Truth Time - GPA

[Run2Med]

Hi guys,

I am at a bit of a crossroads in my undergraduate academic career. Currently a junior at a UC here in California. Strong EC's and life story (homeless, drug addicted parents etc.) and decent academic performance (cGPA - around 3.5, sGPA - around 3.4). My question lies in the classes I have yet to take. Basically it comes down to taking the classes that have a reputation for being easier to get the higher GPA or taking the classes I want to take that challenge me and maybe not always getting that A. I would like to believe that adcoms like to see a student challenge themselves academically, however I am not foolish enough to believe that GPA is merely a number. I didn't work hard to transfer to a UC to study classes that wouldn't challenge me to grow as a student.... yet that's exactly what so many premeds are doing and I fear it gives them a leg up stats wise. Any advice anyone?

Second question - I still have two years left of financial aid eligibility, however if I pace my classes right I can graduate in a year. Would I be better served staying the two years and adding a minor like psych or earth systems science, or graduating in the next year and putting myself in the cycle? Would psych or earth systems science even count towards my sGPA? If not, anyone have any recommendations as to any minors that likely might?

Thanks all for the time, these forums really are an invaluable resource.

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[Stagg737]

Med schools will not care about your minor 99% of the time unless you use it in a major life experience. Example, getting a Spanish minor then living in a Spanish speaking country for 6 months- a year. Even then, it likely won't play as large of a factor as your GPA and MCAT. If you want a legit shot at MD schools, you've gotta pull those GPAs up. They're not bad for DO, but still lower than many schools would prefer from their applicants.

 

[Run2Med]

I feared that would be the case. Many of the upper division classes that I really am interested in are difficult classes with top level professors. I would like to believe that I could ace every one of these classes, but there's a possibility I won't. Should I forgo those classes for the classes that have the easier reputation just to pull my GPA up?

 

[ZedsDed]

I feared that would be the case. Many of the upper division classes that I really am interested in are difficult classes with top level professors. I would like to believe that I could ace every one of these classes, but there's a possibility I won't. Should I forgo those classes for the classes that have the easier reputation just to pull my GPA up?

You are going to need to step up and take the challenge. You may role your eyes at this, but med school will destroy you if you can't get A's as an undergrad. Adcoms may also notice if all your upper div bio classes are ecology, or something along those lines. The point is, prove yourself academically.

 

[CaliforniaDreamer]

Why can't you get As in the challenging classes? They can't be as challenging as med school classes right?

 

[lifetothefullest]

Many people actually thrive at challenging classes because there are fewer grade-grubbing premeds in them. The atmosphere isn't as competitive and you can take the time to learn the material with your classmates instead of viewing them as competitors. Plus, your classmates also know that those "easy" classes are easy A's, so they'll probably be thinking the same thing as you so the easier classes may have difficult curves to get on top of for that fact.

 

[NeuResurgens]

Would it be possible for you to take *some* of the hard classes and *some* of the easier classes? You might not be able to take all the tough/interesting classes you want, but you'll be less at risk for killing your GPA as well. You need to succeed to get your GPA up if you want to be competitive for MD schools.

 

[Run2Med]

Would it be possible for you to take *some* of the hard classes and *some* of the easier classes? You might not be able to take all the tough/interesting classes you want, but you'll be less at risk for killing your GPA as well. You need to succeed to get your GPA up if you want to be competitive for MD schools.

Of course! This was going to be the most likely scenario for class selection. To be honest, I'm just much more interested in the upper div neuro and biochem classes than I am ecology or classes titled "integrative medicine" which should be relabeled as a public health class.

 

[Run2Med]

Many people actually thrive at challenging classes because there are fewer grade-grubbing premeds in them. The atmosphere isn't as competitive and you can take the time to learn the material with your classmates instead of viewing them as competitors. Plus, your classmates also know that those "easy" classes are easy A's, so they'll probably be thinking the same thing as you so the easier classes may have difficult curves to get on top of for that fact.

I never once thought of this aspect, thanks for the input.

 

[Run2Med]

You are going to need to step up and take the challenge. You may role your eyes at this, but med school will destroy you if you can't get A's as an undergrad. Adcoms may also notice if all your upper div bio classes are ecology, or something along those lines. The point is, prove yourself academically.

Not rolling my eyes at all! It's reality and I have come to this conclusion. I would be lying if I said taking 4 upper div challenging bio electives per quarter wasn't a little frightening, but at the end of the day I'm sure it pails in comparison to med school rigor.

 

[NeuResurgens]

Of course! This was going to be the most likely scenario for class selection. To be honest, I'm just much more interested in the upper div neuro and biochem classes than I am ecology or classes titled "integrative medicine" which should be relabeled as a public health class.

Hey, if you think you can handle it, go ahead and take some! Just remember that your GPA is low for MD schools, so you should try and find a balance. If you were theoretically able to get straight As and A- from here on, your GPA and your backstory would be a compelling combinations while you're applying. Just keep that in mind and use your judgement!

 

[Run2Med]

Hey, if you think you can handle it, go ahead and take some! Just remember that your GPA is low for MD schools, so you should try and find a balance. If you were theoretically able to get straight As and A- from here on, your GPA and your backstory would be a compelling combinations while you're applying. Just keep that in mind and use your judgement!

One last question, would picking up an easy minor like psych and boosting my cumulative GPA be worth the hassle of an extra year of school? Given that in that extra year I take my MCAT and boost my leadership and research experience

 

[NeuResurgens]

One last question, would picking up an easy minor like psych and boosting my cumulative GPA be worth the hassle of an extra year of school? Given that in that extra year I take my MCAT and boost my leadership and research experience

Only take a gap year if it adds substantially to your application. That being said, if during this extra year, you are boosting your GPA, participating in meaningful activities that give you leadership experience, doing research, AND hopefully giving you a leg up on the MCAT, that sounds like a productive use of an extra year and would likely help your application. Good gap years are all in the planning of it.

 

[Run2Med]

Only take a gap year if it adds substantially to your application. That being said, if during this extra year, you are boosting your GPA, participating in meaningful activities that give you leadership experience, doing research, AND hopefully giving you a leg up on the MCAT, that sounds like a productive use of an extra year and would likely help your application. Good gap years are all in the planning of it.

Ahhh thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my questions. This forum board is 90% of the time more helpful than any of my pre med advisors have ever been.

 

[NeuResurgens]

Ahhh thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my questions. This forum board is 90% of the time more helpful than any of my pre med advisors have ever been.

No problem! I feel the same way. Trust me, the only people who are really helpful in this are people who have done it. Advisers mean well but they can only do so much when they've only studied it.

 

[DrShephardWannabe]

Basically it comes down to taking the classes that have a reputation for being easier to get the higher GPA or taking the classes I want to take that challenge me and maybe not always getting that A.

Play that GPA game every chance you get. I have a good friend who started off as a neuroscience major, and was doing mediocre, around a 3.55 going into his junior year. He switched to a B.A. of human biology because it didn't require some of the classes that are nearly impossible at my university and brought his GPA up to a 3.7 before applying. He got two II's and squeaked into med school with one acceptance. He just matched into an excellent plastics program and is top of his class. His exact words to me were "Beyond a 3.6, you know how to study enough. Screw the whole preparing you for med school idea, just worry about getting in."

 

[Mad Jack]

Do whatever you can to boost your GPA. Your GPA is a hundred times more important than the courses you take, aside from the prereqs.

 

[Run2Med]

Play that GPA game every chance you get. I have a good friend who started off as a neuroscience major, and was doing mediocre, around a 3.55 going into his junior year. He switched to a B.A. of human biology because it didn't require some of the classes that are nearly impossible at my university and brought his GPA up to a 3.7 before applying. He got two II's and squeaked into med school with one acceptance. He just matched into an excellent plastics program and is top of his class. His exact words to me were "Beyond a 3.6, you know how to study enough. Screw the whole preparing you for med school idea, just worry about getting in."

I guess that puts me in the very mediocre category.... I enjoy neuroscience classes a lot and they have been the majority of my elective classes but certainly they are more difficult than the class on aids and its mechanisms. I guess I either step up to the plate and figure out how to Ace those neuro courses or take the easier GPA boosting classes

 

[Stagg737]

Many people actually thrive at challenging classes because there are fewer grade-grubbing premeds in them. The atmosphere isn't as competitive and you can take the time to learn the material with your classmates instead of viewing them as competitors. Plus, your classmates also know that those "easy" classes are easy A's, so they'll probably be thinking the same thing as you so the easier classes may have difficult curves to get on top of for that fact.

This assumes that a) OP's classes are graded on curves (which is not true at many schools) and b) that the 'easy' classes are actually filled with 'grade-grubbing pre-meds'. I can tell you that neither of these were the case with my undergrad school. I took mostly 300 and 400 level courses starting my sophomore year, and ended up with a 3.2 GPA. I can say, from 3 application cycles worth of experience, that exactly ZERO adcoms cared that I took harder classes and just saw a weak GPA. Also, if there's no curve in the classes, then it doesn't matter how many rockstars there are in any class, it's all about how well you do on the tests. They may look at what classes you took outside pre-reqs as a tiebreaker or determining whether to take you off a waitlist, but as a whole keeping a high GPA is far more important than the classes you take.

One last question, would picking up an easy minor like psych and boosting my cumulative GPA be worth the hassle of an extra year of school? Given that in that extra year I take my MCAT and boost my leadership and research experience

Maybe. I'll elaborate a little more on what @UNMedGa said. You have to show you were doing something significant with that gap year. If they ask you why you took that minor and how you plan to use it in your career, you'd better have a great reason. In addition, they'll be expecting you to have other experiences and not just have a minor that you'll maybe use that probably won't significantly impact your GPA and would do nothing for your sGPA.

If you want to bring your GPA up, you'd be better off doing a 1 year SMP. You'll be taking classes that are (mostly) relevant to med school, you'll get enough credits to impact your GPA, and med schools will know that the classes were near med-school level courses, so getting a 3.8 GPA there will look infinitely better than getting a 4.0 in a psych minor or something like that. Plus you could just focus on your grades and MCAT (if it's not required) instead of worrying about all the other activities. Just another possibility for you.

 

[ChEMD]

If you want to bring your GPA up, you'd be better off doing a 1 year SMP. You'll be taking classes that are (mostly) relevant to med school, you'll get enough credits to impact your GPA, and med schools will know that the classes were near med-school level courses, so getting a 3.8 GPA there will look infinitely better than getting a 4.0 in a psych minor or something like that. Plus you could just focus on your grades and MCAT (if it's not required) instead of worrying about all the other activities. Just another possibility for you.

SMP stands for special masters program, meaning the grades you receive in it will only impact your grad school GPA. It will do nothing to impact your undergrad GPA numerically.

 

[Run2Med]

This assumes that a) OP's classes are graded on curves (which is not true at many schools) and b) that the 'easy' classes are actually filled with 'grade-grubbing pre-meds'. I can tell you that neither of these were the case with my undergrad school. I took mostly 300 and 400 level courses starting my sophomore year, and ended up with a 3.2 GPA. I can say, from 3 application cycles worth of experience, that exactly ZERO adcoms cared that I took harder classes and just saw a weak GPA. Also, if there's no curve in the classes, then it doesn't matter how many rockstars there are in any class, it's all about how well you do on the tests. They may look at what classes you took outside pre-reqs as a tiebreaker or determining whether to take you off a waitlist, but as a whole keeping a high GPA is far more important than the classes you take.



Maybe. I'll elaborate a little more on what @UNMedGa said. You have to show you were doing something significant with that gap year. If they ask you why you took that minor and how you plan to use it in your career, you'd better have a great reason. In addition, they'll be expecting you to have other experiences and not just have a minor that you'll maybe use that probably won't significantly impact your GPA and would do nothing for your sGPA.

If you want to bring your GPA up, you'd be better off doing a 1 year SMP. You'll be taking classes that are (mostly) relevant to med school, you'll get enough credits to impact your GPA, and med schools will know that the classes were near med-school level courses, so getting a 3.8 GPA there will look infinitely better than getting a 4.0 in a psych minor or something like that. Plus you could just focus on your grades and MCAT (if it's not required) instead of worrying about all the other activities. Just another possibility for you.

My university is full of grade grubbing pre meds and all of my classes are graded on a curve! Maybe a minor isn't the best idea, especially in psychology. I just figured an extra year (about 36 or so units of A level work) might be an extra boost to my cumulative GPA. Is there anyway to figure out what minors I could take that my school offers that would count towards my sGPA? For example classes like Earth Systems Science... If I start the application and fill out theoretical classes would it differentiate my sGPA from my cumulative for me? Basically if I took an extra year of school I would pace out my biology major classes with my minor classes and boost my outside of school activities. I am a scribe at a university founded non profit clinic near campus, I have ER volunteer experience, I am the treasurer on the founding board of a nonprofit charity that is about to become fully legally accredited and I am starting research this year. If anything I figured my extra year would give me a chance to get involved with school related leadership positions as well as further my research experience and maybe work towards a publication or two and take my MCAT that year.

 

[Run2Med]

SMP stands for special masters program, meaning the grades you receive in it will only impact your grad school GPA. It will do nothing to impact your undergrad GPA numerically.

Is grad school GPA comparable to undergrad GPA for medical schools? Or does undergrad GPA hold more weight?

 

[lifetothefullest]

This assumes that a) OP's classes are graded on curves (which is not true at many schools) and b) that the 'easy' classes are actually filled with 'grade-grubbing pre-meds'. I can tell you that neither of these were the case with my undergrad school. I took mostly 300 and 400 level courses starting my sophomore year, and ended up with a 3.2 GPA. I can say, from 3 application cycles worth of experience, that exactly ZERO adcoms cared that I took harder classes and just saw a weak GPA. Also, if there's no curve in the classes, then it doesn't matter how many rockstars there are in any class, it's all about how well you do on the tests. They may look at what classes you took outside pre-reqs as a tiebreaker or determining whether to take you off a waitlist, but as a whole keeping a high GPA is far more important than the classes you take.

I guess OP just clarified about the curving but I'm surprised you know exactly that none of your adcoms cared about the difficulty of your classes. Especially since there's whole application to consider - unless you have it firsthand from somebody who read your application. OP also wants to challenge himself/herself academically. I'm assuming only that he/she is actually interested in those classes and in the subject matter. If the class isn't graded on a curve, there's no reason why he/she can't get an A if he/she puts the effort in. Think about it this way: somebody in that class was getting an A. Many "somebodies" actually. So the question becomes: why aren't I getting an A? Given, there are some classes where professors give out one or two A's in total to people who have graduate-level understanding of the material, but those are exceptions. If you know what there is to know about a subject and there isn't a curve, there's no reason you couldn't get an A.

 

[ChEMD]

Is grad school GPA comparable to undergrad GPA for medical schools? Or does undergrad GPA hold more weight?

I'm no adcom, but from what I've heard, grad school GPA isn't looked upon as heavily as undergrad GPA. This is because grad school courses often have pretty high grade distributions (this obviously varies), because grad school is about much more than taking classroom courses.

That being said, doing well in an SMP can probably offset a somewhat low undergrad GPA, since it proves that even though you weren't able to get great grade in undergrad, you can still handle the medical school 1st year courseload. My previous point was mainly to point out that your numeric undergrad GPA will not change if you do an SMP. This is in contrast to doing a post-bacc, which will count towards your undergrad GPA (and there is a lot of discussion on which is of more benefit for people with low-ish undergrad GPAs).

 

[Stagg737]

Is there anyway to figure out what minors I could take that my school offers that would count towards my sGPA? For example classes like Earth Systems Science... If I start the application and fill out theoretical classes would it differentiate my sGPA from my cumulative for me? Basically if I took an extra year of school I would pace out my biology major classes with my minor classes and boost my outside of school activities.

If you want want to know that, I believe the AMCAS and AACOMAS applications both have sections that show what will generally count towards the sGPA. I know that at my school physics, bio, and chem or classes that fall within those categories only are counted towards sGPA. Earth sciences, public health courses, and psych are not included. Other schools may have different policies, but you'd have to contact the schools or look at the specific websites.

Is grad school GPA comparable to undergrad GPA for medical schools? Or does undergrad GPA hold more weight?

While grad schools grades won't replace undergrad grades and typically won't be applied to undergrad GPA, it will be assumed that those classes are graduate level classes (harder than undergrad) and getting a high GPA would definitely be helpful. Will they have the same weight as undergrad? Depends where you apply. I know for a fact some schools will completely throw out your undergrad GPA if you take at least X number of grad school credits (this includes SMPs). Other schools only look at your grad school grades if the undergrad GPA meets their minimum. Some schools just add grad school credits to undergrad (though I don't think this is common). Once again, it varies from school to school and you'd have to look on an individual basis.

Generally, schools don't care about minors unless you use them in a career or some other major aspect of your life, but if it will help you get your GPA up and you want to do the other activities for another year, then go for it. Just make sure you can explain why it took you an extra year to graduate.

I guess OP just clarified about the curving but I'm surprised you know exactly that none of your adcoms cared about the difficulty of your classes. Especially since there's whole application to consider - unless you have it firsthand from somebody who read your application. OP also wants to challenge himself/herself academically. I'm assuming only that he/she is actually interested in those classes and in the subject matter. If the class isn't graded on a curve, there's no reason why he/she can't get an A if he/she puts the effort in. Think about it this way: somebody in that class was getting an A. Many "somebodies" actually. So the question becomes: why aren't I getting an A? Given, there are some classes where professors give out one or two A's in total to people who have graduate-level understanding of the material, but those are exceptions. If you know what there is to know about a subject and there isn't a curve, there's no reason you couldn't get an A.

I may have exaggerated when . However, after getting 0 ii's in my second cycle (which I had a medical withdrawal at the time) I called about 25 schools up to see what my application issues were and if it was the medical withdrawal or if there were other issues (for almost all of them it was the medical withdrawal). I also asked a lot of other questions. I asked a lot of them if the fact that over 75% of my total credits, UG and grad, were 300 level or higher made a difference and pretty much every school I asked said they didn't care. I really thought it would make a difference, but for basically every school I talked to, it didn't. The general trend was that a moderately higher GPA (3.75+) with easier classes was always better than a lower GPA (3.3-3.5) with more difficult classes. This was especially true if the grades in pre-req classes were mediocre (which some of mine were). As long as the vast majority of the transcript wasn't 100 level classes, most places didn't seem to care. What they did care about was that between my senior year and grad school I had an upward trend. Having a downward trend or no movement is definitely not a good sign.

OP, if you have more specific questions, you may want to try and contact some of the adcom members on here like Goro or Hushcom. They can give you a much better idea of what schools will think about these things and specifically what you should do. Generally speaking, as long as you can keep improving and have a good reason for everything you do then it won't hurt you. Some things will definitely help more than others, and I would talk to them to find out exactly what those things are.

 

[wegotthis14]

Take some difficult classes if you want. However, above all else, try to improve your gpa. Maybe you won't take the classes you find most interesting now, but that's a sacrifice you might want to make for the long term goal of med school. The sad truth is that med schools don't care about which major you pursued or which challenging classes you took. Med schools love to flaunt numbers, so make sure yours are on par. Your gpa is already borderline, so be realistic about how you will actually perform and choose classes based on that.