At a top 15 university, adviser says we only need at least a 3.0?

SDN Members don't see this ad. (About Ads)

I have a 3.2

The adviser says that we should aim to keep our GPA above a 3.0, that's all that needed to get into medical schools out of here, mainly because MCAT scores are so high

Someone from my hometown here got into a top 20 medical school with a 3.1 GPA graduating from this school...i only know this because he told me, i don't go around asking friends of mine who are graduating and entering medical school, a pretty substantial portion of the school what their GPAs are

Why does everyone go ahead and claim that you need a 3.7+?

lol

my buddy's girlfriend got into harvard med with a 2.4

First post and this is what you say? Unless you are at UChicago or Hopkins, your advisor is an idiot, and you should know why people say you need a 3.7+ GPA to get into med school. No MCAT score makes up for a lousy GPA.

Yeah, if you have a 40 and a 3.2, you will probably get in somewhere, assuming all your other stuff (ECs, PS, etc) are beast. But if you are a normal applicant with a 30-35 and regular ECs, a 3.2 is going to be pretty much prohibitively low.

Makes sense actually. My friends at a Top 3 (HYP) all tell me that they can get into an MD school with around a 2.7.

Don't assume an MCAT score based off where you go to school. You will be greatly disappointed.

Black Native American, english is her second language after Navaho, 43 on the MCAT, cured cancer?

There are a lot of threads on how your undergraduate institution (and the gpa you get there) plays on med school admissions. Take a look at those...they might help

That's actually an awesome table thanks for that

Here's the rest of it: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=888650

You only need at least? That doesn't make much sense.

lol

I mean the thing that is being ignored is the disproportionately many medical students from top schools vs those from other school

it's also consistent with college as well

Honestly maybe 30-35% of our student body come from the same handful of 30 top high schools in the nation

ie: Choate, Deerfield, Andover, Exeter, Middlesex, Taft, Lawrenceville, Hun, St Marks, Harvard-Westlake, New Trier, etc

The remaining 65% are chosen from the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of high schools that remain

The students whom I have met from the medical school here, no different
Every one of them seem to have come from schools like Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Harvard, etc

With your current GPA, you have a 55% chance of getting into a medical school if you score a 40 on the MCAT.

Clearly, a 40 on the MCAT isn't guaranteed just because you attend a top 20 school...

I would say work on that GPA and don't let your advisor make excuses for you.

I'm also majoring in a subject where the average gpa is a 2.8 with a double major in another one with an average gpa is a 3.1

with pre-med courses on top of that

Did you ask them what their GPAs were?

If you did, you'd probably see that they received an average of ~3.8 or so from their respective institutions.

Attending a good undergraduate institution isn't an excuse for not doing well at that institution...

but a 40% chance with a 32

You have to look at diminishing returns here

Your mistake is in assuming that your school's name will make up for a poor score. There are TONS of school reputation threads out here on SDN, but the general consensus is that its better to have a strong GPA from a lesser known school than a poor GPA (3.0-3.2) from a top school. The students who are getting accepted coming from a prestigious college are also the ones who have high GPAs, MCATs, and have a solid resume of ECs and experiences (as is with most candidates being accepted, regardless of school).

Are you OK with a 40% chance of admission, otherwise known as a 60% chance of being rejected by every single medical you apply to?

If you are, I am too.

And about your comment about difficulty of course load - every other pre-med is facing the exact same thing; if you feel your double major is lowering your GPA, don't double major.

Don't forget that this graph doesn't show where they got in

If you honestly think that your school gives you a free pass for having a subpar GPA, then you are going to be in for a rude awakening when you apply.

It's just more i've been skeptical of this whole you need a perfect GPA thing

I used to be on collegeconfidential and decided to ask if i would get in

i didn't have the greatest GPA in high school, ~3.3. great standardized test scores though. I did go to one of the best high schools in the country: Roxbury latin

and i still got into

Georgetown, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Chicago

and everybody was telling me that I would get into nowhere

I got like 13 rejections, but did it matter?

Admissions to medical school is a whole different ballgame. If you have a subpar GPA, you're not giving adcoms any reason to believe you're going to be successful in a rigorous medical school curriculum. That's the best I can tell you, and if you look at the average GPAs for any mid to top-tier medical school, you're going to see that you're standard deviations below that average. You can either make a difference now and raise your GPA, or keep telling yourself you'll carry yourself with a stellar MCAT performance and your ECs, only to [likely] have to reapply or be limited to your state school. Best of luck.

Difficulty of: getting into college ≠ getting into medical school

You don't need a perfect GPA, you just need a good one

ITT: State school kids crying, losing hope

Maybe OP goes to Harvey Mudd?

I think the OPs advisor's been drinking the cool aid being poured by the Caribbean PR machine.

You better be bringing a 40 on the MCAT.

Why do you hate state school kids so much lol?

And on a different note, I just deadlifted 365 and I feel like bragging about it on SDN! Any other deadlifters in this thread?

I did Diane the other day (CrossFit WOD) 3 sets of 21,15,9 reps of 225 lb deadlift and handstand pushups


But on topic. DON'T listen to the naysayers or crazy neurotic premeds on SDN in regards to "are my scores good enough". If you have above a 3.0, with decent MCAT, a genuine interest in medicine and some clinical experience you will get in to medical school. Besides LizzyM, and I'm actually not sure of her opinion, but every ADCOM member I have met tells me to stay off SDN when applying.

SO maybe you should drop a major and try to salvage your GPA.

The data does not support this. Like someone posted earlier, you should read this thread:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=888650

Maybe 10 years ago above a 3.0 with a decent MCAT was good enough, but now adays it's rly up in the air.

And 225 is baby weight. No matter how reps you're doing it won't impress me.

1) Statistics say differently. While anything is possible, false hope is a terrible thing to propagate. OP, aim for as high of a GPA as possible..3.0 in general does not cut it.

2) If you're not sure of LizzyM's opinion, then why are you stating it?

3) Statement should be revamped to say: if you are insecure of everything then stay off SDN during apps. If you know how to use the internet, look past a lot of the BS that accumulates on it, and use the search feature, you will without a doubt have greater tools to improving your application and thus higher chances at getting in.

Statistics don't show the people who apply with a genuine interest and passion for medicine versus those who are doing it for other reasons. I mentioned Lizzy because she is an ADCOM member that posts on this board regularly, and tends to reinforce the numbers game with her patented LizzyM scale. You need certain stats to get past the cutoff point but the secondaries and interviews will separate those who have interest and compassion from those who don't. What I can't stand is when someone posts their GPA and if it's not above 3.6 they immediately say apply DO.

The other stuff, the suggestions for clinical experience and research or doing some post-bacc courses, those are the useful pieces of advice. I'm not saying just get a 3.0. Of course you should aim to do as well as you can on everything. But no one thing will hold you back, providing it's not like a 7 on the MCAT or a 1.7 GPA.

The people who say apply DO or don't even bother applying without 6 years of post-bacc and 2 PhDs are the naysayers I am referring to.


Edit - And I am not saying stay off SDN, this is what ADCOM members tell me when I mention it.

You would about have to do this to get in with that.

I'm just trolling brah....I'm a state school kid myself lol

I am getting a little old to keep powerlifting as I would like to have joints when I am 50, but my best to date was 615.

Does your adviser look anything like this?

Are you a chemical engineering major at Cal Tech, Stanford, MIT, Princeton or UC-Berkeley?

There are definitely challenges for everyone in school and earning a high GPA isn't easy. All if us have had road blocks to maneuver around and hurdles to jump over. But, if I were going into an interview in the scenario I asked about above, I'd be a lot more confident when explaining why my GPA is a 3.2. If you know what I'm saying. Only because a 3.2 represents more than just one or two classes with average grades.

I'm majoring in a physical science with a crazy and sometimes overbearing workload (made even more stressful by the distraction of SDN) But chemical engineering---let's just say I don't know how those guys have time to breathe.

3.0 is not going to get you into a US allopathic med school, regardless of where you get it from or what major you are

wrong

concur

A lot of wishful thinking going on here. Osprey is correct though. YES there is always a handful of exceptions, but they are exceptions for a reason and adcoms know how to sort it out. If you are an average impassioned and genuine applicant with a good amount of ECs, you will still have trouble even with competitive DO schools with a 3.0 GPA.

Unless the school is CalTech or you're in an extremely hard major at another top school (such as nuclear engineering), you'll have an uphill battle. A 3.5 and decent MCAT would probably have a good shot from top schools, but a 3.2 is a bit low (again, unless you're at CalTech)... Pull the grades up and rock the MCAT

I agree, but the negative and pessimistic attitude that so many posters here have irks me. I'm sure there is a percentage, however small, of applicants that have no idea what they are getting into or even why they want to pursue medicine. If the real answer is because their parents are making them, or they want a safe job with "lots of money", they are most likely not going to say that to ADCOMs. But unless they are professional actors they will come across as disingenuous. This percentage of people that half-heartedly apply can make it all the way to the interview or in all honestly even into medical school. But for the most part they will not be accepted.

I feel like if you are willing to do research and spend significant amounts of time on a site like this one, you have a pretty big desire (for whatever reason) to go to medical school. And if you can convey this desire in your application and your interview you are probably going to get in somewhere, no matter how mediocre your stats are.

People DO need to be hit with a dose of reality when it comes to the application process and understand that if their stats are not great, they need to make up for it by improving in every possible way that they can.

But shutting people down and telling them they have no shot simply based on below average scores is about as small minded as you can get. (I'm not saying anyone in this thread has done that, but numerous other threads)

Thanks for the chart! Pretty cool to look at

You're welcome

I went to a top-15 school (at the time, anyway), had a double major in physics (which boasted a 2.5 average major GPA) and biology, and rocked a 35 on the MCAT. My 3.15 got me a grand total of 1 interview from 28 apps at freaking Arkansas, of all places, and I applied reasonably well. Anyone who tells you school name and/or course of study makes up for a bad GPA is completely full of crap, in case the graph above wasn't enough to convince you.

lol Must be.
My wish for if I ever get reincarnated: Please be an URM.