Thanks guys
@MiamiDAP Just wondering because this hasn’t been covered much. How do medical schools view an A- vs an A? (only asking because I’ve dropped a few grades to an A- due to a variety of reasons based on personal reflection. I agree with you that a pre-med should always strive for an A so I’m not trying to cut any corners here or aim for the lowest cutoff, it just gives me some perspective as to where I am)
“ie a 3.X is basically a 4.0, at what point is this not true?”
As others have explained, it’s never true.
Medical schools view A-minuses as inferior to As. A similar applicant with the higher GPA will get the nod over you. But depending on the medical school, you may still make the cut.
Or you can go to the following website. It has much of the information needed, particularly in-state vs OOS acceptance rates for public schools.
When medical schools recalculate GPA, A or A+ is 4.0, while A- is 3.7.
Because that’s exhausting, and unrealistic. I remember how relieved my summer students were when I told them not to aim for perfection in every class. When you have a lot of things on your plate, it’s not always possible to perform at 100% at all of them. Of course you should aim for the highest GPA you can if med school is your intention, and the theoretical goal is always an A. But there were definitely some classes in college that I thought “A B is fine too!” And I still graduated from UG and I still went to a top graduate school. The world didn’t end.
The AAMC has a handy grid that shows MCAT scores by GPA and acceptance rates (@Zinhead posted it in his post), and the answer seems to be “it depends on your MCAT score.” If we take 50% as the threshold, students with a 3.2-3.39 still had a 53% acceptance rate if they scored between a 36 and a 38 on the MCAT. But the lowest bracket for students who had a 3.8-4.0 with above a 50% acceptance rate was the 27-29 MCAT score.
Conversely, students with a 3.8-4.0, but who only scored a 21-23 on the MCAT, only had a 19% acceptance rate. And students with a 3.0-3.19 but who scored between a 39 and a 45 on the MCAT hat a 45% acceptance rate. Acceptance drops off heavily after a 3.0, BUT there are still some medical school applicants with lower GPAs that are accepted! in fact, fully one-third of students with a 2.60-2.79 who had over a 39 on the MCAT were accepted to medical school.
So, if you have a lower GPA you have a little more wiggle room if you have a high MCAT, but only to a certain extent. It does seem to be that the sweet spot is above a 3.6 or so, but you could get away with a 3.4+ with a high MCAT, or a 3.2+ with a very high MCAT. After a 3.2 your chances are worse than flipping a coin.
To be honest, 3.785 is a great GPA, especially as a sophomore.
Also, don’t medical schools also look at your science GPA? Those courses that are prerequisites for med school? That GPA is important as well.
^^
Yes, both the cum GPA and the BCPM GPA are looked at. And the BCPM GPA includes all math and science courses, not only the prereqs.
OP shouldn’t walk away from this thread with conclusion that with having a certain GPA/MCAT is what will do the trick as to getting into med school. Although certainly important, med schools will look very closely at other application sections to see if one has the qualities that they believe MDs should possess and/or fit school’s mission statement. And even with a strong application including high GPAs or MCAT score, a poor interview will sink one’s chances.
The AAMC definition of BCPM courses is here: https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/article/course-classification-guide/
Good GPA and MCAT are generally necessary but not sufficient for admission to MD medical school in the US.
AMCAS calculated GPAs are often different than institutional GPAs. You can manually track yours using this:
https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fastly.net/production/media/filer_public/10/ab/10ab9407-7134-4477-9fc9-140d8acb35af/amcas_grade_conversion_guide.pdf
What mom2ck said about unhooked applicants could be true. Not all applicants are created equal. (Unhooked could still be better than “anti-hook”.)
The door to your own teaching hospital could be more open.
Inbreed could be rampant at some schools/teaching hospitals – this could be the only more noticeable advantage, as far as I could tell. Staying put is usually easier. Isn’t it true that more than 50 percents (maybe even more than 60%?) of HMS graduates stay at one of their own hospitals? If this is true, you could tell that even for some of their graduates with not so high step-1 scores, they still have a decent chance to stay put in one of their own teaching hospitals in the same city – If I remember it correctly, their step-1 scores are not particularly high as compared to the step-1 scores of the graduates from, say, med school at UVA or Wash U.
I do not know much about med schools in midwest. Maybe MiamiDAP could comment on how much advantage of the graduates at a med school in Midwest may have due to the inbreed phenomenon (assuming that the med school graduates prefer to “stay put” here.)
“I do not know much about med schools in midwest. Maybe MiamiDAP could comment on how much advantage of the graduates at a med school in Midwest may have due to the inbreed phenomenon (assuming that the med school graduates prefer to “stay put” here.)”
Med schools in the Midwest are like med schools everywhere. All US med schools are very good and the “prestige” doesn’t matter much.
actually, the top privates in the midwest – Chicago, Northwestern, WashU – are just as hoody-toidy about prestige as the top privates in the east. It’s not the region that matters, but the fact that the top privates are more about research than anything else. And top research is intertwined with top prestige.
PhD candidates, postdocs, and those career researchers slave away on hardcore research to boost the school’s prestige over a long time (decades, if not even longer.) And the UG students are there to enjoy the fruit produced by these people.
Having affiliated prestigious professional schools could also help boost the prestige of the university (also true to a certain degree the other way around.) The prestige of professional schools is also mostly due to the blood and sweat of those career researchers (and except for the leaders and superstars, a majority of them are low pay, relatively speaking. I once read from somewhere that a large prestigious research university, U. of Mich, has almost 10 thousands in all of their research branches who are actually citizens of another country.)
You’re missing my point, blue bayou. For the everyday doctor who is going into practice and seeing patients, the day in the life of the Harvard Med School grad is indistinguishable from the day in the life of the State U Med grad. The insurance companies don’t reimburse you any differently. The colds and the flus and the broken arms aren’t any more glamorous.
“PhD candidates, postdocs, and those career researchers slave away on hardcore research to boost the school’s prestige over a long time (decades, if not even longer.) And the UG students are there to enjoy the fruit produced by these people.”
I think people on CC waaaaay overthink the value of PhDs.
It wouldn’t be the first time… 
See, that’s the thing. The top ~10/15 med schools, don’t see themselves as producing the “everyday doctor.” They are first and foremost big time, research institutions. They value their prestige, highly. And it doesn’t matter if they are on the Left Coast, midwest or East Coast.
It doesn’t matter what they see themselves as producing; if someone who wants to be an “everyday doctor” gets into one of those schools, his or her doctor-life won’t be appreciably different from that of their buddies who “merely” went to State U Med.
Anyway, who are we kidding? The practices affiliated with some of these hospitals aren’t appreciably different and the work isn’t different from the practices elsewhere. They just have tonier addresses, that’s all.
There was a post here in which it is claimed that it is the prestige of the residency program (rather than the medical school) that matters,
Is there any truth in this statement?
It is also rumored that a top student at ANY med school could get into a top residency program. However, it is also rumored that the “old boy’s network” is still strong in helping a med school student to get into a top residency program.
Any truth in any of these potentially “rumor-quality” statements, or some of these are just myths?