AMCAS changes your GPA?

[princessd3]

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I'm going to be applying to medical school in one year. I'm taking the April MCAT. I was reading some of the messages before and someone said somthing about his AMCAS gpa. What is this about? I didn't know AMCAS would change my gpa. Does your gpa usually increase or decrease when this is done. Is it a great change?

 

[Spiderman [RNA Ladder 2003]]

your AMCAS GPA may be different from your school's because AMCAS would count all the classes you have taken including failed and retaken. Some schools would drop the failed class grade from yuor GPA and include only the grade for the retaken class. AMCAS would count both failed and retaken grades.

Another thing is that AMCAS and some school interpretation of A- and B+ grades may different.

 

[princessd3]

Was your gpa greatly affected. At my school the new grade in a retaken course doesn't count toward your gpa, so I guess this is good for me.

 

[Spiderman [RNA Ladder 2003]]

AMCAS would count the failed course into your final GPA which will make it lower. I had two "D's" and they lowedred my AMCAS GPA compared to my college about 0.1 GPA points. My science GPA suffered a bit because one of the Ds was for a science class.

 

[jot]

hah - due to the amcas adjustments they bumped up my gpa by .02 which didn't make any sense since our school has the exact same grading scheme as they do - but i'm not complaining.

 

[Bikini Princess]

Originally posted by jot
hah - due to the amcas adjustments they bumped up my gpa by .02 which didn't make any sense since our school has the exact same grading scheme as they do - but i'm not complaining.

mine didn't change at all. you think they could have rounded to the nearest 4.0 [+/-] 0.5. 🙂

 

[Femtochemistry]

For me, my overall gpa went down from a 3.70 to a 3.69! and my sci went up from a 3.80 to a 3.82!!!
And the weird thing is that my school uses the EXACT grading scale as AMCAS; go figure! 🙄

 

[Femtochemistry]

nope, i am taking it in august 2002; ie, in 3 weeks!

ok, that was weird! Spiderman [RNA Ladder 2003] just asked me if i took the MCAT, once i posted my message, RNA's question was gone! 😕

 

[Bikini Princess]

Originally posted by Femtochemistry

ok, that was weird! Spiderman [RNA Ladder 2003] just asked me if i took the MCAT, once i posted my message, RNA's question was gone! 😕

Maybe his doctor told him to cut down on his number of posts. 🙂

 

[Femtochemistry]

Originally posted by Bikini Princess

Maybe his doctor told him to cut down on his number of posts. 🙂

 

[Spiderman [RNA Ladder 2003]]

I decided to delete that post

 

[Femtochemistry]

i like the new avatar: 550M or is that the 570M...

 

[Spiderman [RNA Ladder 2003]]

that was 575M. I will hunting for a better pic

 

[princessd3]

so I guess your AMCAS gpa only differs by hundredths of a point, not like a 3.4 turning into a 3.2 or nothing right?

 

[Spiderman [RNA Ladder 2003]]

It all depends if you failed a course and retook it. I had my GPA lowered i think ~0.1 points because I got D's for a couple classes. my Sci GPA suffered quite a bit because one of the grades was for a sci class. If you failed a buch of classes during freshman year, you AMCAS GPA will kill you and make you application not-competetive even though a person may have 3.5 on his/her college transcript.

 

[princessd3]

Do alot of pre-meds applying to med school have some bad grades like F's? I have a few Cs and was feeling horrible about it. I guess I'm not alone.

 

[Spiderman [RNA Ladder 2003]]

I guess the good thing about my app. is that I got D's and when I retook the classes, I got A's

 

[princessd3]

yeah me too...that should help right

 

[Trek]

The answer is: it depends. If you count something as a "science" class and AMCAS reclassifies it as non-science, then that would lower your calculated science GPA (happened to me). Also, like someone said, retakes are BOTH averaged in. Also, in HS i took a few calculus classes at the local junior college like an idiot. I got 2 Cs and a W. I forgot all about these by my senior year in college (some 7 years later) but they ended up factoring into my science GPA and hurting it a lot. --Trek

 

[Bikini Princess]

Originally posted by Trek
If you count something as a "science" class and AMCAS reclassifies it as non-science, then that would lower your calculated science GPA (happened to me). --Trek

I told you bartending didn't count as a science class, Trek. 🙂

 

[Trek]

Originally posted by Bikini Princess


I told you bartending didn't count as a science class, Trek. 🙂

It was sex ed. But not the scientific version. --Trek

 

[chemgirl]

You must be sure to check the GPA they post when they "verify" your transcript. The person who verified mine didn't know how to scale anything with a "-" and decided to make it a "0" (an F). So every A- turned into an F. You have a lot riding on this application don't trust that they did it correctly!

 

[kam730]

something to keep in mind which was alluded to by someone else...most schools that i know of dont factor in the grades from courses you took at another university into your GPA so some people blow these courses off since they are just taking them for credit. But AMCAS does factor in the grade when they compute your GPA. For me this was a good thing since I took a few classes at another college and got A's in them, so my AMCAS GPA is a bit higher than the GPA on my transcript.

 

[tercisima]

i did really bad my freshman year, but from then on i had a 4.0. My gpa will still only be about a 3.2 the amcas way. anybody know a way to make sure that schools notice you aren't as dumb as amcas says you are. if not, anybody know a school that will accept that gpa(i have good volunteer experience and usually get about 34 or 33 on practice mcats) please help, amcas scares me!