<p>Will good letters of recommendation trump a low GPA? No.</p>
<p>The GPA is an issue that must be addressed in the personal statement. I hope there is clear upward trend in GPA–in which case a strong PS, better-than-average MCAT, outstanding LoRs, and strong clinical experience will help mitigate a low GPA.</p>
<p>That MCAT score can’t be right. </p>
<p>Each section is worth up to 15 points (Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Verbal Reasoning- each section worth 15 points for a possible total score of 45) That 11.7 has to be for just one section. If the overall MCAT really is an 11.7, there is no hope whatsoever… </p>
<p>The R is the writing score (which how it’s arrived at is one of life’s mysteries…) and not a make or break thing.</p>
<p>And remember that your friend has a very limited amount of time for “bringing up her scores”, assuming she will be applying next cycle (for admission in 2012). Transcripts will need to be sent for verification next summer so schools will not see any grades for courses taken beyond spring 2011.</p>
<p>11.7 isn’t her total score. Is that her average per section? If that’s the case, it could be a very good score. Recommendations can always have some effect, but to get them read in the first place, you need a GPA and MCAT to make them open the file. Recommendations from research faculty tend to be very respected. Depending on the MCAT total score (an R on the writing section is fine), a 3.6 can be an admissible GPA with no problem provided everything else is in good shape.</p>
<p>haha sorry for the misunderstanding… she received an 11.7 average score per section… whats the highest score per section? A 35 out of 45 doesn’t sound too great…</p>
<p>@WayOutWestMom: What would you suggest to do? Her mother is telling her to stick with D.O. or do Post Baccalaureate after… I am pretty sure she can raise her gpa to 3.65 if she works her butt off since she is going stay an extra year since she is a biochemistry/math double major…</p>
<p>You haven’t given us enough information. 1.) Is it a he or a she? (Compare post #1 to #5.)
2.) What is her actual GPA? No ranges, no projections – what is her GPA? What is her science GPA? 3.) What are her EC’s? Does she have a research background? Clinical experience? 4.) What is her ACTUAL MCAT score? No ranges, no projections.</p>
<p>^^ 1) She (Her Name is Sabeena - I just read post #1 typing error lol) 2) Actual GPA - 3.24
3) EC’s - Longhorn Pre-Medical Student Association (Allows students to shadow doctors in the Austin area), Indian Students Association, Delta Kappa Delta Sorority (Volunteer Chair), American Medical Student Association - Pre-med, Math Club, Tamil Cultural Association. 4) Actual MCAT Score: 11.7 per section… that would come to 35.1… so 35 MCAT score…</p>
<p>Okay. So she’s a 3.24/35 with no EC’s. It’s not impossible, but it’ll be a very unpredictable process. Blanket the Texas schools and I suspect one of them will bite if she can interview well.</p>
<p>“Are you saying that UT affiliated medical schools give preference to kids who went to a UT school (UTA, UT-Austin, UT-Dallas). If that is the case, I am pretty sure that is not true.”</p>
<p>Well I beg to differ. </p>
<p>Granted, the guy was not about to say it outright, but I guarantee you he said that there is favoritism towards UT System grads.</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t there be? Why not take a few extra grads from your own “feeder institutions” (yes I am well aware that there are no direct relationships, but they are still all in the UT System) to make them look better?</p>
<p>This was said directly to my face in a one on one conversation with a past adcom member. Argue all you want, but I’m telling you that’s what he said.</p>
<p>Again, there’s not going to be any “data” to support something like this, and there’s not going to be some overwhelmingly blatant tendency to accept UT grads over others, but there is, without a doubt, at least a little bit of favoritism towards UT grads. Probably not much, but hell, every bit counts.</p>
If it’s a real trend, it should be detectable. It might just be that we don’t have the data available to us (we’d need things like MCAT scores per candidate, etc.), but the data should be out there somewhere.</p>
<p>The only clue that I can think of which could possibly show the trend is: Some UT medical schools like UT-SA will post the number of students they admit from each college every year. I remember seeing this kind of post from the UT-SA medical school. In the post, each student’s name and their undergraduate college are named. It is somewhat strange to me that a medical school will post the name of each of their students every year. (But I still like UT-SA, as they seem to show no sign of tufts-syndrome and not hand-pick students from a waiting list, after wait-listing most applicants.)</p>
<p>There are indeed many admitted students from UT-Austin and A&M every year. (After all, they are the top dogs in this state, with the exception of one national research, small-ish university and one or two good LACs.) But these two jumbo universities produce an army of applicants (similar to the top 2 UCs, and possibly Michigan.) It is then hard to say their students are really favored in terms of admission rate. They tend to produce many high GPA but not so stellar MCAT kids though. (Some, but not many percentage-wise, have very good MCAT scores as well. So MCAT-smart kids can be from everywhere.)</p>
<p>DS noticed not many OOS applicants seem to bother to apply to Texas ones except BCM and UT-SW. Most seem to skip all Texas schools.</p>