Enough of an upward trend?

[Enigma101]

Hey guys

So I just had my GPA confirmed by AACOMAS/AMCAS and its quite low.

cGPA: 3.29 (3.04 --> 3.22 --> 3.17 --> 3.68)
sGPA: 3.35 (3.14 --> 3.42 --> 2.98 --> 3.67)

Clearly I did significantly better in my senior year, but is that enough to convince schools to view me as a 3.6-3.7 GPA candidate? The major qualifying factor here is my 519 MCAT (131/127/132/129) which I took after graduating. I guess I'm mainly concerned about adding/removing MD schools because I don't want to throw away money on secondaries if the schools see me as a 3.3 student.

Thanks

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[Allosteopath]

I'm not an expert, but I don't think the consistency is there to say that you are a sure fire 3.6-3.7 candidate. Maybe if you had another year of 3.6-3.7 it would be slightly more convincing. The MCAT certainly does work in your favour since it was post-graduation.

 

[Moko]

No. You need more than one positive data point to establish a trend..

 

[Med Ed]

Clearly I did significantly better in my senior year, but is that enough to convince schools to view me as a 3.6-3.7 GPA candidate?

Agree with the above, but I would like to know more about your credit load per year (particularly science credits) and the types of courses you were taking. A 3.1 doesn't look so bad if you're taking 18 credits of P-chem. a 3.6 doesn't look so good if you're taking 12 credits of nutrition for non-science majors.

 

[Enigma101]

My course load senior year was entirely upper division biology courses, whereas my course load my first few years was mainly prerequisite courses and GEs. Similar number of units throughout.

 

[Goro]

Hey guys

So I just had my GPA confirmed by AACOMAS/AMCAS and its quite low.

cGPA: 3.29 (3.04 --> 3.22 --> 3.17 --> 3.68)
sGPA: 3.35 (3.14 --> 3.42 --> 2.98 --> 3.67)

Clearly I did significantly better in my senior year, but is that enough to convince schools to view me as a 3.6-3.7 GPA candidate? The major qualifying factor here is my 519 MCAT (131/127/132/129) which I took after graduating. I guess I'm mainly concerned about adding/removing MD schools because I don't want to throw away money on secondaries if the schools see me as a 3.3 student.

Thanks

A great SR year is not enough to convince me that this is the norm, not the outlier.

 

[Allosteopath]

Since I had a near identical question with slightly different circumstances after being verified by AACOMAS, I felt I would add it to this thread as well.


Personally, my MCAT is 507, which is significantly lower than OP's.

cGPA= 3.44 (2.70 -> 3.91 -> 4.0 ->4.0)
sGPA = 3.44 (2.95 -> 3.88 -> 4.0 -> 4.0)
nsGPA=3.44 (2.0 -> 3.95 -> 4.0 -> 4.0)

I felt it was kind of strange when all of my average GPAs landed on 3.44. I chose to apply only DO, given that my career goals are within primary care and my MCAT score. Obviously, I feel that I have an upward trend, but how would schools generally see my GPA's given this.

What would an ADCOM consider to be a true reflection of my GPA? A 3.4? a 3.6-3.7? or closer to 3.9/4.0.?

How do they make this judgment call? Is there some sort of formula they plug in GPAs that weights higher years more heavily?

 

[deleted972488]

Is there some sort of formula

It's likely more subjective than that, but your drastic upward trend looks great regardless.

 

[Allosteopath]

It's likely more subjective than that, but your drastic upward trend looks great regardless.

Well, it's not like I had an option, it was like having an anchor attached to your GPA that's heavy enough to capsize a ship. Or at least it felt that way, since I can barely move my GPA now.

I also don't really know how to broach the subject if it comes up in interviews other than "hey, I was young and mistakes happen")

 

[Moko]

cGPA= 3.44 (2.70 -> 3.91 -> 4.0 ->4.0)
sGPA = 3.44 (2.95 -> 3.88 -> 4.0 -> 4.0)
nsGPA=3.44 (2.0 -> 3.95 -> 4.0 -> 4.0)

What would an ADCOM consider to be a true reflection of my GPA? A 3.4? a 3.6-3.7? or closer to 3.9/4.0.?

If your credit hours were largely the same among the four years, then I would look at your application much like I would with someone whose GPA is ~3.9.

However, this also depends on how the credit hours were distributed. In your case, it would seem that your credit hours were front-loaded. I would look for evidence of challenging course loads in some of your later semesters to make sure that you are capable of producing good grades even with high volume.

Either way, your freshman year is clearly the outlier here, and your GPA trend reflects very positively on you. Whenever I see something like this, I would wonder if something had happened to account for those low grades. Your reasoning is fine in my opinion. No formula at my institution, more of a general gestalt, but we do weigh recent years more heavily (especially pertinent for non-trads).

 

[Allosteopath]

Ironically, credit hours were not front loaded and was taking 3 courses per year (9ch/yr), I just had a few F's tossed in there for good measure so it took me a while to get up to Sophmore credit range (over the course of 2 years). This was mostly in an effort to maintain loan funding.... which fortunately I was in Canada otherwise my heavy debt burden would have become insurmountable.

Most every semester afterward, I took 15+ credit hours.

I'm certainly not proud of my early university accomplishments, but without it, I'm not sure I would have had the discipline or maturity to consistently try to make up for my apathy.

 

[Moko]

Ironically, credit hours were not front loaded and was taking 3 courses per year (9ch/yr), I just had a few F's tossed in there for good measure so it took me a while to get up to Sophmore credit range (over the course of 2 years). This was mostly in an effort to maintain loan funding.... which fortunately I was in Canada otherwise my heavy debt burden would have become insurmountable.

Most every semester afterward, I took 15+ credit hours.

I'm certainly not proud of my early university accomplishments, but without it, I'm not sure I would have had the discipline or maturity to consistently try to make up for my apathy.

Regardless of what you did earlier on, you can at least be proud of the way you bounced back.

 

[Goro]

Since I had a near identical question with slightly different circumstances after being verified by AACOMAS, I felt I would add it to this thread as well.


Personally, my MCAT is 507, which is significantly lower than OP's.

cGPA= 3.44 (2.70 -> 3.91 -> 4.0 ->4.0)
sGPA = 3.44 (2.95 -> 3.88 -> 4.0 -> 4.0)
nsGPA=3.44 (2.0 -> 3.95 -> 4.0 -> 4.0)

I felt it was kind of strange when all of my average GPAs landed on 3.44. I chose to apply only DO, given that my career goals are within primary care and my MCAT score. Obviously, I feel that I have an upward trend, but how would schools generally see my GPA's given this.

What would an ADCOM consider to be a true reflection of my GPA? A 3.4? a 3.6-3.7? or closer to 3.9/4.0.?

How do they make this judgment call? Is there some sort of formula they plug in GPAs that weights higher years more heavily?

As per what the wise Moko pointed out, you would be considered a 3.9+ GPA

 

[jg2021]

I think this is a pretty drastic upward trend as well and wouldn’t have you necessarily labeled as a 3.3 student