pre-dental question

[doubleout]

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I'm a fourth year biochem major and I'll graduate this fall. My current GPA is 3.06 and I know this is not competitive for dental programs, so I was planing on repeating several classes to bring up my gpa to around 3.7 but I've been told by my advisor and other pre-dental students that it's not a good thing to repeat classes as oppose to completing a post bacc program. So is this really true that dental schools don't give credit to repeated courses. I appreciate your feedbacks.

 

[PChemGrad]

There is no way you can bring your GPA to a 3.7
Your school might drop your original grade and count your new one, but when you apply you have to put in every grade you ever earned and then it will be averaged.

Your best bet is to do a post-bac program, a Masters program, or kill the DATs. If you repeat a class you better earn an A since you would have already seen the material. But this isnt the best way, do advanced work and hope you do well.

 

[pmantz]

Taking classes over again or remedial classes probably not the best way to go. I would go the post-bac route. Adcomms want to see proof you will succeed in D-school, and taking new and more challenging classes will show them this. Plus wouldn't it be mind numbingly boring to sit through the same class twice.

 

[doubleout]

Thanks for your help; I also have a question regarding post baccalaureate programs. Since I'm a biochem major , it wouldn't make sense to do a post bacc in Biology, so what are my options other than a second bacc in science?

 

[Meatwad]

Special Master's Program. You have a GPA over 3.0, so if you do well on the DAT, you can get into one. These degrees are only one-year long, and usually involve you taking first year medical school courses alongside med students (you usually won't take gross anatomy, though). They have really good track records of getting graduates into medical or dental school. A few are:

Georgetown
Tulane
UMDNJ
Loyola in Chicago
Boston University

The list goes on. Go to the postbac forum to read about the pro's and con's of each program. I don't think you can get financial aid for the Georgetown MS in physiology, for example, which is a huge turnoff for most (I know it would be for me). Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure every SMP program would be closed for admissions as per Fall 2007 right now, so you'd have to enter in Fall 2008 I guess. In the meantime, study for the DAT and take some upper-division biology courses that you haven't taken yet, volunteer, etc. If you have a C- or below in any of your prereqs, I guess I'd retake those because some schools might not accept below a C.

I wouldn't hold out for a 3.7 GPA, personally. The way your GPA is calculated by dental and medical schools would mean you'd need probably 6 more years of 4.0's to get that number, which is not practical.

 

[doubleout]

Thanks for your reply, So how exactly do these schools calculate the GPA???

 

[Meatwad]

Example:

Fall 2006: General Chemistry I - Grade: F
Fall 2007: (Retaken) General Chemistry I - Grade: A

Your GPA at school will now be a 4.0 (assuming the only class you've ever taken was Gen Chem, to make the example easy). However, for dental/allopathic medical schools it is the average of the two, so:

(F + A) / 2 = C

So your grade to dental schools is a 2.0, which is way different from your school GPA. So basically the more retakes you have, the further and further away your school GPA and your dental school application GPA lie from one another.

One more example, which is more realistic and still illustrates the point:

Fall 2006: Chem I - D
Bio I - B+
Calculus - C+
English - A
History - A
Spring 2007: Chem 2 - B+
Bio II - B+
Calculus II - C
English - A-
Music - A
Summer 2007: Humanities - A
Fall 2007: (Retake) Chem I - A-
(Retake) Calculus - A
(Retake) Calculus II - A-
Some easy class - A
Easy class - A-

So, according to your school, your GPA is: 3.71
Your GPA when applying to dental school is: 3.47

So you can already see that with very few credits (43 here) and a few retakes (3) your GPA differs significantly. Since you are graduating and will have 120+ credits I assume, unless you did really bad in classes (D's or C-'s) I wouldn't bother retaking.