Medical Education US

Hi,
I have a BS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. I am 39 years old. I have been working in the engineering field for 13 years. I am thinking of changing careers - and would like to know how possible is it for me to get into medical school. My first question is – Is it too late for me? I am very much interested in Neurology, mainly in research. My other question is – will medical schools place high importance on my GPA from my undergraduate studies fourteen years ago, even if I do really well on the MCAT and pre-med courses? I graduated with an overall GPA of 2.8. But I aced all of my physics, calculus, and chemistry courses.

Thank you for your help.

Regards,
Jay

I would say it's never too late, but you may want to check out some of the online forums for older medical students, often referred to as "non-traditional medical students". A few that come up when searching google include:

A nice site for non-traditional medical students that appears to have clear, simple, unbiased information

National Society of Nontraditional Premedical and Medical Students, Inc

and there are a gazillion others, including plenty of blogs with advice and ideas for people who are considering medicine for their career change.

As for your GPA, I'm not sure how much it will be a factor. I'm guessing you'll need to take/re-take the required pre-med courses before applying to medical school, and I would think those grades would have a bigger influence. In my uneducated opinion, I would think that if you get very good grades in the required pre-med courses now, your application would be better than someone who is just graduating college with a 2.8 GPA. I think current grades would be a better indication of how you are likely to perform now.

Having said that, though, I think you'd still need to be able to explain why your grades were not better 14 years ago compared to how they are now.