Yeah.
So let's look at a higher tiered Pod school like DMU. their range for the science GPA was 2.85-3.9 and their overall GPA range was 3.1-4.0 and MCAT 491-505. So someone had a sub 3.0 science GPA, but they were prolly strong in anouther area to compensate, like bob said, he rocked the mcat.
Now at pod school with a large class size, like Kent or Temple, they are much more lenient on their minimums because they have to fill their class. Kent State and Schols are prolly the easiest schools to get into (note: doesn't make them worse or easier to get through the curriculum than the more selective ones)
I would hop on over to the pod forums, there is a podiatry school handbook out there somewhere that shows the ranges of mcat and GPA scores. Plus, prepods tend to be super chill and helpful.
Pods also make really good money. Their data is harder to find uniformity for than other physicians, but general salaries since the addition of the 3 year residency have seen pod earnings raise as well. You can expect to earn 120K-200k during your first five years. After that, really the sky is the limit. Pods with Ortho groups have reported numbers in the 400k range! 400k is certainly the upper end of the scale, but not impossible to achieve.
As a reference, the pod I shadowed graduated back in like 2013 and she told me she had something like a 3.1 and a 16 MCAT. Nobody else took a chance on her, but now she is a practicing doctor doing all kinds of surgical and clinical care for her patients. Pods can make a ton of impact on the day to day living of people, and can even save lives! (gas gangrene). It also afford a little less of a hectic hour schedule for a surgical specialty, tho if you want to work late hours, you certainly can.
Granted, these low scores were a couple years ago, scores have been slowly increasing over the years and since this news about DO grade replacement kinda blindsighted everyone, get in while you still can. From what I see in the forums and from my own experience, DO schools are unaffected by the grade replacement policy, and are still picking high GPA MCAT score people.
So with soft minimums, is it basically a situation where an app below 3.0 will be looked at (and not screened out), but then you need to be outstanding in other fields (MCAT, EC's etc) to get in?
