Grades

Brosyden

New Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Mar 15, 2013
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
How much do high school grades really matter? I've been told by some people not to worry about them and I've been told by others that I will become homeless and die immediately after graduation unless I have a 100% gpa (obviously an exaggeration) . My current overall average is around an 89%. I understand that having better grades is good but is it worth all of the stress in high school? Thanks,
Brosyden

Members don't see this ad.
 
They mostly matter for undergraduate studies. Here is the the thing, most dental schools don't give two ****s about your high school grades. However, undergraduate schools do. But, here is another thing, most dental schools don't matter what university you go to as long as you do well.

So no, don't worry about them too much. I think an 89% is decent. I wouldn't stray to far though. Try to get into a decent undergraduate school, but worry more about doing well in undergraduate studies.

Is it right to assume that med schools care more about which undergraduate school you go to?
 
Just be sure to have good enough grades to get in to college, and you'll be fine. You HAVE to step it up once you're in college, though.

And Med Schools don't care about where you do your undergrad. They would rather take a state school grad with good grades than a Harvard grad with bad grades. I hope you know that being a medical student requires a good work ethic, and I think it would be in your best interest to start developing that is high school. If you think you're stressed out now, wait until finals in college.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
High school grades, in my opinion, are as important as you want to make them. For me, they were very important because I wanted to get good merit scholarships/have a school with lots of resources/be surrounded by intellectual, passionate, and hard-working people. However, they're pretty insignificant when it comes to getting into med school. You obviously shouldn't stress out too much right now, but I honestly think there's a lot of value that comes from challenging yourself in high school. It'll make college an easier transition!
 
Just be sure to have good enough grades to get in to college, and you'll be fine. You HAVE to step it up once you're in college, though.

And Med Schools don't care about where you do your undergrad. They would rather take a state school grad with good grades than a Harvard grad with bad grades. I hope you know that being a medical student requires a good work ethic, and I think it would be in your best interest to start developing that is high school. If you think you're stressed out now, wait until finals in college.

I am definitely not stressing out about my workload right now. I go to a college prep school that is known to be difficult and I've been pretty much been putting minimal effort and getting away with a ~89% average while other kids do the same and fail out. Now I know that that is nothing to brag about but I do fully understand that college will be more difficult and I am willing to accept that challenge.
 
If you can get into college, your high school grades don't matter at all. Medical schools and dental schools don't even look at them. They don't look at the SAT either (unless you're doing a combined BS/MD program). Just get into college and do well in college.
 
High school grades, in my opinion, are as important as you want to make them. For me, they were very important because I wanted to get good merit scholarships/have a school with lots of resources/be surrounded by intellectual, passionate, and hard-working people. However, they're pretty insignificant when it comes to getting into med school.

If you can get into college, your high school grades don't matter at all. Medical schools and dental schools don't even look at them. They don't look at the SAT either (unless you're doing a combined BS/MD program). Just get into college and do well in college.

^ pretty much sums it up :thumbup:
 
I know that the popular opinion on this site is that undergrad doesn't matter at all, but I'll go ahead and disagree here.

It's certainly true that in the grand scheme of things undergrad doesn't matter nearly as much as your GPA, MCAT, extracurriculars et al. It is about what you do with the degree more than where you get it. I wouldn't dream of telling a high schooler to take on 160k of debt just to have a better name on the resume.

However, to some extent prestige begets prestige. This isn't pretty, and not nice to think about, but it's true. I went to a good college (top 20 USN I think). I am now at a top-10ish med school and I interviewed at a lot of the top places. Literally almost everyone at the interviews with me had gone to a college as good or better than mine. Some of them were state schools of course (the UC's for example) but for the most part we're talking ivies and thereabouts. This is because those were the students who had had fantastic advising by well-established and knowledgeable premed advisors, who'd had great research opportunities with some of the greats in their respective fields, often from schools with their own big medical center where they could shadow some bigwig who then the med schools would recognize. Not to mention the higher likelihood of them doing things like mission trips funded by the school, or winning a Rhodes or a Fulbright. It's true that biology and chemistry are the same everywhere, but at my school (which was by no means an ivy) after the intro classes I was able to take tiny seminars of 10 people or less with professors who'd done some great and interesting things and who were willing to let me work with them, get letters of rec from them, etc.

Again, you can absolutely succeed no matter where you go. But it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that it won't matter at all. My classmates in college were all extremely smart and dedicated and ambitious, and we studied together a lot. Our grades were rarely on a curve, and when they were there were often so many people who'd done extremely well that it rarely ever helped anyone. It was hard to get that A, and hard to hide in the crowd or let the dumb classmates bring down the curve- cause there really weren't too many people who weren't trying. Per my classmates who went to bigger, lesser known schools, their difficulty was in standing out, in finding great research opportunities, in receiving great advising. Obviously they ended up at the same med school I did, so they succeeded, but it was harder. Also, saying that a 3.8 from MIT is the same as a 3.8 from U Mass is just ridiculous. And no adcom would think that.

So all I'm saying is- don't stress out too much if you can't get into Harvard, you'll be fine. But it won't be nearly as easy to get to Hopkins from a place that's relatively unknown, so be forewarned. Of course you can make a great argument for why going to Hopkins itself is entirely unnecessary, but given that everyone here thinks they can join the faculty of Harvard plastics, I figured I'd play devil's advocate. If you have the opportunity to go to a really good school without totally breaking the bank, I don't think it's unreasonable to do so at all.
 
I know that the popular opinion on this site is that undergrad doesn't matter at all, but I'll go ahead and disagree here.

It's certainly true that in the grand scheme of things undergrad doesn't matter nearly as much as your GPA, MCAT, extracurriculars et al. It is about what you do with the degree more than where you get it. I wouldn't dream of telling a high schooler to take on 160k of debt just to have a better name on the resume.

However, to some extent prestige begets prestige. This isn't pretty, and not nice to think about, but it's true. I went to a good college (top 20 USN I think). I am now at a top-10ish med school and I interviewed at a lot of the top places. Literally almost everyone at the interviews with me had gone to a college as good or better than mine. Some of them were state schools of course (the UC's for example) but for the most part we're talking ivies and thereabouts. This is because those were the students who had had fantastic advising by well-established and knowledgeable premed advisors, who'd had great research opportunities with some of the greats in their respective fields, often from schools with their own big medical center where they could shadow some bigwig who then the med schools would recognize. Not to mention the higher likelihood of them doing things like mission trips funded by the school, or winning a Rhodes or a Fulbright. It's true that biology and chemistry are the same everywhere, but at my school (which was by no means an ivy) after the intro classes I was able to take tiny seminars of 10 people or less with professors who'd done some great and interesting things and who were willing to let me work with them, get letters of rec from them, etc.

Again, you can absolutely succeed no matter where you go. But it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that it won't matter at all. My classmates in college were all extremely smart and dedicated and ambitious, and we studied together a lot. Our grades were rarely on a curve, and when they were there were often so many people who'd done extremely well that it rarely ever helped anyone. It was hard to get that A, and hard to hide in the crowd or let the dumb classmates bring down the curve- cause there really weren't too many people who weren't trying. Per my classmates who went to bigger, lesser known schools, their difficulty was in standing out, in finding great research opportunities, in receiving great advising. Obviously they ended up at the same med school I did, so they succeeded, but it was harder. Also, saying that a 3.8 from MIT is the same as a 3.8 from U Mass is just ridiculous. And no adcom would think that.

So all I'm saying is- don't stress out too much if you can't get into Harvard, you'll be fine. But it won't be nearly as easy to get to Hopkins from a place that's relatively unknown, so be forewarned. Of course you can make a great argument for why going to Hopkins itself is entirely unnecessary, but given that everyone here thinks they can join the faculty of Harvard plastics, I figured I'd play devil's advocate. If you have the opportunity to go to a really good school without totally breaking the bank, I don't think it's unreasonable to do so at all.

Thank you for your thorough response and thank you to everyone else that posted. I am still on the fence between dentistry and medicine but I know I have a good amount of time ahead of me to decide.

My uncle is the dean of a prestigious ivy league school and I could probably angle my way into that school but it wouldn't feel right to use that to my advantage when someone who is more qualified could take my place.

I will definitely try to put more time perfecting my study skills now so that by the time college comes I am not scrambling to figure things out.
 
I know that the popular opinion on this site is that undergrad doesn't matter at all, but I'll go ahead and disagree here.

It's certainly true that in the grand scheme of things undergrad doesn't matter nearly as much as your GPA, MCAT, extracurriculars et al. It is about what you do with the degree more than where you get it. I wouldn't dream of telling a high schooler to take on 160k of debt just to have a better name on the resume.

However, to some extent prestige begets prestige. This isn't pretty, and not nice to think about, but it's true. I went to a good college (top 20 USN I think). I am now at a top-10ish med school and I interviewed at a lot of the top places. Literally almost everyone at the interviews with me had gone to a college as good or better than mine. Some of them were state schools of course (the UC's for example) but for the most part we're talking ivies and thereabouts. This is because those were the students who had had fantastic advising by well-established and knowledgeable premed advisors, who'd had great research opportunities with some of the greats in their respective fields, often from schools with their own big medical center where they could shadow some bigwig who then the med schools would recognize. Not to mention the higher likelihood of them doing things like mission trips funded by the school, or winning a Rhodes or a Fulbright. It's true that biology and chemistry are the same everywhere, but at my school (which was by no means an ivy) after the intro classes I was able to take tiny seminars of 10 people or less with professors who'd done some great and interesting things and who were willing to let me work with them, get letters of rec from them, etc.

Again, you can absolutely succeed no matter where you go. But it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that it won't matter at all. My classmates in college were all extremely smart and dedicated and ambitious, and we studied together a lot. Our grades were rarely on a curve, and when they were there were often so many people who'd done extremely well that it rarely ever helped anyone. It was hard to get that A, and hard to hide in the crowd or let the dumb classmates bring down the curve- cause there really weren't too many people who weren't trying. Per my classmates who went to bigger, lesser known schools, their difficulty was in standing out, in finding great research opportunities, in receiving great advising. Obviously they ended up at the same med school I did, so they succeeded, but it was harder. Also, saying that a 3.8 from MIT is the same as a 3.8 from U Mass is just ridiculous. And no adcom would think that.

So all I'm saying is- don't stress out too much if you can't get into Harvard, you'll be fine. But it won't be nearly as easy to get to Hopkins from a place that's relatively unknown, so be forewarned. Of course you can make a great argument for why going to Hopkins itself is entirely unnecessary, but given that everyone here thinks they can join the faculty of Harvard plastics, I figured I'd play devil's advocate. If you have the opportunity to go to a really good school without totally breaking the bank, I don't think it's unreasonable to do so at all.


:thumbup::thumbup:
 
The schools you apply to for professional programs will never see your HS GPA. In that sense, HS grades are meaningless. An impressive HS GPA can give you some real advantages though. It may indicate you're better prepared to ace your college classes, earn you scholarships that ease undergrad debt load, and increase your odds of acceptance to a more selective school that will hopefully better prepare you for the MCAT, open research opportunities you can brag on later, get better letters of rec, etc. Don't think you're doomed if you don't have a 4.0, but don't blow it off either.
 
Top