Pad GPA to get an application looked at?

[WellThatsGood]

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I tried searching and I found conflicting advice but I also believe this situation is fairly unique.

Let’s compare two situations and which would fare better for admission into a US Allopathic school.

Situation 1:
An A ability student goes to a 4 year state school and fails in a particularly hilarious fashion, leaving college in the middle of a semester ending up with a cGPA of 1.0-2.0. This student takes a couple of years off to mature and then finishes a bachelor’s degree with a 3.8-4.0 GPA, but unfortunately due to the poor earlier GPA their cumulative is 2.9-3.3.

Despite completing a BS with a very good GPA, their application may not even get looked at.

Situation 2:
An A ability student goes to a 4 year state school and fails in a particularly hilarious fashion, leaving college in the middle of a semester ending up with a cGPA of 1.0-2.0 (same situation). In this case the student takes a couple of years off, but in the meantime pads their GPA with community college credits, raising their cGPA. The classes may or may not have relevance and it may be obvious the classes are not difficult.

This student then completes a bachelor’s degree with a 3.8-4.0 GPA but ends up with a 3.3-3.6 cGPA.

Assuming all other aspects of the application are equal in this hypothetical situation (MCAT, ECs, research, shadowing, volunteering, etc.), which one would be more favorable toward admission into a US Allopathic school?

Most of the “gpa padding” threads are about people that took easy classes after they’ve already earned upper division credit, or are looking for classes that look good but are easy. This is a situation where the buffer classes would occur before the student appeared to enter a pre-med track. The student would still be taking the same rigorous bachelor’s degree at a university, but the numbers would end up much better in the latter case.

 

[Sloo0]

Well if the student is taking time off I would assume they would be doing something worthwhile instead of twiddling their thumbs. Obviously the schools want to see an academic continuation so I would assume taking classes would be a good thing.


But you have to realize that they are mainly looking at your science GPA, so if you pad your GPA with a ton of random crap and your cumulative GPA ends up being a 3.6 but your science GPA is a 2.8 they will clearly see.... lol



I would suggest not taking fluff classes but instead taking science-related classes so at least they can pad your science GPA as well.

 

[WellThatsGood]

Well if the student is taking time off I would assume they would be doing something worthwhile instead of twiddling their thumbs. Obviously the schools want to see an academic continuation so I would assume taking classes would be a good thing.


But you have to realize that they are mainly looking at your science GPA, so if you pad your GPA with a ton of random crap and your cumulative GPA ends up being a 3.6 but your science GPA is a 2.8 they will clearly see.... lol



I would suggest not taking fluff classes but instead taking science-related classes so at least they can pad your science GPA as well.

Sorry, I meant to imply that the sGPA would be not terrible as well in either case, let's say 3.4-3.7.

 

[patel2]

Sorry, I meant to imply that the sGPA would be not terrible as well in either case, let's say 3.4-3.7.

that's a broad range; a 3.4 is substantially lower than a 3.7. But as to your original question: "padding" your GPA is fine.

Med school adcoms don't have any way to know if you are truly padding your GPA, as they don't know which courses/depts are hard/easy at your school. Joke majors like education, sociology and clown studies do very well in med school admissions provided they have the gpa/mcats, so really that proves adcoms couldn't care less about the rigor of your curriculum.

 

[curt656]

This is exatly my situation, but I am in CC not padding classes. I am working to my AA so I can transfer to University.

It has been over 10 years since I received those terrible grades so long ago, and I am very worried that at face value, I am going to be overlooked. If I get ALL A's for the remainder of the 2.5 years until I get my Bachelors the best I can do is cGPA 3.1 - 3.4. (I am working with my old school to retroactively withdraw from a whole semester of F's because I had to leave school due to a natural disaster at my family home, so 3.4 is going to be best case scenario). My sGPA I can get up to 3.6 or 3.7. I am 37 with a family and don't necessarily have time for post-bac and/or SMP.

How do I get the admissions people to REALLY take a look at my file and not just brush it aside with the other thousands of applications???

 

[lisi326]

Situation 1:
An A ability student goes to a 4 year state school and fails in a particularly hilarious fashion, leaving college in the middle of a semester ending up with a cGPA of 1.0-2.0. This student takes a couple of years off to mature and then finishes a bachelor’s degree with a 3.8-4.0 GPA, but unfortunately due to the poor earlier GPA their cumulative is 2.9-3.3.

I have to know: is this actually true, or did you just use this really awesome wording for effect?

 

[OveractiveBrain]

Im an M4 now, and I applied 3 times to get in.

I got raped by, lets say Orgo (aka drinking), and got gentlemen's Cs (i was at a top 3 Ivy). The way I got in was upping my 30 MCAT to a 34 and taking GEN chem and Organic chem at central state university. Easy As of course. Yay! Admission!

 

[WellThatsGood]

that's a broad range; a 3.4 is substantially lower than a 3.7. But as to your original question: "padding" your GPA is fine.

Med school adcoms don't have any way to know if you are truly padding your GPA, as they don't know which courses/depts are hard/easy at your school. Joke majors like education, sociology and clown studies do very well in med school admissions provided they have the gpa/mcats, so really that proves adcoms couldn't care less about the rigor of your curriculum.

They can't tell if you're taking random classes along with progressing towards your major, but what if the padding is very obvious (and occurred before pre-med track was started)? Eg. 100 credit hours of Algebra, Word Processing, etc. Possibly repeating the same course with a slightly different name at a different community college since all grades have to be reported!

Is it better to have those worthless credits and a higher GPA? Or the lower GPA without the blatant padding. Assuming the same 3.8-4.0 in the "post apocalyptic" pre-med track, just different resultant cGPA.

Remember, the padding would occur before the pre-med track started. Essentially as an attempt to nullify the first screw up, GPA wise.

I have to know: is this actually true, or did you just use this really awesome wording for effect?

Not literally hilarious as I'm not sure a <2.0 GPA is funny in any way, so for effect?

 

[patel2]

They can't tell if you're taking random classes along with progressing towards your major, but what if the padding is very obvious (and occurred before pre-med track was started)? Eg. 100 credit hours of Algebra, Word Processing, etc. Possibly repeating the same course with a slightly different name at a different community college since all grades have to be reported!

Is it better to have those worthless credits and a higher GPA? Or the lower GPA without the blatant padding. Assuming the same 3.8-4.0 in the "post apocalyptic" pre-med track, just different resultant cGPA.

Remember, the padding would occur before the pre-med track started. Essentially as an attempt to nullify the first screw up, GPA wise.



Not literally hilarious as I'm not sure a <2.0 GPA is funny in any way, so for effect?

no, that's not what I mean. I'm saying if you want to pad your GPA, take classes in astronomy or anything in liberal arts depts. like sociology, education or political science to get easy As. Things like word processing are typically not even taught at a 4 year university, so it would look shady to stack your transcript with vocational classes like that.

as for taking a class at another school that has almost the same content as a course you took, that's also a bad idea. I definitely don't recommend that. Like I said, the easiest way to "GPA pad" is to focus on easy liberal arts classes in the social sciences/humanities departments, and you kill two birds with one stone, since med schools actually like students to have background in these courses.

 

[WellThatsGood]

no, that's not what I mean. I'm saying if you want to pad your GPA, take classes in astronomy or anything in liberal arts depts. like sociology, education or political science to get easy As. Things like word processing are typically not even taught at a 4 year university, so it would look shady to stack your transcript with vocational classes like that.

as for taking a class at another school that has almost the same content as a course you took, that's also a bad idea. I definitely don't recommend that. Like I said, the easiest way to "GPA pad" is to focus on easy liberal arts classes in the social sciences/humanities departments, and you kill two birds with one stone, since med schools actually like students to have background in these courses.

I understand what you're saying but the situation I'm presenting is slightly more complex.

A GPA of 3.8-4.0 is excellent, and in a normal situation would be sufficient for that requirement of med school admissions. What I'm suggesting is what if the 120 credit hours for that degree only bring up the cGPA to <3.3. It's hard to get into a US Allopathic school with those marks. The student has already proved they can handle college material by doing an entire bachelors degree with very good performance.

Unfortunately, despite on-par performance for the entirety of that degree the cGPA is still well below the average matriculant.

I was curious if despite the shadiness of stacking your transcript with vocational (or equivalents) classes would it look better if done *before* the excellent performance in the bachelors program listed above. The student would still have completed 120+ credit hours at 3.8+ towards their degree but instead they'll end up with a cGPA of 3.5+ for applications.

So the timeline would look something like this:

Option 1: [Terrible GPA]                        [3.8 in Biology]: cGPA 3.2
Option 2: [Terrible GPA] [Lots of Easy Classes] [3.8 in Biology]: cGPA 3.5

Classes like sociology or astronomy would still require work, and in this case the student would have to be in school for 5+ years to bump the GPA enough. That would be very expensive at a University. The shady classes on the other hand could be taken cheaply and in mass. Yet still the student would demonstrate 3.8+ competency over the 120 credits for the bachelors degree.

Or is a 3.8+ for the BS AND an SMP really required? Or an extra full year of upper division coursework after getting a 3.8+ for 4 years? Do you see the situation?

 

[slatermd]

This is exatly my situation, but I am in CC not padding classes. I am working to my AA so I can transfer to University.

It has been over 10 years since I received those terrible grades so long ago, and I am very worried that at face value, I am going to be overlooked. If I get ALL A's for the remainder of the 2.5 years until I get my Bachelors the best I can do is cGPA 3.1 - 3.4. (I am working with my old school to retroactively withdraw from a whole semester of F's because I had to leave school due to a natural disaster at my family home, so 3.4 is going to be best case scenario). My sGPA I can get up to 3.6 or 3.7. I am 37 with a family and don't necessarily have time for post-bac and/or SMP.

How do I get the admissions people to REALLY take a look at my file and not just brush it aside with the other thousands of applications???

Let your fear motivate you to crush the MCAT. 3.1 - 3.4 won't keep you out of med school if you have a very good MCAT apply to an appropriately broad range of schools. Good luck.

 

[slatermd]

I understand what you're saying but the situation I'm presenting is slightly more complex.

A GPA of 3.8-4.0 is excellent, and in a normal situation would be sufficient for that requirement of med school admissions. What I'm suggesting is what if the 120 credit hours for that degree only bring up the cGPA to <3.3. It's hard to get into a US Allopathic school with those marks. The student has already proved they can handle college material by doing an entire bachelors degree with very good performance.

Unfortunately, despite on-par performance for the entirety of that degree the cGPA is still well below the average matriculant.

I was curious if despite the shadiness of stacking your transcript with vocational (or equivalents) classes would it look better if done *before* the excellent performance in the bachelors program listed above. The student would still have completed 120+ credit hours at 3.8+ towards their degree but instead they'll end up with a cGPA of 3.5+ for applications.

Classes like sociology or astronomy would still require work, and in this case the student would have to be in school for 5+ years to bump the GPA enough. That would be very expensive at a University. The shady classes on the other hand could be taken cheaply and in mass. Yet still the student would demonstrate 3.8+ competency over the 120 credits for the bachelors degree.

Or is a 3.8+ for the BS AND an SMP really required? Or an extra full year of upper division coursework after getting a 3.8+ for 4 years? Do you see the situation?

If one had the time to do so, the "shady" classes would look better if taken prior to nailing upper-levels at a university, in contrast with taking them in a fury before applying to medical school. In the latter situation it would be fairly obvious that it was a time-crunched effort to boost one's GPA, but I'm still not sure it would look *that* bad. Taking them early better disguises the intent, but medical schools aren't going to be upset with someone for wanting to raise their GPA. At the end of the day, if they haven't screened the person out they'll be looking at the whole application either way; if there's a deal-breaker it will be more the nuance of timing with these courses.

More importantly, to raise your GPA it seems these would have to be actual college-level courses (i.e. the credits would transfer to another institution), and not some sort of CC or online seminar class that anyone can take, not even requiring a high school diploma/GED. It would require some due diligence to distinguish between "intro to word processing" (for geriatrics who don't know how to type good and want to learn to do other things good, too), and, say "Business Computing" or at some places even "Intro to Computer Science" which may all be laughable variations on how to use MS Office, but only one factors into your GPA.

 

[WellThatsGood]

If one had the time to do so, the "shady" classes would look better if taken prior to nailing upper-levels at a university, in contrast with taking them in a fury before applying to medical school. In the latter situation it would be fairly obvious that it was a time-crunched effort to boost one's GPA, but I'm still not sure it would look *that* bad. Taking them early better disguises the intent, but medical schools aren't going to be upset with someone for wanting to raise their GPA. At the end of the day, if they haven't screened the person out they'll be looking at the whole application either way; if there's a deal-breaker it will be more the nuance of timing with these courses.

More importantly, to raise your GPA it seems these would have to be actual college-level courses (i.e. the credits would transfer to another institution), and not some sort of CC or online seminar class that anyone can take, not even requiring a high school diploma/GED. It would require some due diligence to distinguish between "intro to word processing" (for geriatrics who don't know how to type good and want to learn to do other things good, too), and, say "Business Computing" or at some places even "Intro to Computer Science" which may all be laughable variations on how to use MS Office, but only one factors into your GPA.

Yeah, the easy classes would look much better taken before the upper division courses. Although I wasn't even presenting the case of taking the obvious GPA boosting classes after upper division courses were started.

There are A LOT of trivial classes available. I'm pretty sure most community colleges clearly distinguish which classes are for credit and which are non-credit.

What do you think about taking the same course simultaneously at different colleges? You can learn the content once but almost effectively double the efficiency since all grades have to be reported. Obviously this is going to look very shady and will show as blatant GPA inflation, but I'm curious if despite these shortcomings if it will fair better in admissions for the situation in the OP with the superior GPA.

[edit] Heck, even retaking something like Calculus I at different schools demonstrates the example. The content is not going to change from school to school significantly and you could pretty much walk in and just sit for the exams and guarantee an A. The retakes should still be counted in your AMCAS GPA.

Once again yes it looks bad. But worse than applying with an subpar GPA? (With the same good performance in upper division courses in either case.)

 

[WellThatsGood]

Any other thoughts? Here's a simplified example:

Situation 1:
2.0 over 60 credits, drops out
Comes back matured and keeps a 3.8 over a 130 credit BS
cGPA: 3.23

Situation 2:
2.0 over 60 credits, drops out
Takes 100 credits of junk courses and keeps a 4.0
Keeps a 3.8 over a 130 credit BS
cGPA: 3.50

Which one would likely do better in US Allopathic admissions? Both have excellent performance over a significant enough sample size (the 4 year BS degree) to determine capability, but the latter application would have significantly better application stats.

Once again assuming equal MCAT, ECs, etc.

 

[Isoprop]

The one with the longer history of A's or near A's coursework and the higher GPA will do better. Though honestly, they are both pretty even.

The second student will have a better looking trend because all those A's during his "time off" will go towards junior GPA which will be an A. Then his senior GPA will be a mix of the 4.0 and 3.8 grades. The first student's junior and senior will just be a 3.8.

For either of them, in order for either student to get an acceptance, an adcom will have to comb through the classes to see what happened, notice a string of A's or near A's near the end, and look for an explanation/compelling story in PS or other parts of the application. At some point, there are very large diminishing returns of every A you get per class.

 

[Godric]

I have a question related to this. When you are fill out your AMCAS app, and list all your classes, even the ones you took at a community college..

Even if your university does not count the classes you took at the CC in your GPA will AMCAS count it in your cGPA/sGPA ?

 

[WellThatsGood]

The one with the longer history of A's or near A's coursework and the higher GPA will do better. Though honestly, they are both pretty even.

The second student will have a better looking trend because all those A's during his "time off" will go towards junior GPA which will be an A. Then his senior GPA will be a mix of the 4.0 and 3.8 grades. The first student's junior and senior will just be a 3.8.

For either of them, in order for either student to get an acceptance, an adcom will have to comb through the classes to see what happened, notice a string of A's or near A's near the end, and look for an explanation/compelling story in PS or other parts of the application. At some point, there are very large diminishing returns of every A you get per class.

There is a very large diminishing return for each A once you get to that many credits, but the difference between a 3.2 and a 3.5 is ordinarily pretty significant.

So in your opinion the longer string of A-level coursework still looks better even if 100 of those credits are random freshman level courses at community colleges?

Would it still look better if the "random" period included many duplicates for no apparent reason? Eg. Taking Calculus I simultaneously at multiple community colleges.

 

[Isoprop]

I have a question related to this. When you are fill out your AMCAS app, and list all your classes, even the ones you took at a community college..

Even if your university does not count the classes you took at the CC in your GPA will AMCAS count it in your cGPA/sGPA ?

yes

 

[Isoprop]

So in your opinion the longer string of A-level coursework still looks better even if 100 of those credits are random freshman level courses at community colleges?

Would it still look better if the "random" period included many duplicates for no apparent reason? Eg. Taking Calculus I simultaneously at multiple community colleges.

Yes, the longer the history of A's, the better. Of course taking the same class you aced over and over again or multiple times during the same semester at different schools will definitely be a red flag unless it's an internship or something like that.

 

[WellThatsGood]

Yes, the longer the history of A's, the better. Of course taking the same class you aced over and over again or multiple times during the same semester at different schools will definitely be a red flag unless it's an internship or something like that.

Yeah, obviously taking the same class multiple times during the same semester would raise a red flag, but the question is would the added benefit to the GPA in the specific situation above out weigh the negative? Esp. in the above example where the alternative is not taking the extra duplicates at all and applying with a 3.2 vs a 3.5 (but still showing the long string of As through the entire bachelors)

 

[slatermd]

Yeah, obviously taking the same class multiple times during the same semester would raise a red flag, but the question is would the added benefit to the GPA in the specific situation above out weigh the negative? Esp. in the above example where the alternative is not taking the extra duplicates at all and applying with a 3.2 vs a 3.5 (but still showing the long string of As through the entire bachelors)

In the duplicate example, no, the benefit does not outweigh the shadiness.

 

[Isoprop]

Yeah, obviously taking the same class multiple times during the same semester would raise a red flag, but the question is would the added benefit to the GPA in the specific situation above out weigh the negative? Esp. in the above example where the alternative is not taking the extra duplicates at all and applying with a 3.2 vs a 3.5 (but still showing the long string of As through the entire bachelors)

Taking duplicate classes you did well or taking lower level classes when you already finished the upper level class is not getting you anywhere.

E.g. taking calculus I and acing multiple times. Taking remedial chemistry after taking (and passing) organic chemistry.

This will not help and only hurt your application. You are purposefully and badly misrepresenting yourself, which carries a scent of dishonesty that will send your app to the bottom of the pile no matter what your GPA may be.

Now there may be exceptions like you took biology in 2001 and got an A but left school and decided to retake biology again in 2007 to refresh. In fact, this is not that uncommon. But generally, you should not repeat a class you did well in.