GPA, Chiropractic School, and standardizing

Last week in school we had a discussion about standardizing the requirements for getting into school. I was surprised at how many people we against some standardization. The rational was that there are more slots available in chiropractic schools than there are applicants therefore until we have more applicants than slots we shouldn't standardize. I think that is a big mistake.

First off most of the medical community feels chiropractic is somewhat of a joke. In my undergrad work I rubbed elbows a lot with the pre-med students and the sentiment among them was something like this "If I don't make it into medical school I can always become a chiropractor." That is a scary thought. Chiropractic is seen as the bottom of the barrel. Chiropractic and Medicine need to play nice together in the school yard. We need to see that we complement each other and are not necessarily at odds with each other. We can't play nice until we respect each other and the med-students don't respect someone who can get into a health profession program with a GPA of 2.0 - 2.5.

There has been talk of bumping up the required GPA to get into school to a 3.0 and I whole heartily agree. It gives us more clout when we have a higher minimum among the med-students. One might ask what does it matter when the med-students are only students. It matters cause they will become the doctors we chiropractic students are going to have to work along side with. I have faith in chiropractic and what it can do for people but we still have to play with the doctors of the medical community. The standardization of school requirements is only the beginning of course. The chiropractic community needs to show our merit to the medical community and be able to share our message with the rest of the world not just other chiropractors.