PharmCas and Graduate Grading

[Sander]

Hi,
I was wondering how PharmCas utilizes HP, P, LP grades in GPA calculation. I am in grad school at Dartmouth, and interested in applying to Pharmacy school. However, as at many graduate programs, they do not use the A-F system. I have made many HPs (which equate to an A), and would significantly increase my GPA and thus my chances, but if PharmCas is not set up to incorporate them, they maybe useless. A side note, if they do not, then this is a shortcoming of PharmCas and they need to catch up.

I have emailed them asking them this question but they always send a reply about repeated course or something completely unrelated. Has anyone else used PharmCas and had HP-NC grades and did they count in your overall GPA?

Thanks!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[BC_89]

PharmCAS does not compute GPA calculations based on narrative grades. Unless parameters are associated with the narration of each class (e.g. H = 92 to 100, HP = 83 to 91, P = 74 to 82, F = 73 and below ) and designated on the transcript, then the only thing PharmCAS can do is scan your official transcripts and send it off to your programs of choice and have them do the interpretation.

Rather, PharmCAS will separate your grad courses from your undergrad courses and compute the calculations from that point.

To a similar example, my pharmacy program utilized the Pass/Fail system with no GPA (which has now changed this year for our first year pharmacy students). Despite the program defining a "Pass" being 90% or higher and a "Fail" being 89% or lower, some (not all) residencies when looking at applications do not have much of a choice but to push those applicants to the side when many other GPA driven CV's are in grasp. That's not to say students do not get a residency (many do), but the thought process is that our P/F system is not universal due to some programs re-defining their Pass/Fail parameters (70% or higher passing vs 69% below failing) which in turn makes it very difficult to compare two separate (but similar) applicants on the same playing field.