amcas A+ --> A?

[bananaboat]

i got my AMCAS verified today...every single one of my A+s was converted to an A...does this happen to a lot of people? is it worth getting the academic request in? whether i have an A or A+ does not change my GPA i dont think, but...still i have a lot of A+s on my transcript, and they were a result of a lot more hardwork. do med schools look at the letter grades or just the GPA?

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[jackieMD2007]

All of my A+'s, gold stars and smiley faces were verified by AMCAS.

 

[szhao]

lol *waves to the gunner, haha i don't think they really care about A+s. i wish i had some A+s on my transcript to begin with.

 

[Dr. Josh]

i got my AMCAS verified today...every single one of my A+s was converted to an A...does this happen to a lot of people? is it worth getting the academic request in? whether i have an A or A+ does not change my GPA i dont think, but...still i have a lot of A+s on my transcript, and they were a result of a lot more hardwork. do med schools look at the letter grades or just the GPA?

My school doesn't give out A+s even if i have 100 average so for me that puts us on a more even playing field. Why should I be denied A+s? AMCAS doesn't even get to know about them.

 

[MinnyGophers]

i got my AMCAS verified today...every single one of my A+s was converted to an A...does this happen to a lot of people? is it worth getting the academic request in? whether i have an A or A+ does not change my GPA i dont think, but...still i have a lot of A+s on my transcript, and they were a result of a lot more hardwork. do med schools look at the letter grades or just the GPA?

*Insert Gasp here*

Seriously though, A+ = A. I don't see why it should change anything unless your school weighted A+ higher than a 4.0, which then opens another can of worms...,.

 

[bananaboat]

*Insert Gasp here*

Seriously though, A+ = A. I don't see why it should change anything unless your school weighted A+ higher than a 4.0, which then opens another can of worms...,.

no . my school uses a 4.0 scale. university of toronto. just don't know why they couldn't add the +. but i guess the med schools will see that page in its entirety...so they'll se my transcripts A+ next to amcas's As...if they even bother.

sorry for sounding anal or trolly. its not like its 1 A+ or anything. there are 11... so it clearly wasn't a mistake on a single grade.

 

[Law2Doc]

i got my AMCAS verified today...every single one of my A+s was converted to an A...does this happen to a lot of people? is it worth getting the academic request in? whether i have an A or A+ does not change my GPA i dont think, but...still i have a lot of A+s on my transcript, and they were a result of a lot more hardwork. do med schools look at the letter grades or just the GPA?

They will look at everything, but the GPA is more of a focus. This is nothing higher than an A. That will teach you for overachieving.

 

[bananaboat]

This is nothing higher than an A. That will teach you for overachieving.

? you mean nobody gets an amcas A+?

 

[MinnyGophers]

? you mean nobody gets an amcas A+?

AMCAS weighs an A+ like they weight an A --> 4.0

As long as the schools see all your As, you'll be fine.

And yeah, that's what happens when you work too hard: no one notices except you

 

[maestro1625]

what the hell kind of school gies A+s?

 

[QuantumMechanic]

what the hell kind of school gies A+s?

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

 

[szhao]

cal does, haha i got an A+ there when i took my numerical analysis over the summer

 

[bananaboat]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

excuse me?

maybe that's how it is in the states. but getting at an a+ at the university of toronto (canada) is no small feat. we don't have the sort of grade inflation some of you guys do. we have very specific grade distributios that most of our courses follow (e..g, no more than x percent of the class can get As and Bs).

 

[Julius Erving]

I actually had an interviewer who commented, "Man, you must hate it that all your A+'s don't cancel out the A-'s for your GPA." Okay, so maybe not as informal as I put it, but basically the gist. Moral: schools do see A+s, and A-s.

 

[Law2Doc]

excuse me?

maybe that's how it is in the states. but getting at an a+ at the university of toronto (canada) is no small feat. we don't have the sort of grade inflation some of you guys do. we have very specific grade distributios that most of our courses follow (e..g, no more than x percent of the class can get As and Bs).

Think of it as an exchange rate. An A+ in Canadian becomes an A in AMCAS. There's really nothing you can do about it, that's just the way it's valued.

 

[Julius Erving]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

haha, why would they. They are already giving As to B students and Bs to C students. I've had classes of 100s of people where the top 2% would get an A+. The top 15% get A's. That is the difference between a 38 MCAT and a 33 MCAT.... I'd guess an A+ won't get a lot of attention, but let's not belittle them now...

 

[carramrod]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

UPenn gives A+'s. And yes, they always become A's with AMCAS. Every adcom will also see the + sign you entered next to the official grade as well, if you're worried about them not noticing. Who's to say if they'll care or not, but they can if they want to.

 

[BEMD]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

Actually Cornel used to give A+s, I’m not sure if they still do.

 

[bananaboat]

UPenn gives A+'s. And yes, they always become A's with AMCAS. Every adcom will also see the + sign you entered next to the official grade as well, if you're worried about them not noticing. Who's to say if they'll care or not, but they can if they want to.

thanks thats good to know, that i'm not the only one

 

[szhao]

thanks thats good to know, that i'm not the only one

mwhahaha building a book on bananaboat mwhahahaha, they are going to catch you mwhahahaha

i am such a troll, i hope you guys get where this is coming from

 

[glinkov]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

Cornell gives A+'s! Didn't know we were not prestigious.

 

[bubbachuck]

it is different depending on the department at duke IIRC but i think most departments give A+. one rhodes scholar last year had all A+s on his transcript except for 1 A.

 

[silverlining1]

cal does, haha i got an A+ there when i took my numerical analysis over the summer

Stanford and UC Irvine both give A+'s. However, they are very rare and hard to obtain. At Stanford, they are worth an extra 0.2 (I think) and at UCI they don't give you any more points; they just look nice on the transcript. These A+'s are by no means fluffy... they're darn near impossible to get.

 

[maestro1625]

Cornell gives A+'s! Didn't know we were not prestigious.

well, if you really call the 8th best Ivy "impressive"...

 

[bretticus]

Vandy also gives A+'s. All of mine went to A's as well, and I got the same GPA as my school calculated.

 

[R.P. McMurphy]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

Penn gives A+

A little presumptuous?

 

[Karina 07]

Dartmouth doesn't give A+s but does give "citations" in exceptional cases, which shows up as A* even though it doesn't count for more in the GPA (literally, it's an asterisk...). The prof also gets to write a little comment about why you're so special that gets attached with another sheet of paper to your transcript (though I don't know how AMCAS would handle that ).

Edit: But then, those cases are very, very rare. Like how many profs never give even As, even more profs never give citations, or don't even know that option exists. I'd say maybe the prevalence of them is maybe 1 in 500 (students in any class) or even more like 1 in 800 or something, which isn't actually as rare as you'd think considering people tend to take at least 35 classes before they graduate. I've known people with up to 7 or 8 (Valedictorians/Rhodes), and people absolutely and completely thrilled to even get one.

 

[solitude]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

Duke gives A+'s but they only count as 4.0. This statement is absolutely unfounded as other posters have noted that many prestigious colleges do indeed award A+'s.

 

[solitude]

well, if you really call the 8th best Ivy "impressive"...

If you think Brown is better than Cornell you are on crack. In my opinion (and I am a neutral observer here), Cornell is arguably better than Columbia and Dartmouth too. Depends on the field, of course, but in most science fields Cornell wins.

 

[Sarg's kid]

i got my AMCAS verified today...every single one of my A+s was converted to an A...does this happen to a lot of people? is it worth getting the academic request in? whether i have an A or A+ does not change my GPA i dont think, but...still i have a lot of A+s on my transcript, and they were a result of a lot more hardwork. do med schools look at the letter grades or just the GPA?

What the hell kind of school gives out A+'s? It's college. If your school is giving out that much extra credit, then your whole gpa is bull****. Hooray for grade inflation.

 

[bananaboat]

then your whole gpa is bull****.

wow i seriously never realized how many ignorant people there were on these boards. anyway. not even going to bother replying to this.

 

[maestro1625]

If you think Brown is better than Cornell you are on crack. In my opinion (and I am a neutral observer here), Cornell is arguably better than Columbia and Dartmouth too. Depends on the field, of course, but in most science fields Cornell wins.

please dont turn a bit of sarcasm into your normal prestiege trolling...

(looks up at thread)

...oh, too late, nevermind. Carry on then.

 

[maestro1625]

I'm still confused as to why the A+ even exists if it just denotes a 4.0...

...do students have self-esteem issues or something?

 

[degoo_]

Hey bananaboat, I second your comment! Also as UofT student, I know exactly what you mean.
At least you got much benefit off of OMSAS which does recognize your A+ and differentiates it from an A. (that is, if you applied to ontario). Good luck with your app.

 

[premedtim]

wow i seriously never realized how many ignorant people there were on these boards. anyway. not even going to bother replying to this.

...uh, you just did with that post, but yeah anyway.

I don't see what the big deal about an A+ is anyway. Unless it changes your GPA, what difference does it make? If two med school applicants both have a 4.0 GPA, one with a crapload of A+'s and the other with a crapload of A's, I doubt the one with the A+'s would be more competitive than the other.

 

[spicedmanna]

I don't know how it works in other schools, but in mine, you need to score 97% or better in the class to receive an A+ notation. That's pretty hard to do in many science classes. So, yes, I'd like that fact noted; but since it's not, I'm not going to stress over it. However, as far as GPA is concerned, an A+ = A at my school (4.0).

 

[PhotoMD]

If you think Brown is better than Cornell you are on crack. In my opinion (and I am a neutral observer here), Cornell is arguably better than Columbia and Dartmouth too. Depends on the field, of course, but in most science fields Cornell wins.

This is the most arbitrary and unsupported statement of the week. Who the hell cares?

 

[NoktorNoL]

UVa also gives A+s. I have gotten quite a few myself and am proud of them, but I didn't work extra hard to get them..I just did what I thought I should have to get an A and it ended up for the best. Even though the A+ doesn't factor in as more than 4.0, I think its cool that some professors give them to students just to tell the student that they did very well. I ended up getting some (hopefully) good recommendations from professors that gave me A+s so I guess they were a good signal for whom to ask for an LOR. Also, it's nice to be rewarded for doing a little better than the A student, even if it means nothing numerically...of course, some professors don't believe in A+s (or barely even As) so you gotta be happy with what you get in those classes. I definitely wish the A+ balanced the A-, because I have a few of those too..those are pretty annoying!

 

[NoktorNoL]

PS - I heard law schools count A+s as 4.3s...lucky bastards!

 

[spicedmanna]

PS - I heard law schools count A+s as 4.3s...lucky bastards!

Indeed. I could've used a few of those 4.3's to balance out some of my other grades.

 

[sheepunite]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

the university of michigan

 

[szhao]

mwhahaha i can learn of all your locations mwhahahaha. hehe j/m but yea i think this is enough to say the claim is false. lets just stop it here

 

[sheepunite]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

the university of michigan
(and they add to gpa)

 

[DrHuang]

i got my AMCAS verified today...every single one of my A+s was converted to an A...does this happen to a lot of people? is it worth getting the academic request in? whether i have an A or A+ does not change my GPA i dont think, but...still i have a lot of A+s on my transcript, and they were a result of a lot more hardwork. do med schools look at the letter grades or just the GPA?

when i applied, i called AMCAS about this. They didn't it change it back to A+ but they did give me a 4.1points for each A+ instead of the standard 4.0. I ended up with a bcpm of 4.1 but only a AO of 4.08.

 

[maestro1625]

when i applied, i called AMCAS about this. They didn't it change it back to A+ but they did give me a 4.1points for each A+ instead of the standard 4.0. I ended up with a bcpm of 4.1 but only a AO of 4.08.

which makes it all pretty less than significant once you get that high anyway... might help with mandatory GPA cutoffs, but that's about it.

 

[Lorienne7]

when i applied, i called AMCAS about this. They didn't it change it back to A+ but they did give me a 4.1points for each A+ instead of the standard 4.0. I ended up with a bcpm of 4.1 but only a AO of 4.08.

Why in the world would AMCAS only give you extra points for an A+ if you called and asked them to? What's the point of AMCAS' GPA evaluation system if it's not standardized?

EDIT: I realize it's not important in the grand scheme of things but it's the principle of the matter! Yes I know I'm very premed but I would have liked that tiny extra GPA boost.

 

[rskhan29]

they tend not to be prestigious colleges

Just about every Canadian university does with a letter grading system does. And yes, I know what type of response I'm setting myself up for here.

 

[Julius Erving]

when i applied, i called AMCAS about this. They didn't it change it back to A+ but they did give me a 4.1points for each A+ instead of the standard 4.0. I ended up with a bcpm of 4.1 but only a AO of 4.08.

Well, I did the calculation and I definately didn't get this benefit. It really doesn't matter to me if my GPA is raised 2 hundreths of a point, but the fact that the GPA isn't calculated the same for every applicant seems a bit unfair to say the least.

 

[DesignEngineer]

Actually, UC did gave out A+s, however, we still count A+ as 4.0.

At school such as Cornell and Stanford, A+ are weighted as 4.3.

 

[DesignEngineer]

What the hell kind of school gives out A+'s? It's college. If your school is giving out that much extra credit, then your whole gpa is bull****. Hooray for grade inflation.

Calm down, some people worked really hard for their A+s. Give them some credit.

I had plenty of them back in undergrad. They are all in hard engineering classes, and I don't think my GPA is bull****. Of course, after u started working, nobody cares about your GPA and A+s.