post-bacc student's GPA question

[Ratty]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I am a post-bacc student who had a 3.4 GPA in English from an excellent college, has a law degree, and after law school graduation jumped right into a post-bacc program. My question is what sort of post-bacc science GPA should I have to get into any M.D. school? I am of course aiming for all A's but as we all know sometimes this doesn't work out. What would disqualify me? A C? A D? Two C's? A bunch of B's? I am of course especially concerned because I know that med schools look most heavily on one's post-bacc grades in determining admission.

 

[Dr.Linus]

The kind of GPA's expected of applicants depends on the schools ofcourse. If you can look up the schools you are interested in MSAR(Medical School Admission Requirements) book and you will get an idea. Usually, it is better to have above 3.5.

 

[KirsteenB]

Hi there,

So if you've done some Post-Bacc courses, do the medical schools weigh those considerably more than courses completed as part of the undergraduate degree? Also, how would your academic record be treated if you also had one or two graduate degrees in conjunction with a good Post-Bacc average (3.85-sci, 3.71-all others) but a horrific undergrad average? 🙄

Cheers,
Kirsteen

 

[....]

I would say a 3.7-3.8...UMiami has a cut off of 3.2 undergrad GPA for instate residents....if you have taken graduate school classes it is 3.5....does that mean a 3.2 undergrad = 3.5 gradute....i dunno....but it looks that way....

 

[juddson]

Ratty,

Like you, I have also done post-bacc work after law school (though, I practiced for two years before I went back to school). I did 18 months (32 hours) of post-bacc work at my undergrad institution, which included basically the whole pre-med compliment +biochem.

I filled out AMCAS last month and was horrified (though what did I expect) to see that AMCAS automatically averages your Post-Bacc GPA into your undergard GPA. In my case, my science undergard GPA prior to post bacc was something like 2.89 spread over 18 credits taken as a freshamn and sophmore 10 years ago. My Post-bac GPA was 4.0 spread over 32 hours. When the computer averaged everything, my cummulative undergard GPA ended up being 3.48, hardly what I had hoped for.

Although there is a seperate row for bost-bacc GPA on the AMCAS form, I have gotten the impression from calling schools that it is the cummulative they look at when doing initial screenings and determining interviews. So, that's not good.

When I started this, I told myself that I would be competitive if I could get A's in half my classes during Post bacc and B's in the other half. A C, in my estimation, even one of them, I figured would sink me. I am VERY glad that I got all A's, because after seeing how AMCAS figures the GPA's, it could have been a lot worse.

My advice, then, is to work as hard as you can to get all A's. Resist the temptation to say "well, I guess I'm just going to get a B in physics because I am too tired to crack the book again". I think it matters a lot.

Judd

 

[Walter]

Ratty, my experience as a Postbacc was that the grades were important in being able to demonstrate I had the ability to handle the work. But the fact that you are a non-traditional student already differentiates you from most other applicants and it is probably more important how well you do on the MCAT - although that will vary from school to school. I agree with the above post, however. Don't leave anything to chance - get all A's. I did my post-bacc through Rutgers in NJ and their minimum to apply "fast-track" with participating Med schools was 3.6.