AMCAS is BS

[Veritas79]

College courses taken in high school?? Why the heck is the AMCAS asking for this?? I took 2 Calc courses at my local university when I was a senior in high school. Got a B in the fall semester and then when I got accepted into college and stuff, I just stopped attending (senioritis) and as a result got an F. Didn't figure to withdraw since I was still a naive high school student back then and didn't know/care about such a thing. Figured it wouldn't harm me since the college I got accepted into wouldn't even ask for the grades and plus I was just classified as a "visitor undergrad." . Now I read in the instructions that I gotta enter it and send official transcripts to AMCAS even though I didn't take the courses for credit? Hell, you put input an F into the BCPM calculations and that'll drop it like crazy. I know you can explain it off that you were naive and immature back then, yadda yadda yadda. But that's only when they read your personal statement. What about schools that automatically cut you off b/c of your GPA w/o glancing at the rest of your application in determining who to send secondaries out to? Is it just me that's in this position? Does anybody else think it's BS that you worked so hard to get here and now something irrelevant in the past is gonna fubar that up, esp for more selective top schools?

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[drslc134]

yikes...sorry, dude

 

[prettyslick]

aah, those F's

 

[Scrub MD]

ouch

 

[OSUdoc08]

College courses taken in high school?? Why the heck is the AMCAS asking for this?? I took 2 Calc courses at my local university when I was a senior in high school. Got a B in the fall semester and then when I got accepted into college and stuff, I just stopped attending (senioritis) and as a result got an F. Didn't figure to withdraw since I was still a naive high school student back then and didn't know/care about such a thing. Figured it wouldn't harm me since the college I got accepted into wouldn't even ask for the grades and plus I was just classified as a "visitor undergrad." . Now I read in the instructions that I gotta enter it and send official transcripts to AMCAS even though I didn't take the courses for credit? Hell, you put input an F into the BCPM calculations and that'll drop it like crazy. I know you can explain it off that you were naive and immature back then, yadda yadda yadda. But that's only when they read your personal statement. What about schools that automatically cut you off b/c of your GPA w/o glancing at the rest of your application in determining who to send secondaries out to? Is it just me that's in this position? Does anybody else think it's BS that you worked so hard to get here and now something irrelevant in the past is gonna fubar that up, esp for more selective top schools?

I put it as pass/fail, but that won't help you. I'd leave out those high school courses. They won't miss them.

 

[45408]

If you didn't take it for credit, why will it hurt your GPA? My CC transcript for when I took my EMT-B says that I also took CPR and passed it, but it was 0 credits. If you didn't take it for credit, it shouldn't hurt your grades.

Exactly how much does it hurt your GPA?

 

[Scrub MD]

That sucks. I can see why you are pissed. I would be too but I am on the other side of the fence. I had 13 credits of A's in college math(trig, calc, calc 2) in HS that will give my GPA a nice boost.

 

[blessed1]

College courses taken in high school?? Why the heck is the AMCAS asking for this?? I took 2 Calc courses at my local university when I was a senior in high school. Got a B in the fall semester and then when I got accepted into college and stuff, I just stopped attending (senioritis) and as a result got an F. Didn't figure to withdraw since I was still a naive high school student back then and didn't know/care about such a thing. Figured it wouldn't harm me since the college I got accepted into wouldn't even ask for the grades and plus I was just classified as a "visitor undergrad." . Now I read in the instructions that I gotta enter it and send official transcripts to AMCAS even though I didn't take the courses for credit? Hell, you put input an F into the BCPM calculations and that'll drop it like crazy. I know you can explain it off that you were naive and immature back then, yadda yadda yadda. But that's only when they read your personal statement. What about schools that automatically cut you off b/c of your GPA w/o glancing at the rest of your application in determining who to send secondaries out to? Is it just me that's in this position? Does anybody else think it's BS that you worked so hard to get here and now something irrelevant in the past is gonna fubar that up, esp for more selective top schools?

Veritas, you stated that you didn't take the class for credit so how is it going to hurt your AMCAS GPA?

Good luck,
Blessed1

 

[DrBowtie]

If you took it as a visitor undergrad you took it for credit. Even if it doesn't transfer to your school. I too am in your dilemma as I didnt think it would affect anything.

 

[qnisis]

I totally understand what the OP is talking about! I was in almost the same situation (I took calc at a local community college during high school and got a B, then a C…had to pass, a requirement for college). I definitely didn’t know at that point that my less than stellar effort would come back to haunt me so much! The grades didn’t matter for my college transcript so I didn’t worry (it was just accepted as course credits) until it came time to fill out that AMCAS! I looked and looked for so many ways out of this but never could. I also was afraid not to mention that I took those courses because they are on my transcript with my university—plus I needed the college math requirement now as a prereq for med school.

Yep, it did pull down that gpa but I did take some comfort that the grades on AMCAS are split up into different years, which did help because some schools look for that upward trend. I did get a chance to explain at one interview my bad grade and the interviewer was really nice and said he’d probably not do so well either!

 

[Fed Meat]

It's probably not going to happen, but you might want to try and petition the school where you took the class to make the class a zero credit hour course on your transcript. If there's zero credits on the transcript, then you're not losing anything on AMCAS.

I don't know if I'd leave them out, either. I don't know about medicine, but failing to report something like this on a law school application could have serious consequences. After you take the bar, they go through a character fitness investigation, and failing to disclose something like this could permanently prevent you from being certified by the bar. You'd never practice as an attorney and would have incurred all that debt from law school for a worthless degree.

Not sure if there's something like this in medicine, but I'd find out.

 

[Veritas79]

BrettBachelor is right. I received the transcript today from the school and on it says 8 GPA hrs (4 for each class). On the GPA section it's a 1.5 (B+F=(1/2)3+0=1.5) overall. The thing is, none of these credits were even transferred to my undergrad. I just took these damn courses on a voluntary basis b/c they ran out of math at my high school for me and I wanted it to be another resume padder for prospective colleges. Why the hell should courses that had credit hours associated with them, but were never transferred count towards anything?

Someone suggested I omit them. It did cross my mind, but I'm not sure whether they have some national registry where they can access all the educational institutions you've ever attended. If that's the case, by the time they get around to these background checks, it's usually while you're in med school and they might give you the boot for lying. In which case, then you're pretty much f*#%$@ b/c you'll be out quite a bit of $. So to me, it's a lose-lose situation. Either report these grades on AMCAS and get rejected pre-secondary at some schools (since my GPA isn't even that stellar to begin with) or omit these grades, hopefully get in, and then later get kicked out for lying.

Argh...this whole thing pisses me off extremely.

 

[Prophecies]

Instead of asking for everyone's speculations on how this should be handled, why don't you just get an official answer by asking the AMCAS staff? Direct from the source...good luck to you.

 

[v j]

just leave it blank. i don't think they'll ever know. reporting an f will most probably hurt you big time. if they ask 2 years from now then explain it then - it's a high school class so you assumed it didn't have any place in a post grad application.

 

[Shredder]

hey anybody, i decided not to start a thread on this but when you enter AP credit, do you enter all of it in the semester that you claimed credit for it? which is probably your first semester of college? meaning you could have upwards of 10 classes showing up on a single semester, probably fall 2002 for most of you

 

[wetlightning]

hey anybody, i decided not to start a thread on this but when you enter AP credit, do you enter all of it in the semester that you claimed credit for it? which is probably your first semester of college? meaning you could have upwards of 10 classes showing up on a single semester, probably fall 2002 for most of you

that sounds about right. for my transcript, however, my ap credits show up as summer 2002 --before my freshman year began, so i went ahead and input that as the semester. i think it all depends on what appears on your transcript.

 

[Prophecies]

hey anybody, i decided not to start a thread on this but when you enter AP credit, do you enter all of it in the semester that you claimed credit for it? which is probably your first semester of college? meaning you could have upwards of 10 classes showing up on a single semester, probably fall 2002 for most of you

You are correct.