nkased

4success,
I had a similar question which I posed to my brother, who was successly admitted to many med schools and now attends UCSF. His was response was that you should really only worry about your GPA and MCAT scores. In fact, taking the easiest courses you need and doing really well in the will be your best choice. He said he has a classmate that attended Juilliard and only took the bare minimums for med school. The students that he saw not get into med school were the ones that thought they could take four or five really difficult courses each semester and ended up performing worse than they should have.

berry986

I am having trouble with chem for some reason. Bio is a breeze and I have great grades. My chem lab grade is an A but even with that and my recitation grade I will be lucky to get B in chem for first semester. I am considering not taking chem next semester and taking it over the summer at a school back home but I don't think this is a good idea. I could retake it next year with physics instead of organic. My other grades are A's also. So save for chem I have a near 4.0 for first semester. I need some advice.

berry986

I talked to some of the med schools i am interested and while they are not thrilled about me taking the class somewhere else they would much prefer a higher MCAT and GPA above all. The school I am most interested in actually did not care where I took the class which is such a relief.

faithfaith

from what i have heard i would tell you not to do the chemistry in another school. i hear that this will be seen for what it is. you were looking for a place where you can easily pass the class. don't set all your hopes on the reqirements of one school.

deathtoOWL

I know the school berry986 is referring to because my father is the associate dean of admissions and for this school and berry's situation(B average) it is okay.
That being said now on to my problem. I decided to become pre-med near the end of my first semester of freshmen year i.e. now. The problem is unlike berry my chem grade is in the C or below range. So I am faced with a similar situation. I can take chem over the summer at a school back home or I can wait and start the premed series over sophomore year. If I did this I would be taking Bio and Chem and Cal. Since I don't want to apply to my father's school I am in a bind. Since my final is tomorrow I am not looking to pull a miracle grade but I am looking for options. If I take chem over the summer I would probably take it at my current school but at later time like senior year. Or another option is taking chem over the summer and taking a higher level chem class at my current school to show I can handle the work.
I am not planning on applying to medical school immediately following undergrad I am looking toward grad school and maybe a doctorate before med school. Any advice would be helpful.
I am hoping not to have to talk to my father about my future plans for med school until I am 100% sure this is what I want. Right now I am 95% and increasing.

vandygrl

Hi everyone!
I am a pre-med Chemistry major at Vanderbilt, and I am terrified that I won't get into med school because of GPA. I should end up with a 3.1 science and 3.3 overall by the time I apply. I made a 28 on my first MCAT practice test with Kaplan, and I hope to get at least a 35. Vanderbilt has horrible grade deflation, and I don't know how much that will factor into my admission. I'm simply hoping to get into University of Tennessee, which has an average MCAT of 28 but science and overall GPA of 3.5. I have great clinical experience and was an international science fair participant. I plan on doing research all summer before applying in the fall. I simply don't know what I would do other than med school. I just want an honest opinion about my chances. Thanks and Happy Holidays!

cobrien05

If you can't do anything about your GPA, do as much as you can to make yourself stand out from other applicants in your interview/essay/etc.

Jmed08

Hi, this is my first post on CC. i cant seem to find a consensus on this question, but what exactly are the GPAs that are calculated? i've heard it's the pre-med requirements, then a science GPA, then overall GPA. is that correct? also at my school (Stanford), as im sure it is at many schools, the units for classes vary (ex. first/second quarter orgo was 4 units, third quarter was 3, bio is 5)... is this factored into calculating science GPA?

lastly, can someone give me an idea of my chances for med school? i just had a pretty rough first quarter of sophomore year (i studied as hard as usual, but am just a poor test-taker, which really screws me over when final exams are given so much weight)
anyway, my "science" classes have been so far:

gen chem B
orgo A-/B+/B
chem lab A/A-
bio B+
multivar. calc B
stats B+

overall gpa about 3.5... so i have no idea what the right way of calculating science GPA is but factoring in how many units each class is worth, i came out with 3.3.

thanks

cetsweetie

Hi, I have a few questions:
1)I am looking for a part-time job that will give me real experience in patient care. What kind of jobs would you recommend? I am a college grad, but don't have any special certification (ie Medical Assisting, phelbotomy). I'd be willing to take a medical assisting class, or something like it, but I can't find any offered in Boston in less than a 2 year setting (even though I'm told there are 6 week certifications.) Any advice?

2)I have just graduated this December, but have 3 lab science pre-reqs to take because I was not originally intending to go to med school. I'm taking 2 classes through Harvard Extention, but need to take Bio 2 elsewhere since Harvard's bio classes are structured differently. My problem is that although I've essentially lived in MA for 4 years (school during the year, worked here 2 of 4 summers), I am not a "resident" because I came to MA as a student. Do you know of any quality places I could take this class for under $1000.

Thanks!!

cetsweetie

i've been wondering about this, too. Also, do psychology classes count under science? If not, what about psych classes w/ labs?

Aboo

Well, reading through this board has got me really interested, but also extremely nervous. I'm 95% sure I want to become a physician, since I've grown up in a household of two doctors. But by reading through all of these posts, I have a lot of questions, and hopefully you guys will hopefully be able to address some.

1. Firstly, I was wondering whether I would be better off attending a prestigious school and doing alright (because let's face it, I'm not going to be able to compete with geniuses, like a 3.5 GPA) or just going to a state school and doing very well. To be specific, as of now, I have been accepted to Yale, but also, I live really close to the University if New Mexico (with an 8-year BA/MD program), Texas Tech, and New Mexico Tech (which interestingly enough, has been voted the #2 best value by the Princeton Review - I know a kid who went there and scored a 37 on his MCAT, so it couldn't be too bad.) I've also applied to Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, Stanford, Duke, Rice, Northwestern, Washington University in St. Louis, Emory, and Harvard. Which schools would you recommend?

2. Although a science-related field would be best once in med school, I know my GPA will be lower as a result (probably a 3.3 or so, just speculating), so should I take a less challenging major or maybe even double major in something besides tough science majors? I know med school adcoms want different majors, rather than just bio and so forth. I am interested in biomedical engineering, but that would be really tough to keep my GPA up. As I've read, humanities are easy to keep one's GPA up in, so what kind of majors would fall into that category (English, languages, arts, so forth?)?

3. I know about the gradeinflation.com site, but it doesn't mention Yale. I would expect Yale to have inflation, right? Also, which schools are notorious for deflation?

4. Some people mentioned how some schools, such as Hopkins, won't even allow some students to apply to med school. How poorly does one have to do to be denied the opportunity? Is it something extremely bad, or something like a 3.3 GPA?

5. Right now, I'm considering attending Yale, but I'm also considering other places if I get accepted in April. What would be good majors to look into at Yale? I'm really interested in all sorts of stuff, so I have no clue what to go into. I was interested in science and would like something to prepare me for med school (although I know the required pre-med classes would do so), but I'd also like to keep a relatively high GPA and stay out of a cutthroat environment, but on the other hand, don't want an underwater-basketweaving degree. The worst possible scenario I can imagine is going to a super school like Yale, paying $44,000 a year, and then not even getting accepted to medical school while other less-qualified students from state schools get admitted.

Yale offers many majors listed on http://www.yale.edu/yalecollege/publ...iv/majors.html , so which ones would you recommend that would be beneficial, interesting, and probably wouldn't massacre my GPA and social life (studying 24/7)? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

sakky

1) Personally, If I knew I wanted to be a doctor, I would ALWAYS take a BA/MD program over anything else. These days, having guaranteed admission to med-school is priceless. Keep in mind that even at Yale, about 10% of premeds who apply to med-school get rejected from every med-school they apply to. Yep, every single one. And that's just talking about those that apply. There are plenty of other Yale premeds who don't even apply because they know they can't get in anywhere. If you get bad grades and/or bomb your MCAT, you're probably not going to waste your time applying because you know you won't get in. Only those people who think they actually have a chance of getting in will apply.

2) You should major in whatever you are good at and like doing, because that is the major in which you will get the highest grades.

3) Yale is like Harvard or Princeton.
Grade deflation? Try MIT. Or Caltech.

4) The story of Johns Hopkins barring some premeds from applying is only half-true. I think a more accurate description of the process is that Hopkins actively discourages marginal students from applying. It doesn't outright bar them, but it does actively discourage them. Furthermore, lower-performing students may be given a poor committee recommendation.

Get the full story here:

http://www.jhunewsletter.com/vnews/d...4?in_archive=1

5) See my answer to (2) above. I would say that if you really want to be a doctor, and you don't get into a BS/MD program, then I would, by default, either choose a very easy major, or a major like engineering that is obviously very difficult, but is at least highly marketable. I personally happen to believe that the worst possible choices are the natural sciences, because not only are they difficult, but they're also not highly marketable. If you're going to get a technical degree, you might as well go all the way and get an engineering degree.

However, all of that is trumped by your personal interests.

rheasilvia

Well, do med schools take the rampant grade deflation at MIT (where I've been accepted and really hope to attend) into account when it comes to admissions?

rheasilvia

I'm sorry--hadn't read the rest of the thread.

sakky

Rheasilva, the answer is 'probably not'. The fact is, the GPA's of successful MIT premeds is about the same as the GPA's of successful premeds at the average school. If med-schools were taking MIT's grade deflation into account, then that would mean that the GPA's of successful MIT's premeds would be conspicuously lower than that of the average premed.

http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html

It is of course true that MIT has a higher than average admissions percentage. But that's to be expected if, for no other reason, MIT students tend to score above average on the MCAT. However, it doesn't seem to me as if the is any grade-compensation to be had by going to MIT.

The net effect is that, sad to say, MIT is probably not a good place to go for premed. Neither is Caltech. Do many MIT and Caltech premeds make it? Of course. But that's not the point. The point is that you are probably making things harder on yourself than you would be otherwise. Sad but true.