Average science major's GPA

Ouroboros313
Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:18:19 +0000

Bluedog does bring up a good point. Med schools do account for differences in difficulty between state schools and places like Duke, but how close that matches reality…who knows? The other side of that is if you’re a really excellent candidate, a 4.0 from Duke will place you much higher than a 4.0 from a state school.

Also, you gotta take into account that there’s a world-class hospital not ten minutes walk from your dorm, so there’s plenty of opportunities for volunteering and shadowing, which is equally as important as GPA.

To balance Bluedog’s story, my cousin graduated from Duke as a bio major/chem minor with a 3.0 GPA and around a 36 MCAT. He got into Vanderbilt (#15 in research). He balanced the low GPA with a ton of extracurriculars: lab work, research, volunteering, shadowing, etc.