Low BCPM GPA, higher overall, but active in my field?

[baydatgear]

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Hey guys,

I hope you all are having a nice turkey day and are enjoying the time spent with family. For those that cannot spend time with your family, I hope your life is blessed and you're at the maximum happiness you can achieve, or I hope you will get to that point in the near future.

Anyway,

My major is biomechanical engineering, which is really just biology with some mechanical engineering. I'll be frank and blunt, I started college when I was 17, and I lived on campus at a big public "party" school. I was raised in a very strict traditional socially conservative household, so when you mix the two, it was a recipe for disaster since my freshman year in college in terms of focus. I partied a lot, but have toned it down a lot after the first year after reevaluating my life goals. Funny enough, apparently they were right in psychology textbooks when they said seventeen year olds are rarely mature!

Anyway, I made a B in Bio I, and a B in Bio II. I also made a B in Gen Chem I and a B in Micro (all taken first year). However, I made A's in Gen Chem II, Ochem I, Ochem II, my Physics, Genetics, and a cell biology class. I have all A's in math, though. I have a consolidated Biochem I and II merged class (CHEM) and an immunology (BIO) class left for this semester, and I'm all out of BCPM on my curriculum after that. I hope I can grind and make the A's I need to bring my BCPM GPA up for a shot at a good MSTP.


Is there anything else I could do? Unfortunately, most of my other classes are in mechanical engineering and biomechanical engineering, which don't count towards BCPM. I have all A's in my engineering classes as well. Statics, Dynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Engineering Design, Computing in Engineering, etc. It's a shame none of them count towards science GPA (I could make a strong point that statics, dynamics, and fluid mechanics are just extrapolations of physics...but that's just futile). This means there's a gap between BCPM and overall GPA. I have all A's, but one C in my biomechanical classes, too (personal grievance during the summer semester, didn't go so well with the professor, I don't mind...)

I'm a junior. My big thing is medical hardware design. I'm very big on it. I've done research for 2 years in a biomaterials lab, where I get the privilege of finding out when certain prosthetic, stents, pacemakers, and all the other hardware ill people use to make their lives easier--break, and what I can do on the materials science level or the physics level to fix that. I also have research in, ironically, a micro lab (that lowest class ever, made an 81 by the skin of my teeth...again thanks to partying) , where I designed chemostats. I've been to science fairs across the nation on behalf of my school for mechanical design, and I have a senior thesis coming up, and an honor's college thesis coming up soon, too, all from my own research ideas, with faculty supervision.


Are there any tips on how to increase my BCPM GPA? Or at this point, do you think I have a good enough background in research that MSTP wouldn't care as long as I had a good MCAT? I'm really good at knocking down standardized tests.

My EC's are decent. Regular volunteering, actually won a scholarship through my hospital (clerk lady nominated me and I won lol) for service, won another scholarship for most active member (by point system) in a hardware design club, gave my own talk at my uni about the importance of mixing engineering with biology in the 21st century....and that's about it.

Should I do anything to raise BCPM GPA or should I not worry about it?

 

[Neuronix]

What are your BCPM and overall GPAs currently?

 

[baydatgear]

3.67 and 3.80, respectively. With all A's next semester, I can push it up to 3.71 and 3.82 respectively. However, 3.71 is as high as it'll go for BPCM because I'll run out by then. There's still slight room for improvement for overall GPA, but I think that > 3.8 is solid imo.

In fact, if I make a B in a physics class I'm in (modern), it'll drop BPCM to 3.625, but let's hope that doesn't happen. I have a 91 right now before finals week.

Should I take random blowoff bio/math classes like evolution or ecology to bump it up a bit?

Ideally, I'd like to have sGPA >=3.75

We have a blowoff bio MCAT prep summer class that is called "Techniques in Biological Sciences", but its a bio class and thus BPCM. Is it worth taking to bump it up a bit?

P.S.: I just reviewed my degree plan, and I have to take 5000 level (grad school level) Probability and Stats I and II, which are both math. Do grad level classes that are BCPM count towards BCPM?

 

[Fencer]

Continue getting good grades, and hope that you can pull up the grade of your physics class. The MCAT score is critical because most programs have a cut-off. National data tells you that mean for MD/PhD matriculants is around 34.5 and cGPA of around 3.80. If you are above the GPA/MCAT cut-offs, then, the quality of your research experiences is what makes the difference to get an invitation to interview or not. You seem to have already enough clinical experiences. If your sGPA is at 3.70 or above, there will be considerable interest in your application. Even if you score a stellar MCAT, you must apply broadly.

 

[baydatgear]

Continue getting good grades, and hope that you can pull up the grade of your physics class. The MCAT score is critical because most programs have a cut-off. National data tells you that mean for MD/PhD matriculants is around 34.5 and cGPA of around 3.80. If you are above the GPA/MCAT cut-offs, then, the quality of your research experiences is what makes the difference to get an invitation to interview or not. You seem to have already enough clinical experiences. If your sGPA is at 3.70 or above, there will be considerable interest in your application. Even if you score a stellar MCAT, you must apply broadly.

Does grad level BPCM count? For the story, read the last part of my reply to the previous comment in this thread.

 

[Fencer]

Programs look at all data: undergraduate ScGPA/cGPA, graduate ScGPA/cGPA, and combined ScGPA/cGPA.