Canadian GPA vs American GPA

[Murrrr]

I couldn't find any direct answers to the following. I apologize in advance if it may seem redundant on this forum.

I am a Canadian citizen and I am doing my undergrad in an honours biology program at a Canadian university. I am opting to apply to US MD schools this upcoming cycle, however it's unclear to me how my undergrad GPA will be perceived by adcoms, knowing that the GPA grading scales of US schools are relatively harsher than that of Canadian schools. Does anyone have any insight on this? Will adcoms just look at the AMCAS GPA and that's it? Are percentage grades, number and types of courses in a semester, canadian vs us school, etc. considered?

(If any one can point out any good application tips- type of resources for Canadians wishing to apply to US MD schools, that would be appreciated. My uni doesn't have a pre-med advisor, so any help from here would be great)

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[NotASerialKiller]

Are you also an American citizen? If so they'd likely just look at your residence in whatever State you have it in and your GPA, which would be great for you. You'd probably lose a couple prestige points, but the other two factors are more important.

If you're a straight up Canadian applying in the US, you'd be applying to Canadian friendly schools that see many applications from your countrymen. While I've never seen it explicitly stated that they hold Canadians to higher GPA standards, I'd be shocked if adcoms at those schools didn't realize that Canadian students seem to have much higher GPAs. I'm sure they take that into consideration. Still though, it's an easier path GPA-wise, and you'd have a solid chance without the 3.85+ that you need to be truly competitive in Ontario.

Check out premed101.com it's the equivalent of SDN for Canadian schools. Overall it's much less active, but there is some good advice on the US sub-forum, and there are very few Canadian posters here.

 

[Murrrr]

Are you also an American citizen? If so they'd likely just look at your residence in whatever State you have it in and your GPA, which would be great for you. You'd probably lose a couple prestige points, but the other two factors are more important.

If you're a straight up Canadian applying in the US, you'd be applying to Canadian friendly schools that see many applications from your countrymen. While I've never seen it explicitly stated that they hold Canadians to higher GPA standards, I'd be shocked if adcoms at those schools didn't realize that Canadian students seem to have much higher GPAs. I'm sure they take that into consideration. Still though, it's an easier path GPA-wise, and you'd have a solid chance without the 3.85+ that you need to be truly competitive in Ontario.

Check out premed101.com it's the equivalent of SDN for Canadian schools. Overall it's much less active, but there is some good advice on the US sub-forum, and there are very few Canadian posters here.

No, i'm not an American citizen. When you say that i'd lose a couple of prestige points, what do you mean? Losing points from what?

 

[gabem480]

I love maple syrup im not even Canadian

 

[NotASerialKiller]

No, i'm not an American citizen. When you say that i'd lose a couple of prestige points, what do you mean? Losing points from what?

In Canada reputation of your school means absolutely nothing. In the US people debate how much school prestige matters (you can find lots of those threads here), but at the very least it's something adcoms can look at. A 3.7 from Stanford might mean more to them than a 3.7 from a small state school. I'm absolutely not an expert on how much that matters, but I think it's safe to say that American adcoms won't be as impressed with Western as a top US school. There's no formula for how much they care, I didn't mean literally points.

 

[Murrrr]

In Canada reputation of your school means absolutely nothing. In the US people debate how much school prestige matters (you can find lots of those threads here), but at the very least it's something adcoms can look at. A 3.7 from Stanford might mean more to them than a 3.7 from a small state school. I'm absolutely not an expert on how much that matters, but I think it's safe to say that American adcoms won't be as impressed with Western as a top US school. There's no formula for how much they care, I didn't mean literally points.

What was unclear to me was whether you were referring to my citizenship or my academic institution. I didn't think you literally meant points either. Also, I wouldn't say that in Canada a school's reputation means "absolutely nothing". The statistics demonstrating where out-of-province matriculants studied for their undergrad point out that the majority come from McGill or U of T. Anywho, thanks for your input I'll be checking out these other threads.