Did poorly in PSEO classes in HS?

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justanotherpremed1

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Hi,

So my senior year of high school my parents pressured me into taking pseo classes, which for those who don't know, pseo is an option in which students are able to take college courses in high school for credit at no charge. Anyway, I suffered from a horrible bout of senioritis and in fact didn't even know what I wanted to do in life at the time. This resulted in an F in a sociology class, a D in a history of rock and pop class and a C in an English class. I got an A in the psych class somehow. Since college has started however, I have matured and have "gotten my **** together" after realizing what I wanted to do. My UGPA right now is 3.74 and I was wondering how badly my high-school self screwed the now me. Any advice would be appreciated
 
Hi,

So my senior year of high school my parents pressured me into taking pseo classes, which for those who don't know, pseo is an option in which students are able to take college courses in high school for credit at no charge. Anyway, I suffered from a horrible bout of senioritis and in fact didn't even know what I wanted to do in life at the time. This resulted in an F in a sociology class, a D in a history of rock and pop class and a C in an English class. I got an A in the psych class somehow. Since college has started however, I have matured and have "gotten my **** together" after realizing what I wanted to do. My UGPA right now is 3.74 and I was wondering how badly my high-school self screwed the now me. Any advice would be appreciated
All college-level grades will be included in your med school GPA calculations for MD schools, but the HS years are labeled as such, so your steep upward grade trend will show. And you didn't take any math or science at the CC, so your BCPM GPA (commonly felt to be most important) should be very good.

For AACOMAS DO med schools, only the most recent grade counts provided you retook for the same number of credits or better, so that F in Sociology could essentially disappear.

I'd also be interested to know the answer to What will your ~GPAs be by the time you apply be with all those CC grade included?
 
Tragically, the indefinite GPA window that AMCAS/MD schools mandate effectively punishes otherwise strong applicants because of carelessness during their young days (e.g. taking college classes in high school but not expecting performance would affect them in long-term). This especially adversely affects nontrad applicants and career changers. It's an inane policy that should be heavily revised, since 4 years of 4.0-GPA performance may not be sufficient to overcome a low overall GPA due to poor performance in classes taken so long ago.

OP, kindly calculate your overall GPA including these classes and report back to us. Luckily, those classes are nonscience, so you should be fine.
 
Tragically, the indefinite GPA window that AMCAS/MD schools mandate effectively punishes otherwise strong applicants because of carelessness during their young days (e.g. taking college classes in high school but not expecting performance would affect them in long-term). This especially adversely affects nontrad applicants and career changers. It's an inane policy that should be heavily revised, since 4 years of 4.0-GPA performance may not be sufficient to overcome a low overall GPA due to poor performance in classes taken so long ago.

OP, kindly calculate your overall GPA including these classes and report back to us. Luckily, those classes are nonscience, so you should be fine.

I'm not quite sure what my overall GPA is at the moment but I know that by the time I apply, I will have about 100 credit hours at about 3.74 and the pseo classes I would guess to be 12 credit hours. I have also retake sociology and got an A in it freshman year.

Thank you all for your help

Also I am a third year but I expect to maintain or possibly raise the gpa I currently have
 
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While the GPA and grades follow you until the end of time, all your grades are listed by year of school, including college classes taken during HS. So when an adcom takes their first glance at a the GPA Grid, they will immediately see, this GPA is not from "true" college but HS. I find these to have much less negative impact to an applicant than the grades would suggest. Additionally, there is little you can do about it so move on to the next thing

View attachment 209565

This would imply that upward GPA trends matter more than cGPA and sGPA. While I agree that GPA should always be taken in context, will adcoms really be so kind and forgiving?

An example: Say I take 24 college credits in high school and fail all of them (an F). I take 150 college credits at massive grade-deflating university (say electrical engineering at MIT), and crush them with a 4.0 GPA.

My overall GPA = (150 x 4.0 + 24 x 0.0)/(150 + 24) = 600/174 = 3.45.

This is well below the MD matriculant median of 3.7. Is this okay for all medical schools, or will some remain picky because the overall GPA is subpar?
 
This would imply that upward GPA trends matter more than cGPA and sGPA. While I agree that GPA should always be taken in context, will adcoms really be so kind and forgiving?

An example: Say I take 24 college credits in high school and fail all of them (an F). I take 150 college credits at massive grade-deflating university (say electrical engineering at MIT), and crush them with a 4.0 GPA.

My overall GPA = (150 x 4.0 + 24 x 0.0)/(150 + 24) = 600/174 = 3.45.

This is well below the MD matriculant median of 3.7. Is this okay for all medical schools, or will some remain picky because the overall GPA is subpar?

This also worries me. With so many applicants I'm afraid admissions committes won't go out of their way to understand my past transgressions when they can't tell that others have struggled in high school. I feel like 17 year old me thoroughly destroyed any good chances of acceptance to an MD school
 
I'm not quite sure what my overall GPA is at the moment but I know that by the time I apply, I will have about 100 credit hours at about 3.74 and the pseo classes I would guess to be 12 credit hours. I have also retake sociology and got an A in it freshman year.

Thank you all for your help

Also I am a third year but I expect to maintain or possibly raise the gpa I currently have
This also worries me. With so many applicants I'm afraid admissions committes won't go out of their way to understand my past transgressions when they can't tell that others have struggled in high school. I feel like 17 year old me thoroughly destroyed any good chances of acceptance to an MD school

what are the credits for each PSEO course you took in high school? if you're concerned about anonymity, we can continue the discussion via PM.
 
what are the credits for each PSEO course you took in high school? if you're concerned about anonymity, we can continue the discussion via PM.
Hi,

I don't mind saying. The courses I took are as follows...

Sociology = F
History of Rock and Pop = D
Psychology = A
English 1001 = C (I think)
English 1002 = B

I believe all of the classes were for 3 credits

I feel absolutely terrible about this and wish I could go back in time and smack some sense into past me but I was an immature 17 year old.

Hope this helps
 
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All college-level grades will be included in your med school GPA calculations for MD schools, but the HS years are labeled as such, so your steep upward grade trend will show. And you didn't take any math or science at the CC, so your BCPM GPA (commonly felt to be most important) should be very good.

For AACOMAS DO med schools, only the most recent grade counts provided you retook for the same number of credits or better, so that F in Sociology could essentially disappear.

I'd also be interested to know the answer to What will your ~GPAs be by the time you apply be with all those CC grade included?

Hi,

Thank you for your response. My UGPA without the PSEO classes will be around 3.75 or higher, My BCPM GPA is expected to be around 3.65-3.7 (lets hope for the latter). I took I believe 18 credit hours of PSEO in HS and the post right above this one shows how that turned out. Im not quite sure what my total GPA will be including my PSEO courses but Id expect it to drop a good amount. I expect to have about 100 credit hours of non-PSEO classes under my belt by the time I apply
 
I took I believe 18 credit hours of PSEO in HS and the post right above this one shows how that turned out. Im not quite sure what my total GPA will be including my PSEO courses but Id expect it to drop a good amount. I expect to have about 100 credit hours of non-PSEO classes under my belt by the time I apply
Time to figure things out so you know where you stand. Get your grade reports together, or make your best guess. Here is a link to an excellent downloadable AMCAS GPA calculator: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/amcas-gpa-calculator-revised.590424/

Or you can do it by hand using this AMCAS Guide: https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fast...140d8acb35af/amcas_grade_conversion_guide.pdf
 
Hi,

I don't mind saying. The courses I took are as follows...

Sociology = F
History of Rock and Pop = D
Psychology = A
English 1001 = C (I think)
English 1002 = B

I believe all of the classes were for 3 credits

I feel absolutely terrible about this and wish I could go back in time and smack some sense into past me but I was an immature 17 year old.

Hope this helps

You can double check with the calculators but I roughly did the math for you and it comes out to around ~3.51ish.
((100 x 3.74)+(3 x 0.0)+ (3 x 1.0) + (3 x 4.0) + (3 x 2.0) + (3 x 3.0))/115 = 3.51

That's a pretty good cGPA and along with a 3.65-3.7 sGPA I think you will be fine.
 
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