1. Your age and GPA and MCAT if you have it.
late 20's, AACOMAS (osteopathic) cumulative and science gpa are both within +/- 0.1 of 3.2, my MCAT was a 32
2. Your financial and work situation.
good now, but on public assistance during my postbac 'cause i was poor as hell then
3. Your family and significant other situation.
^^
4. Your plan or your path to success.
I'm so happy to finally post here! This is gonna be hella long, since it was a helluva journey
after college I landed a job absolutely
loathed it. I came home every day bitter and exhausted. at some point, I just kind of broke, and quit. in my application personal statement, I make the quitting sound more pre-meditated than it really was, like I knew I was going to go back to school and do a postbac. but at the time,
I had no idea what I was doing. In hindsight, I did know I wanted to work in healthcare
I did know, however, that I needed to go back to school and fix what had gone so wrong in undergrad. I had barely graduated college, and my overall GPA was a 2.5, my science GPA was probably around a 1.8. Also, I had a ****ton of credits, 5 years worth, since I took a year abroad before college and transferred in those credits.
at that point I was a resident of the state I was living in, and could enroll at a state college and take classes for almost nothing. I started planning on nursing, since I was sure I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell for med school. my academic self esteem was shot to ****. I enrolled in 5 courses, all upper level science plus gen chem (which I had already taken, twice, and failed once, got a D the second time. god bless the DO grade replacement policy).
I got all A's! 
I started gaining some hard-won self confidence. I also was doing some clinical volunteering, and had to admit to myself that nursing was not what I really wanted. this is the point when the idea of med school started flitting across my mind. I began thinking back to what I had always wanted to do, which was medicine. I found a journal entry from back in high-school saying I wanted to be a doctor one day. I guess I must have completely pushed it out of my mind because I didn't think I could do it.
next, I met with my schools pre-med advisor. who was a truly mean spirited person. also certainly a poor advisor. he looked at my new list of A's and scoffed. literally. he scoffed at me. he said my looooong list of poor grades would not be overcome with a postbac. he said
maybe, maybeee if I got a 35+ on my MCAT I would avoid the reject pile at a handful of school. he told me to apply to the Carib, and he said he wasn't even sure about that for a candidate as poor as myself. after that meeting I cried in the bathroom for about an hour. but, I didn't give up. I was also pretty suspicious of him for advising me to apply to Carib schools.
this is horrible advice. do. not. go. Caribbean.
I enrolled in organic chemistry next. I got my first test back. I had failed. badly. holy crap. not good. knew if I failed this, my chances would be shot. I studied a variety of ways, for hours and hours, until, at some point, it clicked. I got a (verrrry hard-earned) C- in organic I. I got an A in organic II.
I sailed through the rest of my 2 year postbac, getting pretty much straight A's (and retook organic I for an A)
Thanks to DO school grade replacement policy, I pulled up both my cumulative and science GPAs above a 3.0, and applied. I just found out last week that I got into one of my top choice DO schools. I cried in my car when I found out.
moral of the story:
even the worst undergrad grades can be remediated with enough time and hard work.
your pre-med adivsior might not be familiar with the concept of a postbac and/or reinvention. ....don't drink that haterade, it is obviously possible from all the posts in this thread.
don't be afraid of DO schools! they are great for a variety of reasons, which I will let you find out for yourselves
