Medical How do I handle undergraduate Grading Scale?

[TheBoneDoctah]

I have tried asking this question to other premed students as well as professors and my pre-med advisor at my current university (I am a non-trad student to get my prereqs for med school) and haven't gotten any solid advise, nor could I find information specifically about it on this site.

For my undergraduate degree, (Allied Health) the third and fourth year was a program not a selection of courses to choose from. For these classes in the program the grading scale for all the classes were as follows:

100-94 A
93-87 B
86-78 C
77-0 Dropped from program

I am curious if this is common for other schools across the country, talking to people at my current university, they have not heard anything like this. I have heard of certain classes here or there having a different grading scale like the one listed above or similar, but this was for ~70 credits of my degree.

At the end of my program, I talked with the chair of the department and she graciously gave me a list of all the classes that I had completed in the program and the percent that I had achieved in each of them. Of all 25 of the classes in the program, 15 of them would have reached the next letter grade had they been on the traditional 100-90 A, 89-80 B, etc. As we all know, AMCAS gives a GPA value based on the letter grade on the transcript. This in turn had a noticeable affect on my GPA (For curiosity I calculated that my cGPA would have been raised from a 3.57 to a 3.72). I am concerned that when looking at my GPA trend when applying, the adcoms will see a downward trend in the second half of my undergrad.

As I stated earlier I am at another university taking all the prereqs and have gotten A's in all of them (except for good ole OChem 1, slipped a B). Due to this my cGPA has risen slightly from 3.57 to a 3.62, but my sGPA is at a 3.82 (fortunately my program classes do not fall under BCMP).

I apologize for the long story.. here are my questions:
1. Will there be some point where I can clarify this, should I make a point about bringing it up, or am I just out of luck should've went to a different school/program?
2. Will my higher "post bacc" classes and sGPA make up for the lower cGPA/trend?

Thank you for taking the time to read my story and I appreciate any responses I can get.

This is kinda weird and I personally haven’t heard of this. However, maybe these courses are kinda graded like masters courses where they are “easier” so they skew the grading scale to get the bell curve.

The good thing here is that you are excelling in your post bac courses. Keep that up. Your gpa even with those weird course scale isn’t horrible. Have you taken the MCAT yet?

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[Raryn]

Every school is different, and the only thing that matters in the end is the grade on your transcript. I had classes in undergrad where 82% would have gotten you an A - and others where 94% was required. Both had the same score on my transcript and the same 4/3/2 for my GPA.

You can try to bring up this sort of grade deflation on your application, but honestly? It will just sound like an excuse - you knew the requirements to get an A when you started each individual course, and you either did or did not meet them.

 

[Goro]

1) Have a LOR writer explain this.
2) yes

 

[Mr.Smile12]

AMCAS spells out how it calculates GPA clearly. The grading scale is explained as standard documentation on the back of your transcript.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Your grade is whatever your school says, period. There are some schools out there notorious for grade deflation, and it is what it is. I probably would not waste time explaining it anywhere especially since your gpa is already fine overall