How important is sGPA compared to overall GPA?

[diamondsonmedancing]

Title says it all. Do med schools judge you based on your pre-req grades more than your overall gpa?

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[esob]

Title says it all. Do med schools judge you based on your pre-req grades more than your overall gpa?

There is a chart floating around here somewhere that basically lists what adcoms rank as most important to least important when viewing applicants. Unless I'm mistaken (and I could be b/c I've been doing linear regressions on dead smokers for the last 2 hours), sGPA was the number one thing they considered.

 

[ciestar]

There is a chart floating around here somewhere that basically lists what adcoms rank as most important to least important when viewing applicants. Unless I'm mistaken (and I could be b/c I've been doing linear regressions on dead smokers for the last 2 hours), sGPA was the number one thing they considered.

Which makes sense if you think about it. Med school is hardcore science.

 

[new_dood_don't_be_rude]

View attachment 223979

@gonif
I see they moved some stuff around in the 2018 edition. I have only about 60 hours of clinical volunteering, but I work as a scribe for about 15 to 20 hours a week. Since the new chart ranks clinical volunteering as most important and paid clinical experience as a medium importance, what does this mean? I've always been told that the two were interchangeable

 

[Goro]

@gonif
I see they moved some stuff around in the 2018 edition. I have only about 60 hours of clinical volunteering, but I work as a scribe for about 15 to 20 hours a week. Since the new chart ranks clinical volunteering as most important and paid clinical experience as a medium importance, what does this mean? I've always been told that the two were interchangeable

It means altruism is good thing.

 

[workaholic181]

sGPA is definitely really important; IMO though it is troubling from an adcom persepctive if the sGPA and cGPA vary by a large margin.

Volunteering definitely matters a lot man.

 

[esob]

I wonder where military clinical experience falls on that spectrum. We technically were paid but it sure felt like slave labor at the time

 

[new_dood_don't_be_rude]

@gonnif I understand the difference between volunteering and paid experience. As I said, I have about 60 hours clinical volunteering, nearly 1500-2000 hours scribing, about 400 non-clinical volunteering (of a nonprofit I started), and 75 shadowing, some with a PCP. I have been told by @Goro among others in the past that this clinical volunteering suffices, as I have ample paid clinical experience as well as non-clinical volunteering.

 

[Goro]

I wonder where military clinical experience falls on that spectrum. We technically were paid but it sure felt like slave labor at the time

It's one of the best non-clinical ECs you can have.

 

[begoood95]

And you have been told wrong.

scribing is a paid clinical experience you do for yourself
Volunteering is something you do free for others

But @gonnif, surely just because it was paid doesn't mean one couldn't have reasons other than doing clinical work "for themselves," i.e., at the benefit of no one else? I understand that the "paid" aspect makes it seem less altruistic, but I know—from my experience—that I didn't do clinical work for two years just for the money; in fact, it was mostly "for others," just like my clinical volunteering.

I'm being pedantic, but one could show altruism in the absence of clinical volunteering with non-clinical volunteering, no? (Assuming that they have paid clinical experience, because obviously that, the clinical experience itself whether paid or not, is necessary.) Again, I know it'd be better to just have both, but I'm just disagreeing with the bolded statement.

...Then again, maybe my experience is a little skewed, because I was actually working patients up, taking histories, conducting diagnostic exams and etc., so a scribe's experience may not be as substantial? Idk, that pair of statements just seemed a little too black and white.