grades

[fatbuddha1]

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Hi, I'm going to be a junior this fall and am studying psychology and biology. As of the end of spring my gpa is a 3.57 and my prereq/science gpa is somewhere around that too. My problem is that my second semester freshman year didnt turn out amazing. I took a math class I probably shouldnt have taken and it hurt my other classes...most importantly the second semester of physics (got C+), one of penn's prereqs and most likely only school i could get into since im from PA. I did very well in organic chem and general biology though and I guess my question is, do you think doing poorly in one prereq class significantly hurts your chances even if you do well in other prereqs and well in upper level science classes? In my defense it was engineering physics and not physics for bio majors but I don't know how much that matters.

Thanks for reading the ramble and for any comments

 

[HorseyVet]

I did very well in organic chem and general biology though and I guess my question is, do you think doing poorly in one prereq class significantly hurts your chances even if you do well in other prereqs and well in upper level science classes? In my defense it was engineering physics and not physics for bio majors but I don't know how much that matters.

I don't think it's at all uncommon for applicants to still be successful if they didn't do so well in 1-2 pre-reqs. I think many schools put a lot of emphasis on organic...many feel it's the ultimate "weed-out"/indicator of how you will do in vet school, so it's good that you did well there. Most schools probably don't care that you took a harder physics class. There have been a number of threads here talking about taking easy classes and doing well vs. harder ones (or graduate) and doing ok. Some schools 100% do not care if you took basket weaving or astro physics...others care a little. I didn't apply to Penn, so hopefully someone else can let you know about them specifically.