GPA Rant

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evandavidson

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I was just thinking about this as I was filling out my AMCAS.

My GPA is confusing. How the heck do med schools ever figure out really how well you did. For example, take these three grades.

Organic Chemistry (Chem 14D): A
E and M (Physics 6B): A-
Cell bilolgy (LS 2): B+

In o-chem, I earned about 92% of possible points, no idea about rank. In physics, I earned 73% of the points and ranked top 23% of the class. In LS, I earned about 83% of the points and ranked top 19% of class. And this is just within the school...

Also, how the heck are you supposed to compare GPAs at different schools. I know the average UCLA (where I went for undergrad) is between a 3.1 and a 3.2. But how do you compare it to a GPA from Stanford, USC, Berkeley, Georgetown?

Just my rant. Anyone else see what I mean?
 
evandavidson said:
I was just thinking about this as I was filling out my AMCAS.

My GPA is confusing. How the heck do med schools ever figure out really how well you did. For example, take these three grades.

Organic Chemistry (Chem 14D): A
E and M (Physics 6B): A-
Cell bilolgy (LS 2): B+

In o-chem, I earned about 92% of possible points, no idea about rank. In physics, I earned 73% of the points and ranked top 23% of the class. In LS, I earned about 83% of the points and ranked top 19% of class. And this is just within the school...

Also, how the heck are you supposed to compare GPAs at different schools. I know the average UCLA (where I went for undergrad) is between a 3.1 and a 3.2. But how do you compare it to a GPA from Stanford, USC, Berkeley, Georgetown?

Just my rant. Anyone else see what I mean?
Click to expand...

I see what you mean, and I agree. In my physics class, earning 73% of the points meant that you got a C-. There was no curve in any of my science classes. So how does that compare to other schools? Good question. I just hope that by now medical schools have a good idea of the difficulty of pre-med curriculum at certain colleges and can vouch for how easy/difficult a class was.

The frustration doesn't really ever go away, though. Comparing GPAs almost seems arbitrary, but what else are they going to base their judgements on? The MCAT only tells you so much about a person.
 
Adcoms are not that stupid.

They have been doing this for years and often times can easily compare you to other students from the same school as the one you are in.

In fact, during interviews, anytime anyone brought up my GPA, it was in relation to my school/also mentioned my school.


Also, percentages mean nothing without looking at the work expected of you. Just because I scored 95% of the points in Physics I doesn't mean I would have scored 95% of the points in the same class taught by a different prof let alone taught at a different school.
 
MCAT: the great GPA equalizer.

I think that's why schools require so many things from you. A single data point can't ever predict a trend.
 
Auraraptor said:
In fact, during interviews, anytime anyone brought up my GPA, it was in relation to my school/also mentioned my school.
Click to expand...
That's why you go to a small school.:meanie: I think there's 7 people from my alma mater on all of MDapps....and only 1 other person who occasionally comes to SDN. It's all part of my plan to take over the world....:meanie:
 
The fact that these threads continue to circulate is a testament to how difficult it is to compare grades across schools. I give the adcoms credit for knowing the difference when the schools are in their region, but I don't think they do as good of a job assessing schools from other parts of the country...kill the MCAT.
 
jochi1543 said:
That's why you go to a small school.:meanie: I think there's 7 people from my alma mater on all of MDapps....and only 1 other person who occasionally comes to SDN. It's all part of my plan to take over the world....:meanie:
Click to expand...

Hah yeah. So far I've found one person from my school that's on mdapps. 😎
 
There's no one from my school on MDapps.

I know of only one alumni from my school who's a current med student. There are others who are now physicians, but I think less than 10 have gone in the past 20-30 years.
 
jochi1543 said:
That's why you go to a small school.:meanie: I think there's 7 people from my alma mater on all of MDapps....and only 1 other person who occasionally comes to SDN. It's all part of my plan to take over the world....:meanie:
Click to expand...


Oh I'm here more often than you think jochi😉. As for the gpa rant, I agree with sentiment that med schools tend to look at the whole picture and there's no need to get in a tizzy over varying gpa's from school to school.
 
I went to UCLA too. I'm crossing my fingers that it's a big enough school and puts out enough applications that most adcomms will be familiar with the type of the curriculum and the curving. My issue is that I was a non-science major, and that everyone assumes that those classes are automatically easy. But I agree with everyone else that GPA is only one piece of a really big puzzle, so make sure the rest of your app is as good as it can be.
 
oops I meant applicants.
 
What is the LS-2 and LS-1 stuff? Someone else mentioned this, but I didn't get it...(obviously, I'm not a UCLA student).
 
Life Science 1 (Evolution and ****) and Life Science 2 (cells and organ systems and ****)
 
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