do B students get into MD schools?
Started by YoungProdigy
Get help with your application
Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.
B students (GPA between 3.0 and 3.3) have trouble getting into MD schools. The average matriculant GPa is approaching 3.7 last I checked - there's no skew from this site on that number, you can just look it up on the publicly available AAMC database.. You want to be at least an A- / B+ student if you want to be reasonably competitive.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321518/data/factstablea24-4.pdf
~9000/35,000 accepted students had a 3.59 or lower.
Better grades = higher chances of getting in and more choices.
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
Since you're right on the cusp of getting A's, I'd really suggest taking time to evaluate your study habits and see what you'd doing right/wrong. Couple ways you can do this: read up on the internet on successful study skills, talk with your professors, and talk to any friends you have that are consistently getting A's. I went from getting B's to A's after revising my study habits. Med schools really do pay attention to upward trends in your GPA, so don't feel discouraged, just figure out how you can work smarter (and maybe harder) to get your grades up. Feel free to PM me with any specific study skills questions you have and I'll try to help. Best of luck!
If your A's balance out your B's then it's ok. You don't need a 4.0 or a 3.8 or a 3.6.... it helps though. I had a 3.0 from undergrad, did a post-bacc and got ~3.9 for an overall of under 3.2 and got plenty of interviews. Caveat: I did well on the MCAT, played college sport, had super solid letters from people who really knew me, thorough clinical experiences, research, and several interesting jobs. So if you can't be perfect in one category make sure you make up for it in the others.
Weeeellllll not everything....
I actually disagree. This is something that is lost on many traditional applicants. Grades mean next to nothing in the "real world". Nobody cares about grades, MCAT, step scores, in-service scores, etc. when you start to work. You rarely if ever advance or have more opportunities because of your grades. It is all about how you function clinically and your research/administrative productivity.
A little lost here. Better grades don't lead to better offers when applying to any job in any field? I agree grades/scores are useless after getting in but i was referring to opportunities when applying
I certainly will not speak for every field out there, but talking to my law and engineering friends, grades mean very little. Same with residency for sure. They may help you land internships and whatnot, but people's opinion of your productivity and well YOU matters a hell of a lot more.
Yeah an overall analysis of an applicant certainly matters, but i guess it's inaccurate to say grades are all that emphasized. I guess the minimum threshold of being considered competitive is lower in these fields than going to medical school, which makes sense given threads here showing low GPA engineers from top schools end up working very well in top tech firms (same in finance etc.)
Similar threads
