Can You Get Into Med School With Ac

A couple of W’s on a transcript shouldn’t be a worry. Even less if they are for non-science courses.

Can I Get Into Medical School With C’s? (Explained!)

So you dream of being a doctor but your classes aren’t going as well as you hoped. Don’t worry. Plenty of others share that experience. But where do you stand?

Do medical schools accept C’s?

Yes. You can get into some medical school with C’s but it significantly limits your options. You’ll need to retake prerequisite courses to raise your overall GPA, while also having an exceptional application. Failing that, there are a few other options.

In this article, we’ll talk more about what these are. You’ll learn:

Where (and when) you can get into med school with C’s
The impact of low grades
Alternative options you may want to explore
My own story of studying medicine with “less-than-competitive grades”

Ready to find out more? Let’s go.

Can You Get into Med School with C’s?

As a student at a European med school myself, I can confirm, you can get into med school here with just C’s.

The minimum requirements of my own University, Medical University Varna, are (for British students taking A-levels) grade C and above. But it’s a similar story for a lot of other med schools on the continent (as well as abroad) also.

The truth is that there are lots of U.S., Indian, German, British students, etc. studying in these med schools with less than “ideal grades”.

But there are also students with C’s to their names studying in top-tier American and British med schools.

Getting in is possible if other parts of your application are exceptional.

How to overcome bad grades on a medical school application

“Bad grades” can be overcome with the following:

Outstanding personal statements
Great MCAT (or equivalent medical school entrance) scores
Strong healthcare-related work experience

Other times low grades can be overcome by looking at your options and identifying other opportunities. Like those abroad.

The point is; don’t be deterred from thinking med school (and becoming a doctor) is off the table just because you have C’s. It isn’t.

And don’t listen to the elite high-achieving med students on YouTube and the internet either.

I’m a med student studying with a B (chemistry) to my name. Many other people I know have C’s too.

Do You Need Straight A’s To Get Into Medical School?

No, but it helps.

This is true of almost every country. Scoring as high as possible opens up more options. Possibly even the chance of scholarships and obtaining free rides.

Where having straight A’s helps is when you’re coming fresh out of high school or college. At this point, you don’t have enough life experience to flesh out application sections focused on activities and extracurriculars. Or career experience.

To compete at this level, and to separate yourself from the thousands of other applicants, scoring straight A’s is one way of doing that.

It’s a differentiator.

But if you’re in one of the following positions, straight A’s aren’t entirely necessary:

A non-traditional applicant (like me – you have career experience and a life outside school)
A nurse, physician assistant, pharmacist or ther healthcare professional looking to become a doctor (due to extensive healthcare-related experience)
A minority or special circumstance applicant (there are special programs in the US, UK and other countries for students of certain family income levels and backgrounds)
Life science degree holders

Med schools look more favorably on the grades of applicants from these backgrounds.

Their experience (and academic achievements) are proof enough they can most likely cut it in med school.

Why Do Some Medical Schools Accept Students With Average Grades?

Grades may be a good indication of aptitude but they’re not the be-all and end-all when it comes to becoming a successful doctor (see my article: why medical school grades don’t matter).

Med school application boards are aware of this. They also value other qualities in their applicants; including maturity, responsibility, and organizational skills.

The truth is not all students that are accepted with straight A’s into med school will become doctors either. Some will become disillusioned and quit. Others might fail out for other reasons.

As I’ve said before; you don’t have to be exceptionally smart to be a doctor. You just have to be hard-working, willing to listen, and be resilient enough to complete the degree.

These factors matter most.

How Many W’s Are Too Many for Medical School?

A ‘W’ stands for a class withdrawal.

For US-focused applicants taking pre-med courses, this can sometimes be a worry.

Too many W’s (anything more than five) may be taken as a bad sign – particularly as it looks like you’re trying to keep your grades high by avoiding failure (“grade grubbing”).

A couple of W’s on a transcript shouldn’t be a worry. Even less if they are for non-science courses.

Of course, you can’t be entirely sure how an admissions board will see W’s (or your grades in general) however.

As selection criteria vary across colleges, and among the decision-makers who sit on the admissions committees, it might not be that big of a deal if you do have a lot of W’s if other areas of your application shine.

If you’re unsure, the best thing to do is contact medical schools directly and ask them about their admissions policy.

That’s the only way to know for sure.

Do Medical Schools Accept Summer Courses?

US students can sometimes make up missing prerequisite courses for a med school application by taking courses in the summer.

Although most med schools will accept these, it is sometimes seen negatively when weighed against other candidates taking the same courses through a normal academic year.

The problem with summer courses is as follows:

Their course content is often “thinner” due to a reduced course length
The exam environment may not be seen as “competitive” compared to the normal academic period

I go into all this in far more depth in the following article…

What Can I Do to Maximise My Chances of Getting Into Medical School?

Students with C grades, as already mentioned, will have fewer options available to them than those with a higher GPA.

But there’s nothing stopping you from the taking time required to improve your application and make it more competitive.

Here are some common rules to follow that can help you do that:

Don’t panic: low grades don’t mean it’s the end of the line
Evaluate your study techniques, work out how to study more effectively and alter your strategy
Retake courses where you scored B’s or C’s
Communicate your experience gained from retakes in your application (tailor it to explain how your resilience and attitude helped you overcome the initial setback)
Focus on other areas of your application that could help differentiate you: volunteer work, clinical experience, shadowing, research etc.

Hard work (and a little luck) can definitely help you overcome bad grades.

International Medical School

If all of the above sounds near impossible, you still have the option of applying to study medicine abroad.

There are many countries that offer internationally recognized medical degrees that are taught in English.

Most also have flexible admissions criteria that are more likely to overlook “poor grades.”

Here are some examples:

Romania: “Vasile Goldis” Western University of Arad
Bulgaria: Medical University Varna, Plovdiv, Sofia, Pleven
Serbia: University of Belgrade
Italy: Check out the various English international programs (admissions is solely based on your IMAT score)
Czech Republic: Charles University (see this review), Masaryk University, Palacky University
Hungary: Semmelweis University, Debrecen, Szeged
Poland: Gdansk, Warsaw, Lodz, Wroclaw

Besides myself (check out my about page for more on my story), an American national, MA to MD, has a pretty good story about how he left the U.S. to study medicine in Poland.

It’s cheaper too, as he explains in the following video…

Summary

To sum things up; you definitely still can get into med school with C’s.

The journey may obviously be tougher, and the decisions you make may not be easy, but it is still possible.

Research what options are available to you and what you can do to improve your application. Don’t give up just because you came up short in a couple of classes.

It happens to the best of us!

Do I Need to Retake C/D/F Classes to Get Into Med School?

Session 116

Do you need to retake C/D/F classes from earlier in college? Listen to find out why you may not need to retake classes and what you should consider instead.

Listen to this podcast episode with the player above, or keep reading for the highlights and takeaway points.

By the way, the episodes in this podcast are recordings of our Facebook Live that we do at 3 pm Eastern on most weekdays. Check out our Facebook page and like the page to be notified. Also, listen to our other podcasts on MedEd Media. If you have any questions, call me at 617-410-6747.

[0:30] Question of the Day

“I’m going back and retaking classes to improve my GPA. Should I retake General Chemistry or not?”

Her GPA had an upward trend where it was pretty low for her first two years of college and then it went up for her junior and senior years. She thinks she can’t move it that much more without possibly going back and retaking classes.

She’s taking upper-level Bio classes and Neuroscience classes but not Chemistry classes. She has not taken Genetics.

[1:25] Seeing the Big Picture

At the end of the day, the question isn’t, “Did you retake it? Can you prove that you can handle chemistry?” What does your trend look like? What does your GPA look like? Is there a consistent story of you having a C in General Chemistry 1, another C in General Chemistry 2, a C in Organic Chemistry? Which potentially points to you not having a good foundation in Chemistry in general. That’s really the heart of the question.

The one C at the end of the day doesn’t really matter. Retaking one C doesn’t really matter.

If you feel like at this point, you’ve done well in the upper-division at past Chemistry, if you struggled in let’s say, Chemistry 1, but you did decent in Chemistry 2, Organic Chemistry 1 and 2, Biochemistry, etc. then you are probably okay. Then you don’t need to take General Chemistry all over again.

There’s no difference math-wise between you retaking your Gen Chem series versus you just taking something else at the end of the day.

[3:07] Getting Multiple C’s from Early On

Again, think of the big picture. Overall, your GPA is fine. You have some C’s you’ve overcome. Obviously, you’ve done very well.

Schools won’t think you can’t handle medical school because you got a C. More likely, they will look into where you’ve gone from there. Some students retake the classes early on. Maybe that’s not the right or the wrong thing. Maybe that individual student retook the classes to improve their foundational knowledge.

At this point, you’re close to finishing wherever you’re at in your schooling. Going back and taking freshman or sophomore level classes when you’re about to graduate just doesn’t make sense. Especially given that overall, your GPA isn’t bad and you have a really good trend.

If you have C’s throughout, then there’s a concern over how academically qualified you are for medical school.

That being said, there are a million reasons for early Cs. Maybe you just had some adjustment issues, maybe you tried to take on too much or you just had some issues learning the pace of college. Whatever those reasons are, you had those early C’s, you improved, you have an upward trend, you figured stuff out and you’re doing great. So those C’s aren’t a concern.

Our student believes she has four C’s from a mix of freshman and sophomore year. She’s consistent in Chemistry and Bio. And a mix of it spread out throughout those first two years is not going to be an issue.

Assuming you have this strong upward trend and your upper-division classes are good grades, this would lend you an upward trend. So it’s not an issue. Moreover, the foundation is there when you think about MCAT prep. Again, that’s assuming you’re doing well in your upper-division classes.

[5:48] Taking a Master’s Program to Improve GPA

Our student was also considering doing a Master’s program in order to improve her GPA. Her cumulative GPA overall is 3.6. Her last two years, GPA-wise would be about 3.7.

You don’t need a Master’s for 3.6 or 3.5. Master’s are for 3.1 or 3.2 students potentially. In that case, I typically don’t recommend master’s programs.

Instead, I recommend postbac programs where you’re doing more undergraduate-level coursework because that’s what medical schools tend to lean on. You don’t need any sort of improvement.

You’ve proven academically, with your upward trend, that you are academically capable of medical school. You’ve done that already. You struggled early, and then you improved. Your overall GPA in your mind isn’t great, but a 3.5 is a solid GPA. So many students on SDN would look at that and freak out thinking they need to do a master’s. That’s just not true.

Take the MCAT and make sure the rest of your application is well-rounded. Make sure you have good clinical experience, you’re shadowing, and that you can put together a solid story on why you want to be a physician. Then you’ll be fine.

[8:18] GPA as a Hindrance

This student is bothered that her GPA might hinder. But it actually helps because we can see a story of struggle and then triumph, then some initial issues, and then ultimately figuring it out. That to me is a stronger student than someone just coming and getting 3.7 across the board – not improving.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that but I like the story of someone who had some early issues for whatever reason and then figured it out and did better.

And that tells the admissions committee that when and if you struggle in medical school, you’ve been down this path already and you’ll figure it out again.

I was at an admissions conference in 2019 in Toronto and I was speaking on behalf of premed students. It was all deans and directors of admissions of medical schools, nursing schools, PT schools, etc. The kind of overarching theme that I kept hearing from all these admissions committee members was:

Someone who was given life on a silver platter with a 3.7 GPA versus someone who struggled early on and then figured it out is a much better story in terms of who you are and what you’ve been through.

So don’t worry about your GPA, it’s not going to be an issue. You obviously need a strong MCAT score and the rest of your application needs to be solid. But in terms of GPA, I wouldn’t be concerned about it holding you back enough for you to go and spend $20,000-$40,000 on a Master’s program, which I typically don’t recommend anyway.