Can you recover from a low UG gpa?

[thoffen]

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I heard from some adcoms that they assign a "difficulty" factor to rate undergraduate schools on levels of grade inflation/difficulty, with certain ones having a higher difficulty level. My vague recollection is that Cal, MIT, Caltech, Mudd, Hopkins, and U Penn were in the highest category of difficulty, with UCLA, Stanford, Cornell, and others being in the second highest. Harvard was not in highest two categories. I don't know how much difference the factor makes in considering your app though.

Would you happen to know which adcoms told you this and where they would place a Georgia Tech engineering degree on the list? I have personal interest in this. 😛

 

[whoisthedrizzle]

The days of making out with strangers in the basement is over... it is so incredibly sad I don't know what to say.
Now I'll have to learn to work the bar scene.

bar scene = having sex with strangers (generally not in the basement)

its a nice transition

 

[whoisthedrizzle]

Would you happen to know which adcoms told you this and where they would place a Georgia Tech engineering degree on the list? I have personal interest in this. 😛

from what I know about georgia tech, probably pretty high

i go to a comparably difficult engineering school (top 10 BME program)

some of my older friends that have gone through the process say the interviewers specifically mentioned that they take the rigorous engineering programs into special consideration (regarding gpa)

 

[cur]

some of my older friends that have gone through the process say the interviewers specifically mentioned that they take the rigorous engineering programs into special consideration (regarding gpa)

every time someone types this I feel a little better about my life.

 

[ltrain]

My 2 cents in addition to the spot-on advice about bringing up your GPA already posted above, is that you should take the time you're using to take your extra classes and use it to make yourself a unique applicant in some way. If you are able to develop a specific medical interest, through shadowing/volunteering/research, it will help you craft your application niche. Try to find interesting volunteering/research (because you should want to anyway 😉) that will also stand out on your app, and will fit in with your view of what you want to practice, what setting you want to practice in, what the big problems are you see in medicine today, etc.

I was told by a dean this cycle that schools like people "like you" who have been out of college for a few years, have done something constructive with the time, and will therefore be able to contribute to the class in different and more mature ways. Especially schools that have lots of PBL/small group stuff. So find your application niche and milk it! Address the low GPA as something that has been overcome (you really HAVE to do well in your postbacc stuff), and then move on to show them all the cool stuff you've done and how you'll contribute to their community.

A friend of mine told me this year that she was glad I had finally applied to med school since I had been talking about it for a long time. Um, yeah. It takes awhile to get there, but I couldn't be more psyched to start this fall. Take your time to get all your stuff together before you apply, and then good luck!

 

[crx7]

Well man if your gpa is a 2.67, the reality of it is that your just not fit to go to med school. Med school is for people who are able to consistently get good grade and retain information for 4 years. If you cant even get anything higher than a 3.0 in college or university than how are you expected to even PASS med school?

I actually started with worse a 2.59, which is what I graduated with in Electrical and Computer Engineering. No I didn't care about school then and only needed to graduate to be guaranteed a job and make money, which I did and lots of it. Re-thinking my priorities, I have a 3.94 in 51 hours of Post-Bach including upper division Chemistry and Biology. I'm 12/10/9/R MCAT and my retention is picture perfect at the age of 29.

Every case is different so don't make blanket statments. What are your stats?

 

[entranced]

Yes, overall...I am curious: you say your overall is "really strong" but your BCPM is .22 lower and "not that great" which is curious - what is your overall? Because "really strong" overall GPA to me would be 3.7+, indicating a BCPM in at least the 3.5 range which is better than "not that great"...curious your definition of "really strong."

Use overall in the LizzyM formula...

its definitely reassuring to me that overall is what the schools are using when calculating the avg GPAs and whatnot. if ure saying that 3.7+ is really strong for overall, then what is really strong for BCPM (if in fact the schools are more lenient with the BCPM)?

 

[postbacker]

its definitely reassuring to me that overall is what the schools are using when calculating the avg GPAs and whatnot. if ure saying that 3.7+ is really strong for overall, then what is really strong for BCPM (if in fact the schools are more lenient with the BCPM)?

Ideally your BCPM should be right there with your overall...but if you look at the MSAR, you can get a feel for the acceptable "spread" between BCPM and overall GPA...although the graphs are kind of hard to read with any precision, for "science GPA" the median point for matriculants on the curve falls between 3.5 and 3.75, maybe around 3.55 (correction: 3.57 in 2006 per MSAR table); while the median point on the curve for overall GPA of matriculants appears to fall around, say, 3.65 (correction: 3.64 in 2006 per MSAR table)...thus indicating to me that the spread between your overall and bcpm should not be much more than, say, 0.1 points.

So...a bcpm of 3.6 with an overall of 3.7 appear to be solid and competitive, and as you go north of these, I would say that a bcpm of 3.7+ and overall of 3.8+ qualify as "strongly competitive" GPAs...this is how I interpret the graphs and tabular data, not sure if I have it all figured out or not...

 

[TheRealMD]

Ideally your BCPM should be right there with your overall...but if you look at the MSAR, you can get a feel for the acceptable "spread" between BCPM and overall GPA...although the graphs are kind of hard to read with any precision, for "science GPA" the median point for matriculants on the curve falls between 3.5 and 3.75, maybe around 3.55; while the median point on the curve for overall GPA of matriculants appears to fall around, say, 3.65...thus indicating to me that the spread between your overall and bcpm should not be much more than, say, 0.1 points.

So...a bcpm of 3.6 with an overall of 3.7 appear to be solid and competitive, and as you go north of these, I would say that a bcpm of 3.7+ and overall of 3.8+ qualify as "strongly competitive" GPAs...this is how I interpret the graphs, not sure if I have it all figured out or not...

Looking at most schools, that's how the spread ends up being. I'd say that your BCPM shouldn't differ from your actual GPA by anything more than 0.1-0.2 or so points.

 

[prospectivederm]

Well man if your gpa is a 2.67, the reality of it is that your just not fit to go to med school. Med school is for people who are able to consistently get good grade and retain information for 4 years. If you cant even get anything higher than a 3.0 in college or university than how are you expected to even PASS med school?

I have a friend right now at Howard Medical School that graduated with right at a 3.0 and a 31 on the MCAT, and has honored just about all of the subjects that were covered in the first year of medical school. So I dont think your statement is 100% accurate.
I think if you are determined to succeed then you can do it. You just need motivation and a clear goal set.

 

[foreverLaur]

I have a friend right now at Howard Medical School that graduated with right at a 3.0 and a 31 on the MCAT, and has honored just about all of the subjects that were covered in the first year of medical school. So I dont think your statement is 100% accurate.
I think if you are determined to succeed then you can do it. You just need motivation and a clear goal set.

some of us just realize what our goals are later than others. someone who got a 2.5 consistently throughout college even while pursuing a pre-med track may not be fit for med school but someone like me, who bounced around majors being very unhappy with a 2.5 and then realize my passion and had a 4.0 from there on out is very capable of succeeding in med school.