GPA Rumor

OSUdoc08 · Jul 9, 2006

ironmanf14 said:
So, the AAMC publised data that says that MCAT is a MUCH strobger predictor of med school success (USMLE scores).....but yet they still put more weight on GPA??

This doesn't make sense to me

take a look at this

Medical College Admission Test (MCAT®) scores can be used to predict how well students will do during their clinical rotations in the third year of medical school, as well as during the basic science curricula of the first two years, according to a recent AAMC study. This result was somewhat unexpected to faculty and admissions personnel who formerly believed that the predictive validity of the MCAT was limited to the basic sciences.

In fact, MCAT scores were better predictors of the scores later achieved on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step tests than were undergraduate grade-point averages (GPAs). Grades in medical school, however, were best predicted by taking both MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs into consideration, according to the report.

http://www.aamc.org/newsroom/reporter/march06/mcat.htm

Cool. Thanks for the info.

Unfortunately, the conversation was regarding admission to medical school and not success in medical school. It seems as though you've drifted a little bit off topic.

R.P. McMurphy · Jul 9, 2006

OSUdoc08 said:
Cool. Thanks for the info.

Unfortunately, the conversation was regarding admission to medical school and not success in medical school. It seems as though you've drifted a little bit off topic.

No, I understand it was about admission to medical school

But that's my point. So you are saying that they AAMC knows that MCAT is a better predictor of how well someone will do in medical school, but they decide to use GPA as a higher weight anyway??

It seems kind of ridiculous.....you would think they want to admit the majority of students who are predicted to make it in med school....

OSUdoc08 · Jul 9, 2006

ironmanf14 said:
No, I understand it was about admission to medical school

But that's my point. So you are saying that they AAMC knows that MCAT is a better predictor of how well someone will do in medical school, but they decide to use GPA as a higher weight anyway??

It seems kind of ridiculous.....you would think they want to admit the majority of students who are predicted to make it in med school....

1. The AAMC doesn't decide who is admitted to medical school.

2. It is ridiculous, which has always been my contention about Allopathic Medical School Admissions Committees. They are not admitting people that would make the best physicians, but who would make the best research scientists.

mvenus929 · Jul 9, 2006

Alright, time for my two cents.

First, I'd like to say that at least my pre-med advisor says that med schools look not only at your overall GPA and your science GPA, but also take into account your worst semester and best semester, to see the true range of your abilities.

Second, not that I believe my state school is hard or anything, but both gen chem classes that I've taken have a cutoff of an 85 for an A, and out of the hundred or so people that took the class, I think only about 10 got an A with that cutoff. Consequently, there were a few of us who not only got A's with the lower cutoff, but were fighting to get 100% in the class. It made watching grades all the more interesting. (Most classes in my school do have the 90% cutoff, but apparently we have a rockin' chem department, so that makes a bit of difference, I suppose. Personally, I thought gen chem was no different from high school chem.)

Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference, but I went to a state school cause it was a heck of a lot cheaper than any other school I applied to, and the tradition is to really get to know your professors, because few classes are actually taught by TAs (and I mean VERY few). I think that's one of the downfalls of Ivy League schools... you may have awesome grades and know how to take a test, but in my experience, you don't get to know the professors that well because you're lost in a crowd of 800 people in a class (the largest class at my school will be the organic I class: 130, most are restricted to 30 or 40).

R.P. McMurphy · Jul 9, 2006

OSUdoc08 said:
1. The AAMC doesn't decide who is admitted to medical school.

2. It is ridiculous, which has always been my contention about Allopathic Medical School Admissions Committees. They are not admitting people that would make the best physicians, but who would make the best research scientists.

Ok, yea AAMC doesn't decide who is admitted to med school, that was stupid.

I am just under that delusion right now because I see it in the AMCAS and AAMC seems to be in my face all the time.....I forget to take into consideration that the schools are separate.

nervousivy · Jul 9, 2006

ahumdinger said:
Actually I wouldn't agree with that, precisely because of the filtering system. a high MCAT/low GPA combo is much more likely to be filtered out than the low MCAT/high GPA. It is true that many schools filter MCAT scores too. I don't know what the cut off is, but it certainly isn't equivalent to the GPA cut off (of, let's say, 3.0). And that's precisely the crux of my argument, that the average MCAT score of 27 is not considered a "lost cause" but a straight-B record is. If you look through these forums, no one is embarassed to say they got a 27, or even 30, MCAT. But we have threads dedicated to GPAs below 3.3 because they are considered the true underdogs.

Perhaps that's b/c the MCAT just measures your knowledge and test taking skills at one small moment of your academic life, whereas your GPA reflects your ability as a student. IMO, if you have a pretty low GPA and a high MCAT, it kinda suggests that you are a slacker who's pretty intelligent, but not motivated. Whereas, getting an average or low score on an MCAT could be a reflection of you not being a good standardized test taker...

Rafa · Jul 9, 2006

^ It could also be a reflection of the unchallenging nature of your school's pre-med curriculum.

thesauce · Jul 9, 2006

nervousivy said:
Perhaps that's b/c the MCAT just measures your knowledge and test taking skills at one small moment of your academic life, whereas your GPA reflects your ability as a student. IMO, if you have a pretty low GPA and a high MCAT, it kinda suggests that you are a slacker who's pretty intelligent, but not motivated. Whereas, getting an average or low score on an MCAT could be a reflection of you not being a good standardized test taker...

You hit the nail on the head!

OSUdoc08 · Jul 9, 2006

mvenus929 said:
Alright, time for my two cents.

First, I'd like to say that at least my pre-med advisor says that med schools look not only at your overall GPA and your science GPA, but also take into account your worst semester and best semester, to see the true range of your abilities.

Second, not that I believe my state school is hard or anything, but both gen chem classes that I've taken have a cutoff of an 85 for an A, and out of the hundred or so people that took the class, I think only about 10 got an A with that cutoff. Consequently, there were a few of us who not only got A's with the lower cutoff, but were fighting to get 100% in the class. It made watching grades all the more interesting. (Most classes in my school do have the 90% cutoff, but apparently we have a rockin' chem department, so that makes a bit of difference, I suppose. Personally, I thought gen chem was no different from high school chem.)

Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference, but I went to a state school cause it was a heck of a lot cheaper than any other school I applied to, and the tradition is to really get to know your professors, because few classes are actually taught by TAs (and I mean VERY few). I think that's one of the downfalls of Ivy League schools... you may have awesome grades and know how to take a test, but in my experience, you don't get to know the professors that well because you're lost in a crowd of 800 people in a class (the largest class at my school will be the organic I class: 130, most are restricted to 30 or 40).

1. The advice of a premed advisor is worth it's weight in fecal material.

2. You can go to a private school with a small class size without going to an Ivy League school. I did. You can also recieve an excellent premedical education at said school.

Dr.Pdizzle · Jul 9, 2006

Rafa said:
^ It could also be a reflection of the unchallenging nature of your school's pre-med curriculum.

Yeah, cause how I do on verbal is a great indication on how well I did in biochem and whether my immunology class was cake or not

It's the same stupid argument about gpa vs mcat over again and goes both ways. I didn't do great on the ACT verbal either, it lowered my overall ACT score, and I seemed to do swell in college. Just like not acing the MCAT verbal doing a number on my overall MCAT score, I think I'll do just fine in med school.

zach1201 · Jul 9, 2006

I do know that in the coming years, medical schools will be putting more weight or stock into MCAT scores rather than GPA.

Heard this at a conference held by a head of an admissions committee.

Geno, you are right in terms of Cornell too. I believe this is taken into consideration also. By admissions committee and the school (e.g. GPA for Dean's list is different by colleges).

Rafa · Jul 9, 2006

s/he said...

nervousivy said:
IMO, if you have a pretty low GPA and a high MCAT, it kinda suggests that you are a slacker who's pretty intelligent, but not motivated. Whereas, getting an average or low score on an MCAT could be a reflection of you not being a good standardized test taker...

then i said...

Rafa said:
^ It could also be a reflection of the unchallenging nature of your school's pre-med curriculum.

then you said...

Dr.Pdizzle said:
Yeah, cause how I do on verbal is a great indication on how well I did in biochem and whether my immunology class was cake or not

what are you talking about? i was responding to the self-flagellating claim that a high gpa and a low mcat were signs of a diligent student who was simply a poor test taker. this has nothing to do with how you did on the verbal section of your biochem or whatever's you're getting at.

edit: i think i see where the confusion is. you thought i stated that a low mcat by itself could point to an unchalling pre-med courseload. rather, i was referring to the touted combination of a hi-gpa/low-mcat score. as in, a high gpa may not have as much to do with a student's work ethic or diligence as much as it might have to do with the environment in which the grades were earned (or bought).

solitude · Jul 9, 2006

ironmanf14 said:
actually I didn't read any of your other posts and don't plan on reading them. They are long/ranting/whiny/and bitchy.

No, I hate reading posts like that.

The perfect defense. If you refuse to address my arguments, then you must be right by process of elimination!

notdeadyet · Jul 9, 2006

I find that the theory that schools should place emphasis on grades instead of MCAT is often held by those with good grades.

The theory that the MCAT should have more emphasis is usually the one held by those who did well on it.

nervousivy · Jul 9, 2006

Rafa said:
^ It could also be a reflection of the unchallenging nature of your school's pre-med curriculum.

True, but if you have over a 3.8 at a top undergrad insti., then I doubt the curriculum was 'easy'...

geno2568 · Jul 9, 2006

nervousivy said:
Perhaps that's b/c the MCAT just measures your knowledge and test taking skills at one small moment of your academic life, whereas your GPA reflects your ability as a student. IMO, if you have a pretty low GPA and a high MCAT, it kinda suggests that you are a slacker who's pretty intelligent, but not motivated. Whereas, getting an average or low score on an MCAT could be a reflection of you not being a good standardized test taker...

on the surface, u might be right

however, for me to get my mcat score, i had to study all the time from December through April...not just a small moment in my life. Not to mention that I had to retain a lot of knowledge from the previous years. And there are a lot of things that brought down my gpa..."slacking off" was not one of them.

I'm not disagreeing with you...cuz yur right: based on the numbers, I look like one of those closet-genius slacker types. I just hope the adcoms don't make these generalizations.

Returnednds · Jul 9, 2006

notdeadyet said:
I find that the theory that schools should place emphasis on grades instead of MCAT is often held by those with good grades.

The theory that the MCAT should have more emphasis is usually the one held by those who did well on it.

I've always believed in the MCAT, even after my poor performance the first time around.

mvenus929 · Jul 9, 2006

OSUdoc08 said:
1. The advice of a premed advisor is worth it's weight in fecal material.

2. You can go to a private school with a small class size without going to an Ivy League school. I did. You can also recieve an excellent premedical education at said school.

1. Well, considering she got it straight out of a booklet given to her by the University of Colorado adcom, plus several of the students in our pre-med society have said the same thing about other schools, I'm inclined to believe her.

2. I am aware of that, I was just saying that that's one of the reasons I decided not to go Ivy League... I didn't want to get lost in the numbers. The reasons I chose MY school had to do with my family and my financial situation. It was just a big plus that it was a pretty small state university with a great science department. I even said so in my original post:

I went to a state school cause it was a heck of a lot cheaper than any other school I applied to, and the tradition is to really get to know your professors, because few classes are actually taught by TAs (and I mean VERY few). I think that's one of the downfalls of Ivy League schools... you may have awesome grades and know how to take a test, but in my experience, you don't get to know the professors that well because you're lost in a crowd of 800 people in a class

Gabujabu · Jul 9, 2006

One of the previous posters mentioned MIT in comparison to similarly ranked schools. I think it is unfortunate that this the reality, but the lack of grade inflation at MIT actually hurts MIT students when it comes to admissions to med school. According to this website http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html, only 73.5% of MIT students who applied to medical school got into any school at all. This rate is much lower than that of comparable schools, which have over 90% acceptance.

One MIT girl once told me flat out, "If you want to do pre-med, don't come to MIT. You won't have a high enough GPA to get into the top schools." Now while this is certainly an extreme statement (I know someone who had a 5.0 at MIT who went to Hopkins), what happens is that when a top school decides to have very high standards, some smart people fall by the wayside. This is the ugly side of professional school admission. While I've heard that some MIT recruiters, like Microsoft, control for this by giving people at MIT a .3 GPA boost, this certainly does not happen with medical schools.

One example of this is Mr. Fujinaka's website - http://i8u.org/reject.html. Despite a 3.3 MIT GPA, a 3.9 postbacc GPA, and a 36 MCAT all his 63 applications to various medical schools were rejected

. Now there may very well have been other reasons he may have been rejected (personality, fit, applying in the 90s when admission was more competitive), if this individual had gone to a school that was easier, he may very well have become a doctor.

Gabujabu · Jul 9, 2006

Sorry about the double post. Slow connection.

mvenus929 · Jul 10, 2006

From the CU-Boulder website:

The CU School of Medicine, as well as many others, use a formula to calculate your GPA that takes into account a bad year, a slow start, etc. They calculate the GPA using sub-scores of your GPA. The first is your overall GPA for all course work taken by the time you apply to medical school (including postgraduate coursework). The second is your science (BCPM) GPA. This GPA is calculated by looking at your grades in every biology, chemistry, physics, and math course you have ever taken. The third is your "best year" GPA. This is the GPA of an academic year (Fall semester followed by a Spring semester - no other combination is considered) in which you took 20 or more semester hours of course work (can be from your post-baccalaureate or graduate work). Thus if you did poorly in the past, by doing well in 20 or more hours a following year, your GPA will look better. It is important to remember that the best year GPA is a Fall/Spring sequence, not a Spring/Fall or Summer/Fall, or Spring/Summer.

Granted, I don't know what these other med schools are, but I thought I should show everyone. Here's the website: http://www.colorado.edu/ArtsSciences/aacforstudents/applymed.html

lk2230 · Jul 10, 2006

Not being confrontational, just thought you might find this interesting.

Essentially no one ever graduates Harvard undergrad with a 4.0

5 PEOPLE in the history of Harvard have done it...that's since the 1600's when Harvard was founded. 5 people.

Interestingly, 2 of them were in the past 6 years...BROTHER AND SISTER. And they both went to my high school (she was in my grade).

LOL...in high school his ambition was to one day be president, and I read in an interview with her that she wants to be the first female supreme court justice...we'll see

Gabujabu said:
The reality at harvard is that hardly anyone graduates with a 4.0 (only a handful of people in the past decades) and getting a solid 3.8 would put you in the top 10%. The real problem with harvard up until a few years ago was that an excessive number of people were graduating w/ honors because the bar for honors was way too low. That changed a few years ago. In fact, if you go to gradeinflation.com, the average GPA at Harvard is not altogether that different from similar colleges, and many of the high grades were being given in humanities subjects. This is not quite the case in the sciences. In fact, one of the deans at Harvard told me that, at least in biology, the data indicate that there has been some deflation.

According to this article <http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=349042>, the average MCAT for Harvard students who were accepted to medical school was 34.7, which is close to the average MCAT at some of the top medical schools in the country, yet the average GPA of these students was 3.57. All I'm saying is that grades at Harvard are not quite the joke that people make them out to be.

manning18 · Jul 10, 2006

This is a debate that will never cool down, huh? That said, I wanted to throw in my $0.02. I graduated from a prestigious/elite College, where I did most of my coursework. However, I did take some courses at a more average school and, after graduating (and not getting into Med School), I took some Science courses at another average school. My take was that the courses I took at the average schools were SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER than similar courses at the College I graduated from, which is considered elite. This difference in difficulty is MUCH GREATER than any modest adjustment that Med School AdComs may make for having attended a tough college. My College, while tough, is not considered one of the "super tough," elite Colleges, like UC-Berkeley, MIT, Hopkins, UChicago, so things must be even tougher at those places.
I am in Med School now (pretty far along) and my take is that an A is better than a B is better than a C is better than a D, etc. The moral of the story is that, if you're certain you want to go to Med School, attend the College where you can get the highest GPA, particularly in the Sciences/BCPM (or whatever it's called). As long as the school you attend is not a community/junior College, a high GPA will take you further than a low one!
For example, I'm quite certain that this student from MIT ( a few posts above) with the 3.3/36 could have easily broken 3.7+ at the schools I took classes at (outside my main school) and, with a 36 MCAT, would have gotten into many strong Med Schools. Go where you can get the highest GPA, period! Forget prestige, forget any sort of adjustment based on name/reputation, etc. This applied if you're very confident or certain you want to go to Med School. If you may end up looking for a nice job, this does not apply, as the stronger companies do not recruit at the weaker schools.
Good luck!

ahumdinger · Jul 10, 2006

manning18 said:
This is a debate that will never cool down, huh? That said, I wanted to throw in my $0.02. I graduated from a prestigious/elite College, where I did most of my coursework. However, I did take some courses at a more average school and, after graduating (and not getting into Med School), I took some Science courses at another average school. My take was that the courses I took at the average schools were SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER than similar courses at the College I graduated from, which is considered elite. This difference in difficulty is MUCH GREATER than any modest adjustment that Med School AdComs may make for having attended a tough college. My College, while tough, is not considered one of the "super tough," elite Colleges, like UC-Berkeley, MIT, Hopkins, UChicago, so things must be even tougher at those places.
I am in Med School now (pretty far along) and my take is that an A is better than a B is better than a C is better than a D, etc. The moral of the story is that, if you're certain you want to go to Med School, attend the College where you can get the highest GPA, particularly in the Sciences/BCPM (or whatever it's called). As long as the school you attend is not a community/junior College, a high GPA will take you further than a low one!
For example, I'm quite certain that this student from MIT ( a few posts above) with the 3.3/36 could have easily broken 3.7+ at the schools I took classes at (outside my main school) and, with a 36 MCAT, would have gotten into many strong Med Schools. Go where you can get the highest GPA, period! Forget prestige, forget any sort of adjustment based on name/reputation, etc. This applied if you're very confident or certain you want to go to Med School. If you may end up looking for a nice job, this does not apply, as the stronger companies do not recruit at the weaker schools.
Good luck!

I gotta agree with you! I don't regret going to uchicago, but i think if I were go do it over, I would have definitely dropped that "challenge myself" mentality and just taken the easiest level science courses possible. Honors Calculus and Honors Bio killed me and my GPA!! As horrible as it sounds, if you know you're going into medicine, you gotta play the game as early as possible.

silkworm · Jul 10, 2006

Gabujabu said:
One of the previous posters mentioned MIT in comparison to similarly ranked schools. I think it is unfortunate that this the reality, but the lack of grade inflation at MIT actually hurts MIT students when it comes to admissions to med school. According to this website http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html, only 73.5% of MIT students who applied to medical school got into any school at all. This rate is much lower than that of comparable schools, which have over 90% acceptance.

One MIT girl once told me flat out, "If you want to do pre-med, don't come to MIT. You won't have a high enough GPA to get into the top schools." Now while this is certainly an extreme statement (I know someone who had a 5.0 at MIT who went to Hopkins), what happens is that when a top school decides to have very high standards, some smart people fall by the wayside. This is the ugly side of professional school admission. While I've heard that some MIT recruiters, like Microsoft, control for this by giving people at MIT a .3 GPA boost, this certainly does not happen with medical schools.

One example of this is Mr. Fujinaka's website - http://i8u.org/reject.html. Despite a 3.3 MIT GPA, a 3.9 postbacc GPA, and a 36 MCAT all his 63 applications to various medical schools were rejected . Now there may very well have been other reasons he may have been rejected (personality, fit, applying in the 90s when admission was more competitive), if this individual had gone to a school that was easier, he may very well have become a doctor.

Man, that man's story is so dispiriting. My stats are similar: low GPA, high MCAT, live in Portland OR, Asian.

ahumdinger · Jul 10, 2006

silkworm said:
Man, that man's story is so dispiriting. My stats are similar: low GPA, high MCAT, live in Portland OR, Asian.

Silkworm! your stats are fine! Especially with an MS and what seems like a lot of "real world" experience. I don't think you even need to do the SMP but with that as a bonus, you should have a really successful cycle. good luck.

swifty100850 · Jul 10, 2006

lk2230 said:
Not being confrontational, just thought you might find this interesting.

Essentially no one ever graduates Harvard undergrad with a 4.0

5 PEOPLE in the history of Harvard have done it...that's since the 1600's when Harvard was founded. 5 people.

Interestingly, 2 of them were in the past 6 years...BROTHER AND SISTER. And they both went to my high school (she was in my grade).

LOL...in high school his ambition was to one day be president, and I read in an interview with her that she wants to be the first female supreme court justice...we'll see

And one of the other three was Henrey Kissinger.

I heard the other two were Chuck Norris and Vin Diesel!

Gabujabu · Jul 10, 2006

Cool. I've actually read about her in the school paper - she's doing a joint JD-MBA at Harvard Business/Yale Law. Too bad about her desire to be first female supreme count justice, though, since Sandra Day O'Connor beat her to it.

lk2230 said:
Not being confrontational, just thought you might find this interesting.

Essentially no one ever graduates Harvard undergrad with a 4.0

5 PEOPLE in the history of Harvard have done it...that's since the 1600's when Harvard was founded. 5 people.

Interestingly, 2 of them were in the past 6 years...BROTHER AND SISTER. And they both went to my high school (she was in my grade).

LOL...in high school his ambition was to one day be president, and I read in an interview with her that she wants to be the first female supreme court justice...we'll see

Gabujabu · Jul 10, 2006

Mr. Fujinaka does offer this assessment of what happened. "I didn't get in because of bad luck and bad timing. I applied when the number of people wanting to get into medical school was peaking. I was also too old, too Asian, and my undergraduate GPA was too low."

I personally think the main factor was that he applied in the 1990's when the # of applicants was much higher. To the previous poster, don't worry, I think you have a much better shot.

silkworm said:
Man, that man's story is so dispiriting. My stats are similar: low GPA, high MCAT, live in Portland OR, Asian.

iheartrain · Jul 10, 2006

mvenus929 said:
Alright, time for my two cents.

First, I'd like to say that at least my pre-med advisor says that med schools look not only at your overall GPA and your science GPA, but also take into account your worst semester and best semester, to see the true range of your abilities.

Second, not that I believe my state school is hard or anything, but both gen chem classes that I've taken have a cutoff of an 85 for an A, and out of the hundred or so people that took the class, I think only about 10 got an A with that cutoff. Consequently, there were a few of us who not only got A's with the lower cutoff, but were fighting to get 100% in the class. It made watching grades all the more interesting. (Most classes in my school do have the 90% cutoff, but apparently we have a rockin' chem department, so that makes a bit of difference, I suppose. Personally, I thought gen chem was no different from high school chem.)

Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference, but I went to a state school cause it was a heck of a lot cheaper than any other school I applied to, and the tradition is to really get to know your professors, because few classes are actually taught by TAs (and I mean VERY few). I think that's one of the downfalls of Ivy League schools... you may have awesome grades and know how to take a test, but in my experience, you don't get to know the professors that well because you're lost in a crowd of 800 people in a class (the largest class at my school will be the organic I class: 130, most are restricted to 30 or 40).

*WHAT!?!* You are arguing that ivy league schools have 800 people in a class while state schools have small classes that are not taught by TAs!?! Are you smoking crack? I went to an ivy league undergrad and I can tell you I was never once taught in a class by a TA, though I had several sections led by TAs which never bothered me. Taking classes at a state school in the summer, I am being taught by a grad student in a class of 500 (and classes are smaller in the summer session). Your state school was the exception- most are very large with very little contact with professors unless you make the effort to go to their OH, or you are in upper division seminars.

iheartrain · Jul 10, 2006

manning18 said:
This is a debate that will never cool down, huh? That said, I wanted to throw in my $0.02. I graduated from a prestigious/elite College, where I did most of my coursework. However, I did take some courses at a more average school and, after graduating (and not getting into Med School), I took some Science courses at another average school. My take was that the courses I took at the average schools were SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER than similar courses at the College I graduated from, which is considered elite. This difference in difficulty is MUCH GREATER than any modest adjustment that Med School AdComs may make for having attended a tough college. My College, while tough, is not considered one of the "super tough," elite Colleges, like UC-Berkeley, MIT, Hopkins, UChicago, so things must be even tougher at those places.
I am in Med School now (pretty far along) and my take is that an A is better than a B is better than a C is better than a D, etc. The moral of the story is that, if you're certain you want to go to Med School, attend the College where you can get the highest GPA, particularly in the Sciences/BCPM (or whatever it's called). As long as the school you attend is not a community/junior College, a high GPA will take you further than a low one!
For example, I'm quite certain that this student from MIT ( a few posts above) with the 3.3/36 could have easily broken 3.7+ at the schools I took classes at (outside my main school) and, with a 36 MCAT, would have gotten into many strong Med Schools. Go where you can get the highest GPA, period! Forget prestige, forget any sort of adjustment based on name/reputation, etc. This applied if you're very confident or certain you want to go to Med School. If you may end up looking for a nice job, this does not apply, as the stronger companies do not recruit at the weaker schools.
Good luck!

I couldn't agree with you more. I had the same experience with ivy league undergrad being much much much harder than any +.3 gpa points a med school could give me. The state school and 2 private schools I took post bac classes at have been a joke compared to undergrad, and they are pretty well regarded middle tier schools. I almost regret going to the undergrad I did go to because my B-s there are not impressive to adcoms, though I worked 5X as hard there as I did for my 4.0 at my post bac schools. What can you do? Just move on, be glad you have an undergrad degree from a place that most people know and regard with respect. I only feel bitter when I think of how I would be in med school now if I had gone to an easier lower tiered undergrad, and I think its a smart argument to make to attend one if you know you want to go to med school. A's are always better it seems, regardless of where they are earned (ive only gathere this from sdn so im not sure how true it is) which sucks, but what can you do but move forward?

ahumdinger · Jul 11, 2006

iheartrain said:
*WHAT!?!* You are arguing that ivy league schools have 800 people in a class while state schools have small classes that are not taught by TAs!?! Are you smoking crack? I went to an ivy league undergrad and I can tell you I was never once taught in a class by a TA, though I had several sections led by TAs which never bothered me. Taking classes at a state school in the summer, I am being taught by a grad student in a class of 500 (and classes are smaller in the summer session). Your state school was the exception- most are very large with very little contact with professors unless you make the effort to go to their OH, or you are in upper division seminars.

I'm glad SOMEONE replied to that! I saw it quoted earlier, but couldn't find it in the thread so I couldn't reply to it. Yeah, totally untrue for the claim that state schools have small classes. Heck, even Penn, the biggest Ivy, has huge classes and problems with people not getting in the classes they want. That was never an issue for me-- i had a class junior year that had only 2 students (including me). At any other school (even some ivies), that would have been cancelled in no time. I also never had or heard of anyone at my school taking a class taught by a TA.

mvenus929 · Jul 11, 2006

ahumdinger said:
Yeah, totally untrue for the claim that state schools have small classes.

It's the tradition at MY state school, as well as a few other state schools I know. Mostly because I'm not going to the main campus (which has well over 30,000 enrolled students... compared to the 7,000 or so at mine). I didn't say this held true for all state schools (and I certainly know it doesn't).

Andre04 · Jul 11, 2006

lk2230 said:
Not being confrontational, just thought you might find this interesting.

Essentially no one ever graduates Harvard undergrad with a 4.0

5 PEOPLE in the history of Harvard have done it...that's since the 1600's when Harvard was founded. 5 people.

Interestingly, 2 of them were in the past 6 years...BROTHER AND SISTER. And they both went to my high school (she was in my grade).

LOL...in high school his ambition was to one day be president, and I read in an interview with her that she wants to be the first female supreme court justice...we'll see

Genius, her.

CTtarheel · Jul 11, 2006

People make a big deal about classes taught by grad students. Some of the grad students i've had teach classes are the best teachers i have had and unlike some of the prof's who only care about their research and/or graduate level classes they actually put some kind of effort into teaching. Only downside is they're useless for rec. letters.

binsbts · Sep 1, 2006

I guess so much had been said here but I think I will write some of my own thoughts and experiences.

1. In premed classes (intro chem for example), the median grade is around C+/B- for most schools.

2. And I have a friend who goes to University of Kentucky and he says that people there generally don't study and I think it's true that people at top-tier schools tend to study more hours for exams...etc (on average), so having a median grade of B- in Ivy leagues might mean that it's rather grade-deflated.
3. I think some adcoms do consider this factor and some don't since there are so many other important factors to consider. From what I see, having a low gpa at a top-tier school gives you a better chance of getting in some med school than having a low gpa at a lower-tier school. But having a low gpa at a top-tier school would not give you any boost in getting in any of the top medical schools, meaning that you have a better chance of getting in top med schools if you have a high gpa at lower-tier schools.

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