Med Schools recalculating GPA's

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>Well, I was reading a thread and there were some interesting things said about med schools recalculating your grade. </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cornell-university/59070-4-3gpa-3-bonus-points-premeds-just-screwed.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cornell-university/59070-4-3gpa-3-bonus-points-premeds-just-screwed.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>So you don’t have to read through all of it i’ll summarize what they said.</p>

<ol>
<li>The first round of med school admissions is based solely on GPA and MCAT.</li>
<li>Med Schools will recalculate your GPA depending on the difficulty of the school you went to. This was in a Cornell thread so I’ll use what they said about Cornell as an example.
GPA x 1.13= Number med school uses for your gpa.
This thread claimed that the group the schools so that State U=1 and so on and when you get to the hardest schools you get numbers like 1.15.</li>
</ol>

<p>What is your take on this? specifically #2, is this true or are they just saying what they want to hear.</p>

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<p>its bs…medical schools don’t give you a boost in gpa because your school is known for being hard.</p>

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<p>1.) Just not even close.</p>

<p>2.) Trying to quantify something without any data to back it up.</p>

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<p>Btw, your Lazarus award for a 5 year thread bump is pending a ruling since you just linked to it.</p>

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<p>I’m sorry but I don’t know what you just said means</p>

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<p>Why is it even important? Who cares? Get your 4.0 at any place and you will be fine.</p>

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<p>Premed4 – </p>

<p>the original thread from 2005 - hence the Lazurus comment since you have resurrected a LONG DEAD thread. </p>

<p>Your linked thread even seems to refute your original question - i.e. schools don’t use any random number (1.12 or otherwise) to correct your GPA. Some schools will eliminate any bonus points for an A+ so that all GPA’s are at least calculated in the same way. An A = A+ = 4.0 </p>

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<p>There isn’t really any reason to go further, but just for hearing myself type on my old school IBM clicky keyboard: As far as I’m aware NO MED SCHOOL has any formula where they randomly cutoff applicants below a particular GPA and/or MCAT. Now, if you are applying to Harvard with a 2.9 and MCAT of 21 then they aren’t going to spend a lot of time below tossing it into the reject pile, but they are going to at least glance at the application to see if there is something interesting enough to merit a second look, but somebody’s going to look just out of curiosity. There are almost always a few STATS outliers in every Medical School class and somebody is going to have an strange looking GPA and/or MCAT. </p>

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<p>I’d reread the thread b/ I’m pretty sure even it refutes the original premise – Med Schools don’t use some random number (1.12 or otherwise since there is no way to come up with some legitimate corrective factor) to correct your GPA. The only thing that some schools appear to do is eliminate any bonus points for an A+. An A = A+ = 4.0 </p>

<p>I can’t vouch for other Grad schools, but the Med Schools and AdCom members I;ve been around and spoken with have never mentioned anything like this. While I know some members will (conscious or unconsciously) give the 3.8 GPA Ivy/Duke/Vandy a bit of an advantage over a 3.8 GPA from a less prestigious Tier 3 regional college there isn’t any ‘numerical Factor’ that tries to quantify such a thing – and even that is a lot less common than many people think among the long term admission people. The MCAT’s have a way of evening out that playing field without some mysterious calculation.</p>