AMCAS GPA Question

[toastedbutter]

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[toastedbutter]

Lets clear all this up. AP Chem Lab is typically NOT a college course. You normally do not get college credit for the course. Rather you get credit awarded base on the AP EXAM. So If you that AP course was actually a college level course and you now retake the course, both grades with count for AMCAS and both will be marked as a repeat. You should not retake any course with a C or higher. Tell your advisor that they are dead wrong about this. Absolutely utterly wrong

 

[KnightDoc]

ahhh cute cute cute, we love to hear it. Yeah it is definitely a college course, shows up at "Chem 1070" on my transcript with 3.3000 grade points. No one at my HS told me it was a college course, they just said it's a chem lab you can take alongside your AP Chem class to fortify understanding of some of the theory. So RIP chances of a 4.0 AMCAS GPA

The answer to your question is that AMCAS does not honor individual school's policies regarding grade replacement, because they vary across schools and the whole point of the AMCAS calculation is to apply a uniform standard to everyone.

Basic SDN advice is to not be neurotic about 4.0s, because this is considered a red flag to adcoms who HATE perfectionism in premeds because it leads to potential issues with med students. Finally, yes, if you ever received a grade less than A on any college transcript transcript, regardless of when you took the class (HS, UG, post-bacc), you will not have a 4.0 AMCAS GPA. Sorry. The good news is that it doesn't matter. 3.9+ is looked at the same by med schools. Good luck!!

 

[PigsHaveWings]

The answer to your question is that AMCAS does not honor individual school's policies regarding grade replacement, because they vary across schools and the whole point of the AMCAS calculation is to apply a uniform standard to everyone.

Basic SDN advice is to not be neurotic about 4.0s, because this is considered a red flag to adcoms who HATE perfectionism in premeds because it leads to potential issues with med students. Finally, yes, if you ever received a grade less than A on any college transcript transcript, regardless of when you took the class (HS, UG, post-bacc), you will not have a 4.0 AMCAS GPA. Sorry. The good news is that it doesn't matter. 3.9+ is looked at the same by med schools. Good luck!!

There is nothing to suggest from the AAMC data tables that a 4.0 GPA is a red flag to an ADCOM.

I do agree that GPA 3.95 and 4 will be regarded similarly in most schools.

 

[MyOdyssey]

Lets clear all this up. AP Chem Lab is typically NOT a college course. You normally do not get college credit for the course. Rather you get credit awarded base on the AP EXAM. So If you that AP course was actually a college level course and you now retake the course, both grades with count for AMCAS and both will be marked as a repeat. You should not retake any course with a C or higher. Tell your advisor that they are dead wrong about this. Absolutely utterly wrong

What's the consequence of having to mark a course as a repeat?

 

[KnightDoc]

There is nothing to suggest from the AAMC data tables that a 4.0 GPA is a red flag to an ADCOM.

I do agree that GPA 3.95 and 4 will be regarded similarly in most schools.

No, there is nothing in the data table to suggest that. That's also not what I said. I said "not be neurotic about 4.0s, because this is considered a red flag to adcoms who HATE perfectionism in premeds because it leads to potential issues with med students." The evidence lies in the comments on SDN on the topic from any adcom who has ever commented on the topic.

Don't believe me? Just ask them!!! People who go about their business and get all As are fine, as reflected in the data tables. People who are disturbed when their B+ in a lab isn't replaced by AMCAS with an A after the UG does so, thereby costing them their 4.0, not so much! Does the data table suggest a 100% acceptance rate for applicants with 4.0s? If not, something is going on. Maybe this is part of it.

 

[lull]

I took an AP Chem Lab at the local University in HS and got a B+

Having a B+ in a college-level chem class you took in high school is a good grade, you should drop that chem lab and take another class if you can. Chem labs are what..1-2 credits? That'll barely have an effect on your gpa 3 years from now. As a freshman, your GPA is still very flexible so you can raise/lower it easily.

 

[PigsHaveWings]

No, there is nothing in the data table to suggest that. That's also not what I said. I said "not be neurotic about 4.0s, because this is considered a red flag to adcoms who HATE perfectionism in premeds because it leads to potential issues with med students." The evidence lies in the comments on SDN on the topic from any adcom who has ever commented on the topic.

Don't believe me? Just ask them!!! People who go about their business and get all As are fine, as reflected in the data tables. People who are disturbed when their B+ in a lab isn't replaced by AMCAS with an A after the UG does so, thereby costing them their 4.0, not so much! Does the data table suggest a 100% acceptance rate for applicants with 4.0s? If not, something is going on. Maybe this is part of it.

The AAMC data tables are limited since the highest bracket stops at GPA 3.8 and MCAT 517 which predicts a 88% chance of acceptance. We do not have any slicing of data for higher stats, after that to look at acceptance rates, to see if it starts reaching 95% acceptance at some magic stats.

Is GPA 3.8/MCAT 517 the same as GPA 4/ MCAT 525 ? we dont know in the post 2015 MCAT era. If you look at the older data tables for the pre-2015 MCAT data tables from AAMC, it appears that the acceptance rate in the "very high stats" top bracket is about 92%.

There is a nice research paper which I read, which delves into this exact question and discusses this very well. Read this paper and let me know what you think. According to his research table of the sigmoid curve (not sure this is really true) it appears that GPA 4.0 does better than GPA 3.8, again I am taking it with a grain of salt, since this is purely hypothesis and conjectures are never fully valid.

Optimizing Your Chances of Medical School Admission

a statistical guide to med school

towardsdatascience.com

As a full disclosure, I am a lowly pre-med student who has very low chances of hitting this top bracket, so this is just an academic exercise for me.

 

[KnightDoc]

The AAMC data tables are limited since the highest bracket stops at GPA 3.8 and MCAT 517 which predicts a 88% chance of acceptance. We do not have any slicing of data for higher stats, after that to look at acceptance rates, to see if it starts reaching 95% acceptance at some magic stats.

Is GPA 3.8/MCAT 517 the same as GPA 4/ MCAT 525 ? we dont know in the post 2015 MCAT era. If you look at the older data tables for the pre-2015 MCAT data tables from AAMC, it appears that the acceptance rate in this top bracket is about 92%.

There is a nice research paper which I read, which delves into this exact question and discusses this very well. Read this paper and let me know what you think. According to his research table of the sigmoid curve (not sure this is really true) it appears that GPA 4.0 does better than GPA 3.8, again I am taking it with a grain of salt, since this is purely hypothesis and conjectures are never fully valid.

Optimizing Your Chances of Medical School Admission

a statistical guide to med school

towardsdatascience.com

As a full disclosure, I am a lowly pre-med student who has very low chances of hitting this top bracket, so this is just an academic exercise for me.

I'm in the exact same boat as you, and totally agree with you that 4.0 is always better than 3.8, so we are arguing about nothing. Seriously! I just think you overlooked the NEUROTIC part of my post, which was my whole meaning, not based on my opinon (which, like yours as a premed, doesn't count for anything! ), but based on what adcoms have repeatedly and consistently said over the year and a half I have been a member here.

The concern is that we are pretty much all super bright overachievers who are used to excelling. Half of us will be in the bottom half of the larger pool that is medical school. Some will struggle academically.

The adcoms' experience tells them that perfectionist premeds who struggle in med school have a much more difficult time coping than others who are more inclined to go with the flow. Thus, perfectionism, as manifested by being upset over losing a 4.0 to a B+ in a lab taken as a HS student, is a red flag to them. Not to you, and not to me, but to them. This matters because they are on the adcom and we are not. This has nothing to do with data tables demonstrating that higher achieving applicants do better in med school admissions.

There is no data table that captures the 3.99 applicants who turn off adcoms with perfectionism, as demonstrated in essays and interviews ("my biggest failure was when I couldn't convince AMCAS to change its policy to allow me to substitute my A received in chem lab in college for the B+ I received in HS, causing my GPA to fall to the unacceptable level of 3.99, since I have always prided myself in achieving the highest grade possible, in everything, always"). We only know about this through the anecdotal evidence kindly provided to us by the anonymous adcoms willing to share here. Of course, everyone is free to accept the advice or ignore it.