RifleAutoWin

If you have to get a 5 to skip out of 1B, then please interpret this:
"Score: 5. Units: 5.3. Math 1A and Math 1B will be satisfied with a perfect score of 5. It is recommended that students with scores of 3 or 4 contact a non-major advisor in the Math Department (510-642-4024), or consider taking Math 1B."

", or consider taking Math 1B."

Azure326

I've always interpreted that to mean that if you get a 5, you can skip 1B and get full credit for it. If you get a 3 or 4, you do not get full credit for 1B and have 2 options: either take 1B or talk to a non-major advisor in the Math Department and convince them that you know enough to skip 1B.

So, the only guaranteed way to skip 1B in terms of AP credit is by getting a 5. There's a chance you could skip it with that talk to an advisor in the Math Department.

missnancy427

BlueElmo is shallow... what you learn and how u apply it will have an big impact on the world (ex. hitler, mao, stalin, even though they used it for evil).... your GPA will not

excelblue

Education and learning is temporary? Almost always, education came into play when I need to make important decisions or judgments. Even for the most trivial of things, education can play an important role.

GPA stays with you too, but unlike education, it is an artificial construct. It is a mere number that does not mean anything outside of context. People actually have to care about the number for it to have any effect on you. This is why the top colleges do holistic admissions these days. It may have an effect, but in the big picture, it is quite little.

Just like how SAT/ACT scores become absolutely insignificant after a couple years in college, GPA will become insignificant after a couple years of real work experience.

Good Game

BlueElmo was being ironic...

AznN3rd

GPA is much more important than actual knowledge, partly because most applicable knowledge are learned outside of the classroom. Unless you plan to be the next Ken Jennings, it's much better to get into a better grad school without learning too much in college than a mediocre grad school and claim to know more stuff.

ethancc2

GPA is an important factor for grad school/med school applications, but they only reveal so much. Numbers can't tell you anything about the applicant's character and personality.

For this very reason, many grad/med schools require interviews or highly recommend them. Top-tier med schools are looking for applicants with social skills, strong character, and roundedness. GPA and test scores enable you to apply with the minimum reqs, but without solid charisma and exceptional character get you through the second half of the process.

Even though some schools don't require interviews, not doing one may hurt your chances of even getting in. As quoted from MIT's admissions page "The admit rate for applicants who had interviews (or whose interviews were waived) is about three times the admit rate for those who didn't"

Something else MIT states clearly in its admissions blog "Your interview gives us a vivid sense of you as a person and how you would fit at MIT - something the paper application alone can never match."

GPA is useless as a standalone factor for admission, but beneficial when used in conjunction with an interview for grad/med school.

BlueElmo

Not really ethancc2, med and grad schools look at GPA very FIRST. In fact, they use GPA and test scores to screen out the the qualified applicant from the unqualified. I have went to lots of medical school admissions panels and such, and they all emphasize the importance of GPA. In fact, one such discussion meeting even went so far as to say that GPA was worth about 1/3 of the entire student's application when medical schools looked at the potential students. The fact is, GPA is extremely important and everything else (interview, extracurricular, etc) come second.

ethancc2

Umm... please read my post carefully next time...

This is from my post:
"GPA and test scores enable you to apply with the minimum reqs"

Obviously if you don't meet the min reqs you can't apply in the first place. I thought I mentioned this explicitly in my post. And like you said it's 1/3... but not 2/3 or 100%. The other 2/3 still matters tremendously.

I also mentioned "GPA is an important factor for grad school/med school applications" as my very fist line...

missnancy427

well disregarding grad school ..... gpa is not more important in life in general, thats where this whole discussion was rooted in.... gpa is important when applying but in life no one cares about ur gpa, ur knowledge and how u apply it will matter the most... and will have a greater impact

Shah Rukh Khan

lol i thought this was a thread about math classes...

It seems to me that a person's GPA in most cases correlates to a person's understanding of a knowledge. But a good gpa could be misleading because someone could understand how to use the system to get a high gpa but then could not understand how to apply their acquired knowledge to the real world. Ultimatly that is why we go to college, to have skills that others don't have and to apply them to the living, breathing real world. A person who has a high GPA but no knowledge might happen to get hired by a big company, but that person wouldn't survive in the real world.

a high gpa could represent success or it could represent the ability to trick the system; you have to use what you have learned in the real world which has no solutions manual. A person could have poor grades but could still have the knowledge to help the real world (ahem...Einstein...).

icie

i took math1b at a cc and then i took the bc exam yesterday, and i felt like i made some pretty stupid mistakes on the bc exam, which means i probably wont get a 5

would my math1b credits from cc transfer over without any difficulty? originally that was what i hoped for incase i bombed the bc exam