@rabbott1971 @Robin-jay
(Note: I say this as a non-traditional student with a graduate degree)
DrMidLife isn't suggesting that there aren't medical schools who take into consideration your graduate GPA or that your graduate GPA isn't considered at all. (Note: I It is possible that both what you two are saying AND what they are saying is true...and in fact, in this instance, that is the case.
It is important to understand that DrMidLife is also writing for posterity. There will be hundreds of non-traditional students each year, many with a graduate degree, who will perform a Google search or use the forum search feature in an effort to understand how their graduate degree will be viewed in the medical school application process. They are trying to assess the landscape. Trying to understand how much sacrifice and hard work it will take to get into medical school. For students who performed poorly as undergrads but excelled in graduate school, they are trying to figure out if an excellent graduate school performance can redeem a poor undergraduate performance. What DrMidLife is saying, is that
1) in the absence of other compelling information to suggest that you can hack the academically rigorous challenge posed by medical school (such as formal or informal post-bacc coursework in BCMP, an SMP, etc. AND a decent MCAT score) that
a good graduate GPA alone is not enough to get you into medical school.
(Additionally, and I don't want to further muddy the water, I believe that what DrMidLife is suggesting is that
2) even
if a good graduate GPA
alone were enough to get you into medical school that you might need to have some concerns about your degree of preparation for medical school. The hard part of medical school is not getting in, it's not drowning in the work once you are there. If you are applying to medical school, you should certainly research the admissions process and understand how your academic profile will be viewed. However, you should remember that getting in and being adequately prepared are two different things, and one of the reasons that many medical schools take post-bacc and SMP work more seriously than unrelated graduate coursework is because they do the later. The overriding concern here seems to be for students who might be able to get into on of the schools you mentioned, as a result of a good gGPA, who do little to no BCMP work beyond the prerequisites, who then are not adequately prepared for medical school).
Now, what you two are suggesting is that
1) a graduate degree, and its resultant GPA, is not an "extra curricular" and that there are quite a few medical schools who take the GPAs awarded seriously, several who in fact replace the uGPA with the gGPA depending on the number of credits completed or average all course work together. It also seems like you are suggesting that
2) the overall attitude towards the significance of non-SMP graduate coursework on SDN is
too dismissive. (This is probably true but SDN only knows the extremes.) This is great news for folks who performed well in graduate programs. There are many folks who didn't know this, including myself, and your contributions to this thread will serve some folks well as they research the medical school admissions process. As folks strive to just get their application in front of human eyeballs. However, that doesn't make what DrMidLife is saying any less true.
Bottom line: Getting into medical school is difficult and applicants should do what it takes to make themselves competitive in the application process; this means creating an appropriate list of schools of which to apply. However, applicants should spend as much time, trying to ensure that they are as prepared as they can be, as success in the former doesn't necessarily suggest success in the later.
