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I wonder why there isn't a "prereq GPA", seems like it'd be handy and save a lot of time vs looking through actual transcripts
Wingardium isn't it?
Cool. You should totally try applying with a 4.0 in your BCPM courses and a 2.9 in the rest...I'd love to see how that played.
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It's called the MCAT 😛
Honestly, doing well in classes is all the same. It's not about the material covered...none of it is particularly difficult to comprehend. What matters is time management and focus. It'd be easy to rock a 4.0 in science courses if you took and bombed a bunch of 'fluff' to fill out your schedule. I like cGPA as a metric because it shows your overall performance - your ability to handle/balance everything at once, which is the hard part. That's the skill people need to develop in order to succeed: the ability to consistently perform well at all tasks on your plate, even the ones outside your field of interest.
we have very different experiences regarding effort/time making for 4.0 sGPA remember 😛
No, we haven't discussed this...and we won't, because I neither attempted to earn a 4.0 in undergrad nor succeeded in doing so.
I did do so in my postbacc, but that puts us so many variables apart it isn't worth the time trying to compare the two.
I do stand by the fact that GPA comes primarily from effort/time management, and for that I want to see how you perform on everything thrown at you, not just one subset. None of the concepts covered in the prereqs is particularly difficult to grasp (and if you do struggle with them, that'll show on the MCAT anyway). What GPA is good for is showing your ability to maintain focus and juggle commitments over the long term.
The concepts are very simple. The exams still need a curve though, and so they are made as puzzle-solving tests of reasoning that require an understanding of the concepts. Everyone had to put in the effort to know basic Ochem mechanistic principles for example, but doing well meant having flashes of insight on puzzles at a faster rate than most of the others, not really a function of time spent in review and practice. I think if you grabbed a random person and told them to clear their schedule because their life depended on being the high score on the next Ochem final, they're probably dead.
Some things are for the exercise in itself you know, not the application. So...chill
perhaps. I've always struggled with time management and not at all with content, so I am definitely biased in this discussion.
Yeah, I think you qualify as too smart to understand how best effort can be met with failure
Haha, thank you...but I have a feeling this cycle is going to be educational on that front 😛
In terms of the actual thread topic, I'd wager that adcoms' opinions are likely as nonhomogeneous as our own when it comes to the importance of the various GPAs. Which, in my mind, makes this discussion all the more valuable.
Ah, I was talking about sGPA and cGPA, not s and ao. Glad you're doing well though!
