my application is strong enough. My GPA is barely at the minimum: overall of 3.27 and sGPA of 3.14. I have over 3250 patient care hours as a scribe, but my GPA concerns me. I am graduating from my 4 year university this May and do not want to come back for another semester (so expensive) and I'd like to take as many classes at community college as possible. My plan is to work as an EMT-B over the next year to further boost my application as well. Anyway, I'm posting all the classes I got C's in (and 1 D unfortunately) and would like to know the best ones to retake. I also have a somewhat downward grade trend which I know hurts my application and I don't have an excuse for except for illness and having to work. I won't be taking the GRE until 2020 shortly before I apply. I'm just looking for the best ways to improve my app until then.

Anatomy and Physiology II Lab: 1 credit - C. (Got a B in the 3 credit lecture)
Organic Chemistry I: 4 credits - C. (Got a B in the 1 credit lab)
Organic Chemistry II: 3 credits - C. (No lab taken)
Human Physiology Capstone: 4 credits - C ( I know this one is going to sting the most, like, a lot)
Molecular Genetics: 3 credits -D (Only D in college, but at least it's for a non prereq)

Thank you guys for your input!

EDIT: If I retook all of the above classes and got an A in all of them, my GPA would increase to approximately ~3.57.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[pamac]

They would average your retakes, not replace the grades, unfortunately.

You have a challenge ahead of you. With professional schools, the rule of thumb is that the difficulty of the graduate level courses means that you can often expect that if you were a B average student in undergrad, you would be looking at being a C average student in your professional program given the intensity. I found that to be true, with the added component of the fact that many professional schools also don’t count anything below a B as sufficient for passing. So in my Np program, not only did I have to work a lot harder to get A’s (because they graded things harder, and what it took to get A’s before would have gotten me B’s in Np school), I also had to get above a C+ to be passing. AND.... then they skewed the grading so that a B+ was anything given to grades that were from like 89% to 92%. I didn’t realize that for several semesters until I saw that I had a 91 percent in a class, and it registered as a B+, and I was like “isn’t that an A-? Nope. So PA programs might have a lot of the same grading features, and I’ve heard of several that at least only allow folks above C range to be considered passing. And PA programs seriously have 6 great students for every 8 that apply, so nothing compels them to take candidates that could easily fail out, leaving the program with an empty seat that they lose out on tens of thousands of dollars in tuition. That’s the logic behind the notion that poor students need to put forth a tremendous effort to prove themselves to PA programs. By the time school starts, they want everyone to be ready to buckle down and perform well, and they have many, many folks to choose from that can do that. They don’t have seats set aside for folks that aren’t self starters, and they don’t apologize for that. It used to be that there were other avenues available to be evaluated, but so many folks showed up with good grades that they didn’t need to justify being picky. For instance, there are lots of EMT’s that also have excellent grades, so programs can be diverse while still getting folks with unique backgrounds into their programs. A long time ago, if you wanted non traditional folks in your program to balance things out, you had to lower academic standards a bit to reach them. It’s all just about the competition.

 

[themanonthemoon]

Well, shoot you're absolutely right. I didn't even think about the averages of the grades. So if I retook all of those classes, that would put me around a sGPA 3.3.

Thank you so much for such a detailed and thoughtful reply. You're right, I absolutely did set myself up for a challenge. Do you have any specific suggestions for me to attempt to overcome this challenge?

 

[pamac]

I can give you my sympathy, because about a decade ago I had a similar challenge ahead of me, albeit with slightly better numbers. It could have been done back then if I hadn’t gotten into RN school as well and decided to take the Np path for other reasons. But I think that the Gpa standards have only tightened for PA, and you’d be aiming for a target each year that is steadily moving away from you. You try to fix things, then apply and wait to see if it worked, and then a year later can apply again if it didn’t. That’s a long wait for feedback, and I wasn’t interested in taking that gamble, so I jumped at the chance to become an NP and have the benefits that come with the independent license.