M2Oer said:
I was just wondering if anybody had filled out the AMCAS application from a school that doesn't give grades? I go to a non-traditional college in Washington State that gives comprehensive evaluations rather than letters as grades, so the whole GPA section is really daunting....
Do you go to Evergreen? That's a cool college.
👍 I went to New College in Florida, which is another LAC that doesn't give grades, credit hours, or GPAs. Here's what you need to do.
1) Get a copy of your Evergreen transcript. Enter your programs on AMCAS *exactly* as they are listed on the transcript, even if that doesn't correspond to how you actually took the courses. (New College doesn't use the designations "freshman," "sophomore," etc., so I arbitrarily assigned courses to each year.)
2) For each course, you must check the box that says "Pass/Fail course," and you must enter "P" or "S" (whatever they use there) as the grade for each course. If you don't have any credit hours (we don't at NC), just leave that box blank for each course.
3) I don't know if you get failed coursework listed on your transcript (we don't), but if not, don't include it, because that will confuse AMCAS. List everything EXACTLY as it is on the transcript, and don't list anything that's not on the transcript. Ditto for course withdrawals and repeats (both of which are not listed on NC transcripts either).
4) AMCAS will calculate a GPA of 0.00 for your undergrad coursework. That may cause problems with some schools not wanting to give you a secondary. You will probably have to contact every screening school and explain the situation.
5) Assuming that your NEs say that your work was average or better, you can try photocopying your NEs for the pre-med pre-reqs, and sending them to the med schools along with the secondary apps (or separately if the secondaries are on-line.) I also sent a one-page typed explanation of the New College program, emphasizing that there was no option to receive grades for any coursework there. Every med school permitted me to send copies of my NEs to them. I have no idea whether the adcoms read the NEs or how they factored them in, but at least they had them. FWIW, my NEs ranged from saying that I was average (biology, physics) to above average (biochem, English) to saying that I was the top student in the class (chemistry, organic, and calculus).
Even with all of this work, some schools may still reject you pre-secondary. If you want to know which schools gave me a major hassle, PM me. But most of the schools did finally end up giving me a secondary after I talked to them: I applied to 22 schools, got 21 secondaries, and 19 interview invites. I wound up getting 12 acceptances. Some of my acceptances were total shocks, and so were some of my rejections. So my advice is to apply to a lot of schools (20+), and keep an open mind about where you think you will be a good match....my original first choice was the one school that ultimately rejected me pre-secondary, and my second "first choice" rejected me post-interview.
😛 I totally would not have correctly predicted which school I'd end up at if you had asked me that question a year ago when I was in your position.
Feel free to PM me if you have any questions, and best of luck to you with your apps.
🙂
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