<p>Hey,
I maybe getting discouraged and come off sounding really unmotivated (is that even a word?), but I am really worried about my grades in undergraduate. I am a first year, and my gpa so far is 3.66 (first semester) and 3.47 (second semester). I really don’t like the dropping gpa and the fact that my classes aren’t going to get any easier (I go to UC Berkeley) isn’t going to help my gpa. So far, do I really have a chance of going to medical school. It seems really difficult with my relatively low gpa, lack of research over summer and others. I really do want to be a doctor, but if my grades are really going to hurt me, wouldn’t it be much better if I just look into something else?
Please reply. I am really confused about what to do.</p>
<p>I will say that while 3.56 is not the end of the world, that you are certainly facing an uphill battle. I am assuming you are a CA resident, and there’s a good chance you’re an ORM. Both of these are very bad things for your application. Berkeley is a rough place to be a premed. If you do no research, should I also assume you have no clinical experience?</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean it’s over. You still have two years’ worth of grades, and a 3.55 is most certainly not the end of the world, even if it doesn’t rise at all. (I am assuming this is half A’s and half B’s, not 3/4 A’s and 1/4 C’s. The latter would be worse.) You still have your MCAT score. You still have the chance to sign up with a research lab, get clinical experience, etc. Your chances are not over, but you will need to kick it up a notch. If you don’t think that’s possible - and Berkeley is a very difficult school - then most certainly, you are still young enough that there are many other options available to you, too. If one of those appeals to you, then certainly pursue it!</p>
<p>You absolutely have a chance of going to medical school, a good chance, in fact, if that’s what you really want to do. Your odds will be improved if you bring up your GPA, but you’re not starting from a deep hole that you have to dig yourself out of. </p>
<p>But is that what you really want to do? There really are many options open to you, and some of them might suit your interests more than medicine would. Reading about some of those other options this summer might make you feel a little less stressed out about your future.</p>
<p>thanks… i just found out my grades last night and was really disappointed. I was wondering how a bunch of A-'s look on the transcript. Do medical schools look at it as almost an A?</p>
<p>No. A-'s are 3.7’s. A’s are 4.0.</p>
<p>idleburra, ur gpa is fine…try to pull it up a bit but u r on par (if not a tad below)…nothing that’ll kill u though, stop freaking out</p>
<p>thanks shraf… its just my grades came back and I were a little worse than I expected. You are right, I just have to stop freaking out and work hard. :)</p>
<p>if it makes you feel better, you are doing a lot better than my brother did when he was at upenn his first year. he had a first year gpa between 2.8-2.9 but then worked hard and eventually brought it up to 3.4. now he is a cardiologist…just work hard!</p>
<p>Why do people say that freshman year is always the hardest? The way I see it, the classes are only going to get harder from here…meaning the GPA will probably go down.</p>
<p>I’m kind of worried about my freshman gpa affecting my chances at med school too. First semester was a 3.95, which was great, but then…it dropped to a 3.85. Not so great. Pulling up this GPA seems like a long shot, and I don’t think I have any room for it to drop anymore. My lowest grades (B+/A-) were all in math/sci classes too…Advice? Criticism?</p>
<p>3.85 is… well above the average for any medical school. Relax.</p>
<p>Oh, and I don’t think anybody says that your freshman year is the hardest. At least, I’ve never heard that.</p>
<p>I’ve seen enough during my years with the fraternity to understand why some might say freshman year is the hardest. </p>
<p>It’s definitely not the class difficulty they are talking about. The difficulty of freshman year comes from the adjust that must be made from HS to college: being on one’s own; finding a group of friends; balancing parties/alcohol with school work; not having parents pressure you to be doing school work; really learning to manage one’s time; so on and so forth. I really think that (at least depending on the school) there is a lot more pressure for freshmen to go out and party then for upperclassmen.</p>
<p>There are certainly students who end up managing this transition by going to the extremes - locking themselves in their room and studying all hours of the day and night, as well as those who never do any studying, instead partying 8 nights a week and never going to class. Neither of these options is particularly healthy, but that’s how some manage the difficulty of freshman year. Simply by avoiding the conflict and going full steam to one extreme or the other. Neither will particularly find the first year that difficult.</p>
<p>Now what does become hard is finding that balance between having fun and doing well. I know it took me a while to get a handle for it, even with the fraternity’s help (study hours and stuff like that). I definitely got my lowest GPA my first semester freshman year which did cost me some scholarship money.</p>
<p>But assuming you’ve figured out what works for you, then balancing the social and academic issues becomes a lot easier, and while the classes become more difficult, you have conquered most of those issues that coem from the first year like friends and involvement and such.</p>
<p>With that gpa my advice to you is, shut it. You have an extremely good GPA, you want to see bad GPA look at engineers after two semesters. I took 6 classes first sem. and only pulled a 3.67 working my behind off. 2nd sem. went worse.</p>
<p>Even a 3.67 isn’t that big a problem.</p>
<p>Okay, since everyone here is worried about GPA, I’ll go ahead and let everyone know that I graduated with a 3.494. When I submitted my AMCAS, my GPA was a 3.479. The highest GPA I ever got in a semester was a 3.821 in the first semester of my senior year, which means that my HIGHEST CUMULATIVE GPA I ever had in college was in the middle of my senior year with a 3.527. I promptly followed up that semester with the lowest GPA I ever got in a term.</p>
<p>The point is, I want everyone to stop whining about their GPA. A 3.6 is more than respectable so shut up already. Seriously a 3.67 is straight A- at my school - hardly a bad grade.</p>
<p>thanks for trying calm us freshman down. I have a question, how important is having clinical experience? Some people say its very important while some say that it is not clinical experience that counts but research. Can you guys give any advice on that?</p>
<p>You want both.</p>
<p>I think if you can only choose one, do clinical experience/volunteering at a hospital. But BDM is correct in saying that you should try for both if possible, though I didn’t do research (I swear if wasn’t for my MCAT score, I would have been the worst applicant around - horrible grades, no research…sheesh)</p>
<p>Well bigred thats a relief, for my right now my gpa is a 3.46 and I still have orgo and higher up engineering classes to look into. I said that was my GPA to show that person they have stellar grades, for more of a comparison my last sem. gpa of 3.28 shows just how stellar it is.</p>
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<p>I think this is different from school to school and from major to major. At some schools and some majors, freshman year classes really are the most difficult, not because the material of the classes is difficult, but because the GRADING of the classes is the most difficult. In short, many majors at many schools position their weeders within the first 2 years. Once you’ve made it to the upper division of your major, then the grading lightens up. But it’s making to the upper division that is the killer. It is in the first 2 years when many people get weeded out of various majors, and in extreme cases, get expelled from school entirely for their poor grades within the weeder classes. </p>
<p>This seems to be particularly true in engineering where many students actually report that classes actually become EASIER as they progress in the major, mostly because the grading gets easier. Weeder class grading has very little to do with the difficulty of the material in the class. In fact, easy course material can actually paradoxically make weeder classes HARDER because if the material is easy to learn, then that means that everybody will know it meaning that the curve is going to be brutal. In such classes, you can know most of the course material and still end up with a grade of an F because everybody else in the class knew the material better than you did and you are being judged relative to other students in your class. </p>
<p>*Weeder?? What’s That?
At UCLA there is something called a “weeder” class. “Impacted” courses (courses that have strict guidlines about adding or dropping them due to their high demand) are often “weeders.” Most majors have at least one weeder course. Many have more than one (called “weeder series”). A weeder is a course that is designed to flunk out kids who aren’t good enough for the major, thus “weeding” them out. FEAR THEM. You’re at a school with the best and the brightest… and these courses are designed to flunk a big chunk of them out, of course not on an official level. Most of the time you won’t know your class is a weeder until you go to UCLA for a while and you hear the rumor. I will do my best to inform you of what classes you may take as an incoming freshman that may be weeders. UCLA is a pre-med school… remember that. Anything here that is pre-med is *<strong><em>ING HARD. All of the chem courses are considered weeders. Computer science and engineering in general is considered one giant weeder. No, they do not get easier as you move up; in fact, they get really *</em></strong>ing hard. To illustrate, I have a friend who is a graduating senior, Electrical Engineer, I quote him saying, “A’s? What is an A? I thought it went from F to C-.” It’s his last quarter here and yet at least once a week he won’t come back from studying until four or five in the morning… and yet it’s not midterm or finals season…</p>
<p>…Why Do You Keep Talking About “Harder As You Move Up?”
Amazingly, many majors get EASIER as you move up. This is because once you get through the weeder, they give you a break and the workload is only as hard as an “average” class. Certain majors aren’t so lucky.</p>
<p>Back to Weeders…
I once took a weeder course in North campus (largely considered the “easier” side of campus). It is the weeder for the communications major (Comm 10). However, because this is an introductory weeder (anybody can take it), it is considered by many as North campus’ hardest class. I didn’t know this and I took it as an incoming frosh. I was quite scared. The material is ****ing common sense; you get a ton of it. I had 13 pages of single space, font 10 notes covering only HALF of the course (this is back when I was a good student and took notes). I was supposed to memorize the entire list including all the categories and how the list was arranged by them. And I did. Fearing it yet? My friend told me about his chem midterm… the average grade was a 16%… No, they didn’t fail the whole class; I’m sure they curved it so only half the kids failed. My freshman year, I met this friend of mine who was crying because she got an 76% on her math midterm. I told her that she should be glad she passed, she told me, “the average grade was 93%, the curve fails me.” Weeders can have curves, as these three examples show… but only to make sure some people pass… and some fail. Famous weeders are courses like: Communications 10, Life Scienes 1 (and 2 & 3), Chemistry 14a (and all the subsequent ones get only harder), English 10a (OMG that class was hard), CS33, etc. Oh, and if you’re wondering, my friend ended up getting a C- in her math class after studying her butt off. Lucky her!!!"</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.moochworld.com/scribbles/ucla/16.html[/url]”>http://www.moochworld.com/scribbles/ucla/16.html</a></p>
<p>*</p>
<p>hey, i am an incoming freshman to Vanderbilt University. i want to do premed majoring in biology and economics (so, i am in college of art and science). however, recently i am thinking about transferring to engineering school. here are the pros:
- if i major in biomedical engineering, even if i don’t go to med school, i can still find a decent job. but if i major in biology and don’t go to med school, i would end up being a teacher
- in engineering school, i don’t need to take those requried liberal arts courses. i am so bad at English and writings. and engineering school takes many of my ap credits.
- whiling being in engineering school, i can still get degree from college of art and science. let’s say, i want to double major in eco. so, i can do that. but not the other way around. it’s hard for CAS students to get degree from engineering school.
However, here are the cons: - vandy’s engineering school isn’t really good. i don’t think it’s in top 25
- like you guys said, engineering school is tough, and i need to work really hard, but not necessarily get a high GPA comparing to college of art and science.
So, can you guys help me to decide? any suggestion?
also, does doing premed in engineering school requires more work than doing premed in college of art and science? does engineering has more required courses than premed?</p>
<p>thank you so much.</p>