Is your AMCAS GPA different than your school GPA?

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GomerPyle

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I don't understand the difference in conversion here. Some people's GPA's appeared higher in AMCAS than in their school transcripts - and I dont understand why?

I know that if you retake a class, both grades count (but I don't have any retakes). I am an engineering graduate from a school that has a fall, spring, and summer semester schedule. Can anybody please inform me on this??

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Some universities may weigh +/- grades higher and lower respectively than AMCAS, resulting in an applicant with many X- grades having a higher calculated GPA than their school determined. Also, some institutions truncate digits when calculating GPA as opposed to rounding, allowing a certain memorable SDNer to apply with an AMCAS GPA of 4.0 with a B on his transcript. ;)
 
yep amcas' doesn't honor grade replacement/deletions. So mine is slightly different, but nothing crazy.

Every class is viewed independently (doesn't matter if its taken once or 15 times). Each will count.
 
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Some universities may weigh +/- grades higher and lower respectively than AMCAS, resulting in an applicant with many X- grades having a higher calculated GPA than their school determined. Also, some institutions truncate digits when calculating GPA as opposed to rounding, allowing a certain memorable SDNer to apply with an AMCAS GPA of 4.0 with a B on his transcript. ;)

Okay..so my school does an A - 4.0, A- 3.7, B+ - 3.3, B - 3.0, B- 2.7....so on

Is this same with AMCAS?

Also I don't understand what you mean by rounding - what does the AMCAS do with that?
 
AS far as I know, Only Texas schools do the rounding and do not implement the +/- scale.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
My University did this thing called "Quality Points" and so depending on how many credits the class was and the grade you would get x # of "quality points" and so my GPA was slightly higher for AMCAS than it was my University...weird
 
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I got a 4 in AP Chemistry and my university gave me transfer credit for Gen Chem 1, but I retook it because med schools want to see a full year of Gen Chem but my university did not count it toward my GPA because it was considered a retake.
 
Doesn't AMCAS put more weight on BCPM classes? So, whether or not your AMCAS GPA is higher or lower than your institutional GPA depends on how you did in your science courses. I may be rongg.
 
My main undergrad school calculates GPAs on a 5 point scale for some reason. I also took classes at 4 other colleges. Between the 5 schools I took at least one class at, there were three different schemes for assigning a number of units or credits to a class. I spent a lot of time trying to calculate my AMCAS GPA, and I still got a different result than the one AMCAS ultimately came up with.
 
still confused lol

Your school does the +/- weighting the same as AMCAS, but not all schools do was my point. With regard to rounding I believe AMCAS rounds the thousandths place up, so a 3.996 would be a 4.0. I don't know about TMDSAS.

DrHouse, no the BCPM courses are not weighted more heavily, just calculated separately in addition to being factored into your cumulative GPA.
 
Doesn't AMCAS put more weight on BCPM classes? So, whether or not your AMCAS GPA is higher or lower than your institutional GPA depends on how you did in your science courses. I may be rongg.
I have never heard that before. Schools may focus more on BCMP courses than non-BCMP when evaluating an application, but a 4 credit course in chemistry counts the same toward your cGPA as a 4 credit course in history.
 
I have never heard that before. Schools may focus more on BCMP courses than non-BCMP when evaluating an application, but a 4 credit course in chemistry counts the same toward your cGPA as a 4 credit course in history.

It would really be incredibly unfair since not all applicants are science majors, think of how that would affect GPA calculation!
 
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It would really be incredibly unfair since not all applicants are science majors, think of how that would affect GPA calculation!
Yeah, makes no sense for AMCAS to do that. Breaking them down into separate calculations already allows schools to decide how much more weight they want to give to the science grades than the non-science grades.
 
Yeah, makes no sense for AMCAS to do that. Breaking them down into separate calculations already allows schools to decide how much more weight they want to give to the science grades than the non-science grades.

why is that a bad thing? Since when are humanities just as hard as hard sciences? I doubt you've ever experienced a test with an average in the 70s in your history courses.

I was a biology major, but still took a 4000 level (400 at other institutions) history and a sociology, and they were nothing compared to a upper-div bio.

let me guess, your mad because your a humanities major and you can dilute out one bad in your cGPA but not your sGPA?
 
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It would really be incredibly unfair since not all applicants are science majors, think of how that would affect GPA calculation!

Good point. I don't know, I just remember calculating my AMCAS sGPA awhile back and seeing that it was higher than my school major GPA (I am a science major). Also, I'm only a second year so all I've taken is Orgo, Gen Chem, Phys, and Bio, meaning my Major GPA should equal my AMCAS sGPA. Maybe the rounding bumped me up a little? In any case, I apologize for putting incorrect info out there.
 
why is that a bad thing? Since when are humanities just as hard as hard sciences? I doubt you've ever experienced a test with an average in the 70s in your history courses.

I was a biology major, but still took a 4000 level (400 at other institutions) history and a sociology, and they were nothing compared to a upper-div bio.

let me guess, your mad because your a humanities major and you can dilute out one bad in your cGPA but not your sGPA?
LOL, you mad? Yep, humanities are pretty easy compared to sciences. I also got an A in P-Chem without studying more than 2 hours a week. You mad? :D
 
LOL, you mad? Yep, humanities are pretty easy compared to sciences. I also got an A in P-Chem without studying more than 2 hours a week. You mad? :D

He Mad bro. I be mad 'mirin on your stats bro.
 
Holy Franz, he was talking about why it wouldn't make sense for AMCAS to weigh science courses more because it would give the advantage to science majors who get to take more science courses. Also, he mentioned how it would be redundant since sGPA is calculated separately and schools inherently put more value on sGPA than cGPA, anyway. So, if they weighted science courses more, there would be no need for a sGPA.
 
why is that a bad thing? Since when are humanities just as hard as hard sciences? I doubt you've ever experienced a test with an average in the 70s in your history courses.

I was a biology major, but still took a 4000 level (400 at other institutions) history and a sociology, and they were nothing compared to a upper-div bio.

let me guess, your mad because your a humanities major and you can dilute out one bad in your cGPA but not your sGPA?

Your opinion is meaningless seeing as AMCAS doesn't weigh science course more heavily.
 
He Mad bro. I be mad 'mirin on your stats bro.

I have the same GPA as him, my mcat is a bit lower (could have retaken, but high enough to get in), my major was a lot harder, but in the end him and I are both in at our state institutions. Game on bro, we'll see who goes AOA :cool:. Have fun when developmental and biochem role around.
 
doesn't mean schools do bud

Feel free to name any school that actually wastes time to do that. The best you can hope for is the ADCOM to look at your course list and think "oh, this load looks slightly harder than that load".
 
Feel free to name any school that actually wastes time to do that. The best you can hope for is the ADCOM to look at your course list and think "oh, this load looks slightly harder than that load".

They will look for workload -- as stated on many of their webpages. I doubt taking 16 credit hours, only 3 of those being science, is considered "rigorous."

Chiapet, I have a strong feeling that you're a freshman or sophomore, and are just naive. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.


The inflated GPA's only go so far if your MCAT can't back it.
 
From the person who has a lower MCAT than the humanities major :D

... and still got in no problem to a school pretty equivalent to wayne.

And i thank my rigorous coursework and the resulting stellar LORs
 
They will look for workload -- as stated on many of their webpages. I doubt taking 16 credit hours, only 3 of those being science, is considered "rigorous."

The inflated GPA's only go so far if your MCAT can't back it.

Schools will look at workload; as LizzyM has stated several times, she wants to see around 30 credits a year.

If all of your 30 credits are hardcore sciences, than yes- that's gonna look better. But that additional "weight" is unlikely to ever come into play- unless there were two applicants who were exactly the same in everything except course load.

There are simply too many other more important factors coming into play. What if the student with the "lighter" load accomplished more in his/her research work? What if the student who took hard courses had a poorer GPA?
 
Congrats! You just might want to step down from the pedestal you put yourself on compared to those who majored in something other than bio/chem, that's all :)

ha you'll meet TONs of us first year, then it chills down.
 
Schools will look at workload; as LizzyM has stated several times, she wants to see around 30 credits a year.

If all of your 30 credits are hardcore sciences, than yes- that's gonna look better. But that additional "weight" is unlikely to ever come into play- unless there were two applicants who were exactly the same in everything except course load.

There are simply too many other more important factors coming into play. What if the student with the "lighter" load accomplished more in his/her research work? What if the student who took hard courses had a poorer GPA?[/QUOTE]

and what if he did this.
 
Schools will look at workload; as LizzyM has stated several times, she wants to see around 30 credits a year.

If all of your 30 credits are hardcore sciences, than yes- that's gonna look better. But that additional "weight" is unlikely to ever come into play- unless there were two applicants who were exactly the same in everything except course load.

There are simply too many other more important factors coming into play. What if the student with the "lighter" load accomplished more in his/her research work? What if the student who took hard courses had a poorer GPA?
Yeah, it is pretty clear that a difficult major can help a little, but won't make up for a truly low GPA. Take chemical engineering for example, a major that makes both humanities and biological/physical sciences look like high school; if you have a low GPA, it won't matter that you are a chemical engineer, the history major with a 3.8 will still get in ahead of you. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, since engineering is definitely more difficult, but the variance between schools, programs, and even professors of the same course at the same school, is such that med school adcoms have to take GPA's at face value and use the MCAT as the equalizer.

There is no other way to do it, since adcoms can't research every course and every professor in every program at every school and decide exactly how a 3.6 GPA at PoDunk State compares to a 3.6 at MIT. Sure, there will be a difference, but quantifying that difference would require way too much legwork to be worth adcoms' time.
 
They will look for workload -- as stated on many of their webpages. I doubt taking 16 credit hours, only 3 of those being science, is considered "rigorous."

Chiapet, I have a strong feeling that you're a freshman or sophomore, and are just naive. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.


The inflated GPA's only go so far if your MCAT can't back it.

What? So non-science courses are automatically less rigorous?
 
Yeah, it is pretty clear that a difficult major can help a little, but won't make up for a truly low GPA. Take chemical engineering for example, a major that makes both humanities and biological/physical sciences look like high school; if you have a low GPA, it won't matter that you are a chemical engineer, the history major with a 3.8 will still get in ahead of you. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, since engineering is definitely more difficult, but the variance between schools, programs, and even professors of the same course at the same school, is such that med school adcoms have to take GPA's at face value and use the MCAT as the equalizer.

There is no other way to do it, since adcoms can't research every course and every professor in every program at every school and decide exactly how a 3.6 GPA at PoDunk State compares to a 3.6 at MIT. Sure, there will be a difference, but quantifying that difference would require way too much legwork to be worth adcoms' time.

I disagree with this, because A) it's not really that difficult and B) it's been done before.

The easiest way is to normal GPAs by MCAT between schools, which is standardized. For example, here's what Boalt Law School did to adjust grades between schools (http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm). Which is basically normalizing by LSAT. They're not allowed to do it anymore post-lawsuit, but it's very much more than proof of concept. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if most schools don't have hidden cheat sheets that allow them to compare schools.

I've seen databases that schools keep of applicant. They're super detailed and easily allows an Excel Monkey maybe 15 minutes to get a point system for schools, and maybe 30 minutes to do the 90% most common Majors.

The major reasons is not the difficulty (it's not). It's more for diversity reasons, some legal, and some ranking reasons.
 
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Another reason for discrepancies (at least in my case) was the conversion of units from quarter units to semester units. As a result, my GPA went up very slightly (about 0.02) points.
 
I disagree with this, because A) it's not really that difficult and B) it's been done before.

The easiest way is to normal GPAs by MCAT between schools, which is standardized. For example, here's what Boalt Law School did to adjust grades between schools (http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm). Which is basically normalizing by LSAT. They're not allowed to do it anymore post-lawsuit, but it's very much proof of concept.

I've seen databases that schools keep of applicant. They're super detailed and easily allows an Excel Monkey maybe 15 minutes to get a point system for schools, and maybe 30 minutes to do the 90% most common Majors.

The major reasons is not the difficulty (it's not). It's more for diversity reasons, some legal, and some ranking reasons.
Sure, there are ways to try to do it, but without actually checking each and every program at every school against one another, the normalization will be significantly flawed. Even if you ignore the inherent flaws with normalizing by MCAT alone (which are significant), other than a handful of the most popular programs at each large school, there probably wouldn't be a statistically significant n of students taking the MCAT from each program for a valid comparison. This problem is compounded if you are looking only at applicants to each individual medical school (rather than a list of all MCAT takers).

It would be easy to do for the most popular programs at the larger universities, but once you get beyond that limited scope, there won't be sufficient data to normalize the applicants, and normalizing based on MCAT is problematic in and of itself.
 
... and still got in no problem to a school pretty equivalent to wayne.

And i thank my rigorous coursework and the resulting stellar LORs

In all seriousness, do you wish you could have taken a lighter course load? Because, from the way you're talking, it seems you think you could have gotten a higher GPA if you had theseeker's major/course load.
 
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