Medical GPA questions

[Goro]

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Hello,

I am a student at a T15 school majoring in math with a bio minor. I have not yet taken the MCAT (taking a gap year), but am finishing up undergrad and had a few questions on some potentially troubling GPA trends that I have noticed. I am not trying to be neurotic about grades and I know that a lot of other factors come into play when determining if this affects my chances (including MCAT), but I honestly just do not know if these GPA trends are troubling/something I need to explain or make up for or not.

First, my GPA has a U-shaped trend: 3.94 - 3.72 - 3.6 - 3.92 (senior year is calculated based off what I am fairly confident my grades will be this term). This dip in the middle of my undergrad is due to the fact that I took the majority of my pre-health courses in my sophomore or junior years. I am not sure if this dip is important, but I did notice that it is especially low in junior year which seems like it might be viewed negatively (and also it was due to worse grades in pre-health courses, which I thought might be a red flag).

Second, most of my worse grades are in biology. I have straight As in my math major, but for some reason biology is my worst subject. Among the 6 biology courses that I have taken, I have 1 A-, 3 B+s, and 2 Bs. My other grades are mainly fine, with my worst grades in other pre-health courses, such as chem, being spread out among As, A-, and B+s. Will it be viewed negatively that biology is my worst subject? Even though I worked hard for these grades and am happy that at least they're not lower, I am worried that this is the most relevant subject to medical school and yet the one that I do the worst in.

In terms of the rest of my application, I have substantial research experience in biology with a few publications, many hours of work as an EMT, volunteer experience, and shadowing…I'm not trying to do a full what are my chances/school list thread here, but wanted to provide a little context into the background of the rest of my application in determining if these GPA trends are worrisome or not.

Thank you so much for your help!

That's not a U-shaped trend. A 3.9-> 3.1 -> 3.4-> 3.8 would be a U-shaped trend.

There's nothing wrong with your Biology grades. You don't need to have a 4.0 in anything to get into medical school.

TLDR: Chill; you're fine!

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Keep up the good work. You are fine at this point!

 

[GoSpursGo]

Agree. you're fine.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Ok, thanks so much. My pre health advisor said that I might have cause to be worried so I really appreciate the responses and knowing that I can chill out in terms of worrying about this.

Many/most premed advisors are not the best people to ask.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Hmm... I'm not sure what the "cause" is. There could be a detail i am missing out on. But I don't see anything that would concern me if you are smart picking your schools.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Hmm... I'm not sure what the "cause" is. There could be a detail i am missing out on. But I don't see anything that would concern me if you are smart picking your schools.

Agree...you don't have any red flags, do you?

 

[AlteredScale]

Not that I know of. In this meeting we really only talked about my grades and she just mentioned that people might pick up on the fact that most of my worst grades are in pre health classes, i.e. Bs in bio, B+ in orgo 1. She also brought up the fact that according to her, I have a U-shaped trend (which I feel better about having read this thread). I haven't taken the MCAT yet so obviously a lot is contingent on that but my ECs are all fine (according to my advisor).

Sorry for the late response on this, also! It is exam + move out week at my school so things have been kind of crazy.

I don't think there's anything to do with that outside of do well on your MCAT and just have a good explanation for why biology is your weakpoint, how you've adjusted your study habits to excel and grow from this area of weakness, and what you'll do to ensure that you'll do fine in medical school (since after all you will be studying biology). The one thing too about being a T15 school is these pre-req classes get really tough because most of the professors are pretty successful in their fields, normally teach graduate students, and have a difficult time "watering down" the material to make it a basic undergrad course.

 

[AlteredScale]

Ok great, thank you so much. Yes, I've found that for some reason the intro bio classes are much more difficult for me than other disciplines - I definitely did not expect bio to be harder for me than chem, math, and physics combined haha. In fact the whole bio department at my school has a reputation of being quite difficult and a major that many people shy away from. I will be sure to study up on bio for the MCAT though and hopefully will have a satisfactory explanation for the reasons why I have not excelled in undergrad bio (I have a pretty good idea why (study methods, circumstances, etc) but I don't think anyone is dying to hear that long explanation here). Many thanks again for your response!

I understand. Bio courses at these institutions are very difficult. I tutored someone from Yale regarding their lower div molecule bio class and struggled big time with some of their questions because they were so beyond my lower div bio course.