Med Schools with GPA forgiveness???? Please help - First MD app

[GabGonEvs]

Which Canadian (or US, but Canada is preferred) med school has some kind of forgiveness in their application? I have a very poor GPA from 1 year of a previous unrelated degree and refuse to let it impact my (now) very strong application. I know University of Calgary can "ignore" (for lack of a better term) post-secondary from 10+ years ago.

Does anyone else know of anything else similar but not as drastic? Ex. only calculating a cGPA from your best 3 years. Literally anything that doesn't make me wait 4 more years.

No way am I going to omit those old transcripts from my application so please don't bother suggesting.

Thanks in advance

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[Goro]

International need to be of Harvard/Stanford caliber. I have yet to see any evidence that US MD schools reward reinvention. DO schools do.

Can't speak as to Canadian schools.

 

[NotASerialKiller]

There are very few Canadian schools, you should go do some research. Each one has an admissions page that very clearly lays out how their calculate GPA and what kind of 'forgiveness' they have. Some drop all years after a certain point, some drop your worst class if you were full-time throughout, some only look at your most recent degree. Most of them are forgiving in one way or another.

I'm not just trying to teach you to fish either, anything you read on SDN should be double checked on official websites, so you're just better off cutting out the middle man and looking on their sites first.

 

[doctorbeastmode]

What do you mean you're not going to omit the other transcript? You want credit for the courses but also for them to ignore the grades you got? Either I'm misreading you (very possible) or you're trying to have your cake but have other people think you're eating broccoli. And also you want to eat the cake too.

 

[Optimist Prime]

What do you mean you're not going to omit the other transcript? You want credit for the courses but also for them to ignore the grades you got? Either I'm misreading you (very possible) or you're trying to have your cake but have other people think you're eating broccoli. And also you want to eat the cake too.

What OP means is he is not going to act like those grades didn't happen and simply not report his old transcript. Basically hes saying not sending in his old transcript with poor grades is not an option.

 

[doctorbeastmode]

Why would a program ignore the grades you got but also give you credit for taking the courses? Do they ask you for your mcat score, or just a certificate saying you took it?

Generally, showing up to something and (by OPs admission) not doing well at it isn't something you should be rewarded for...

Maybe I'm still missing something? I feel like this is a hopeful delusion that shouldn't be spread. If you bomb a course or a degree program, you don't get an A for effort from the adcoms. Options are:

1. retake the course
2. not submit the transcript
3. submit the transcript and hope it doesn't hurt you too much

It seems like the OP wants:

4. Submit the transcript and get credit for showing up but have the adcom ignore his performance

Doesn't that seem far fetched?

 

[doctorbeastmode]

Let's all simmer down. No reason to get testy. What you said makes more sense - I didn't realize that there was fear the school would track you down. I though he just wanted credit for the courses but for the grades to be ignored.

I'm actually a fellow now and I definitely omitted a transcript when I applied to med school. I took calc for a summer that I ultimately had to retake at my institution anyway (and so did not send it in because it seemed unnecessary - not to dodge anything) and took language courses at another (did not include them because it would have been a lot of work to get transcripts from abroad). Nobody tracked me down to kick me out, and if they asked me I would have told them the truth.

I'd obviously be swayed if someone has experienced this. Is there anyone out there who got kicked out of school because they omitted a transcript? I'm an example of a person who omitted two transcripts and nobody ever cared (and honestly I would be happy to email my school to tell them - they'd probably just laugh), so I'd be curious to see if your nightmare scenario ever actually played out.

Anyway, I didn't mean to start a troll-panic here. I (might have) misinterpreted the OP - which I very clearly said multiple times may be what was happening - and I really do empathize with people in that situation. Grades are often capricious and arbitrary, and unfortunately they can be a make or break for good applicants.

 

[doctorbeastmode]

So i bounced back to the OPs previous threads and this is actually really interesting.

For one, his prior transcript has 6 fails during an online program. Also, he's a really good guy and has a great GPA now! Sucks man - I really hope you can find a way around this. That online one is going to be killer.

Now I was totally unaware that Med schools actually have some database to look up what other institutions you've been at. Apparently there IS a central repository for all this, which I didn't know about and still hardly believe. That's where my ignorance of all this came from. I need to just get off SDN haha.

All that being said, there was a ton of pushback in the other forum agreeing with the above. Basically saying that you will get caught and your life will be over if you omit transcripts. Seems to be the consensus.

I STILL find it hard to believe that this actually happens. More likely it would seem to me that they would just ask you to submit the other coursework if you got caught, which I still think is unlikely. If I were the OP I would totally just omit the online coursework and see what happened. Basically everyone on SDN disagrees with me from what I saw on the other thread, though, and I'm sorry for hijacking this one. I'm done posting and will leave it to other more helpful people to answer the OP.

 

[imp_44]

UBC will drop your lowest year (beginning in Sept) up to 30 credits. If your lowest academic year has more than 30 credits, the lowest 30 from that year will be dropped. *this only applies if, after subtracting the 30 credits, there remain at least 90 credits to assess. (i.e. min 120 total - 30 worst = 90 to calculate adjusted GPA (AGPA). Hope this helps!

 

[coramDeo]

International need to be of Harvard/Stanford caliber. I have yet to see any evidence that US MD schools reward reinvention. DO schools do.

how true is this sentiment? Just curious as I'm a Canadian Applicant myself, and I've seen some success stories that aren't exactly Harvard-caliber. Just wondering how people think about this issue.

Which Canadian (or US, but Canada is preferred) med school has some kind of forgiveness in their application?

As @imp_44 mentioned, UBC drops the worst year/30 credits. Toronto also drops the worst year, but only if you have taken a "full-course load" for all years while in college/university. (For the definition of "full-course load," check out their website.) I believe most of the Ontario medical schools - if not all - have some sort of GPA-adjustment with the intentions of "forgiving" the applicants.

 

[Goro]

how true is this sentiment? Just curious as I'm a Canadian Applicant myself, and I've seen some success stories that aren't exactly Harvard-caliber. Just wondering how people think about this issue.
.

Why would a US school take a foreign national who was only a median candidate?

 

[seren1051]

how true is this sentiment? Just curious as I'm a Canadian Applicant myself, and I've seen some success stories that aren't exactly Harvard-caliber. Just wondering how people think about this issue.

Out of ~40 or so schools that'll take Canadians/Internationals, roughly half of them falls on top 30. Pretty difficult to get into those. Remaining half are combinations of public schools, super low-yield schools, HBCUs, shows regional preference. So, yeah. There are so many reasons to choose Americans (ample amount of diversity there) over non-Americans.

 

[coramDeo]

Why would a US school take a foreign national who was only a median candidate?

I understand that reasoning, but they aren't only looking for Ivy-level students are they? My thoughts were - for the schools that take Canadian/Int'l students - that you just need to be better than their applicant pool median rather than every Canadian/int'l being Ivy level.

 

[altblue]

I understand that reasoning, but they aren't only looking for Ivy-level students are they? My thoughts were - for the schools that take Canadian/Int'l students - that you just need to be better than their applicant pool median rather than every Canadian/int'l being Ivy level.

I was going to say, something like a 3.8 and 513 is still better than most medians

 

[onyxbell]

I understand that reasoning, but they aren't only looking for Ivy-level students are they? My thoughts were - for the schools that take Canadian/Int'l students - that you just need to be better than their applicant pool median rather than every Canadian/int'l being Ivy level.

Those int’l applicants that are better than the school applicant pool median will need to face off against domestic applicants with the same stats. And they need to be better because all else being equal, the domestic student wins the seat. So given that those who accept int’l applications are already the top tier schools, the ‘above median’ often translates to ivy caliber stats.

 

[RinShanKaiHo]

I'm by no means Harvard caliber and I got in. I applied super late application complete in November, LizzyM 70. I have had several interviews from even top schools.

DON'T scare away those poor kids that are already disadvantaged compared to domestic applicants. We went through the same process and stronger than the national pool. We mostly have to fund our education out of pocket or get private loans. The process is hard and we do need backup plans that's for sure, but so does everyone. It is far from undoable for kids with lizzyM 70+ and good ecs.

Good luck to you all! GANBARE!

 

[coramDeo]

Those int’l applicants that are better than the school applicant pool median will need to face off against domestic applicants with the same stats. And they need to be better because all else being equal, the domestic student wins the seat. So given that those who accept int’l applications are already the top tier schools, the ‘above median’ often translates to ivy caliber stats.

I see what you are saying. On a tangent, your stats are incredible. Lol