How bad does it look to have low grades in labs? I do well in lectures, but labs

[alexfoleyc]

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for some reason I just dont perform well. I kind of messed up my bio labs and did poorly in them. And now, I am not doing well in chem lab. It's one credit, but I was wondering how would adcoms assess this?.. You know, doing well in lecture, but horrible in lab.

 

[schrizto]

Bump. I'd like to know this too, because I have this paranoid fear of having something lopsided such as a good grade in lecture but not lab.

 

[aggie08]

I would say it probably doesn't matter as long as your GPA and science GPA is fine and as long as you're not failing labs.

However, something tells me you aren't going about lab the right way. I will admit I HATED most of my undergrad labs and scored Bs in several of them, but you are maybe taking the wrong approach if you're doing really horrible in them.

Read your material ahead of time, figure out what you're doing in lab so you don't fumble through your experiment and so you can write up a good report. Prepare and everything will make a lot more sense.

 

[fastboyslim]

I think for a while I went about labs the wrong way. I didn't give myself enough time to prepare well, and I didn't prepare in a way in which I knew the exact reason for every step in the experiment. During lab, I would get easily flustered when things didn't go as expected, and when I got home, my data never seemed to make sense.

Nowadays, I like lab much more. For me, the turning point was realizing that problems in the lab were not the exception, but rather the general rule. It is having a strong understanding of the theory and the methods that helped me stand there and puzzle through not only what I did wrong, but also to puzzle through HOW to figure out what I did wrong. I think having advanced level lab courses where a significant portion of the grades depended on accuracy, yield, and purity provided really strong incentives for me to shape up. Lecture was always pretty straightforward for me; there was always a sample problem or solution in the back of the book to guide me explicitly. Lab typically required me to think and work harder.

Anyway, I don't think I quite answered the OP, but anyway, just thought I'd share that.

 

[CoolWhipp]

Medical schools average your non lab classes and obtain what is called a cumulative nonlab gpa. Then they also average your lab courses, although many only have 2-4 of them. They compare these two gpa's to see if you can really put into action what you have learned in class. Power is knowledge in action.

I'm just kidding, they could careless. They aren't going to look at your lab grades with any more specificity than your other classes. It's cumulative and bcpm, that's all folks.

 

[alexfoleyc]

Medical schools average your non lab classes and obtain what is called a cumulative nonlab gpa. Then they also average your lab courses, although many only have 2-4 of them. They compare these two gpa's to see if you can really put into action what you have learned in class. Power is knowledge in action.

I'm just kidding, they could careless. They aren't going to look at your lab grades with any more specificity than your other classes. It's cumulative and bcpm, that's all folks.

haha..you scared teh **** out of me for a second..