<p>Huh, Afan, you need to read things more carefully.</p>
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<p>There it says it right there. IN THE FIRST SEMESTER (and in the winter period of IAP, which is not important for this discussion), the only passing grade that is recorded will be a ‘P’.</p>
<p>However, in the second semester, the non-passing grade that will not be published will be a D, F, O, or OX. That therefore means that a passing grade you receive in the second semester will be whatever the passing grade is. Since a C grade is a passing grade, THAT MEANS THAT IF YOU GET A C IN YOUR SECOND SEMESTER, IT IS EXPOSED FOR ALL TO SEE. Read it again, if you don’t believe me. And let’s face it. A ‘C’ is a pretty darn disastrous grade when it comes to med-school admissions. Sure, it’s not as bad as a D or an F. But it’s painful nonetheless. Even a ‘B’ isn’t anything to write home about. </p>
<p>So, once again, first semester- all grades hidden. Second semester - passing grades exposed, non-passing grades hidden. Read it again, if you don’t believe me. </p>
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<p>I’ve read the report. Point to me the direct quote that explicitly says that this is the dichotomy that the report is using. </p>
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<p>No, we are comparing the relative standpoints of weak engineering students vs. weak liberal arts students. It is of course true that weak engineering students have weaker engineering prospects. But that’s the key - ENGINEERING prospects. From a jobs perspective, who is better off, a guy with weak engineering prospects, or a guy with weak liberal arts prospects? Hence, who is more potentially more desperate and more likely to see med-school as a ‘Hail-Mary’ pass? I am arguing that a weak MIT engineering student is less likely to apply to med-school than, say, a weak Harvard liberal arts student. True, both are unlikely to apply, but who is MORE unlikely to apply? </p>
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Finally, imagine you are on the admissions committee of a medical school. You see applications from HYPSM. From HYPS you see all grades, from the start of freshman year. From M you see no first year grades (which is typical of medical schools). You know that first year grades tend to be lower. How would you compare HYPS grades to M grades? You could drop the freshman grades from the HYPS students and recompute their GPA’s, to make the basis of comparison comparable to M. Since this would tend to raise their GPA’s, you would them rank them higher. Or you could impute a lower GPA to the M students, based on the knowledge that, on average, their freshman GPA’s are lower than their later GPA’s. Either adjustment would result in higher reported GPA from M (since it excludes the freshman grades) than from HYPS. So, allowing for the practice of not giving (first semester) or not reporting (second semester) grades, admissions committees may be adjusting to compare M with HYPS. They would then accept HYPS students with lower REPORTED GPA’s,those total GPA’s, including freshman grades, are comparable.[ /quote]</p>
<p>That’s a non-sequitur for two reasons. #1, as explained above, you do see the MIT passing grades for the second semester of freshman year. #2, if you as the adcom officer really wanted to, you could demand to see all MIT grades (and places like Johns Hopkins do precisely that). The fact that other med-schools don’t demand to see those grades indicates that they don’t think it is an important enough of a point to quibble about.</p>