question

[student233]

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[KnightDoc]

Hi,
I read on here that some medical schools use AMCAS's gpa, while some calculate their own GPAs. Which MD medical schools do this?

Where did you read this? Please quote or link. As far as I know, no MD school does this, since the only transcript they see is the one validated, prepared and calculated by AMCAS.

 

[WOWM]

U New Mexico SOM re-weight grades and recalculates GPA for applicants;

Through the GPA weighting process, freshman and sophomore year grades count for less than the grades from junior year and beyond. First-year grades are weighted 1X, second-year grades are weighted 2X, and grades from all subsequent years, including post-graduate and graduate school, are weighted 3X.

https://hsc.unm.edu/school-of-medicine/education/md/admissions/med-school-application-self-assessment.pdf

Louisiana State SOM has the 32 Hour Policy:

The 32-Hour Policy was a policy adopted by the LSU-New Orleans Admissions Committee many years ago. This policy allows for an applicant to obtain 32 or more post-baccalaureate hours of coursework in biology, chemistry, physics or mathematics. The admissions committee would then consider the GPA for those 32 or more hours to be that applicant’s GPA for the medical school application process.

Requirements

There are probably other schools that do this, but I don't have time to search.

 

[Developer]

IIRC Wayne State has something similar to the LSU policy mentioned above

 

[DNAJB6]

TX schools count A+/A/A- as 4.0. B+/B/B- as 3.0, etc.

 

[deleted555445]

any private schools that do something like this, formally saying they heavily weight post-bacc GPA? californian here, unlikely any of my public options are helpful in this regard.

 

[KnightDoc]

AMCAS does give them a transcript, but I read that some med school calculate their own GPA (which could be lower or higher than what AMCAS gave). I can't find it now but I did read it here on SDN. Not all things on here are true obviously but it got me wondering what med schools do this.
I also read that GPAs are calculated for verification purposes when an applicant submits their app, but then the GPA is calculated again once they get accepted to a school. this also confused me

Yeah, @WOWM gave a few examples. This is really not different than just saying that schools reward upward trends, and it isn't clear whether they actually recalculate the GPA or just weight the later years more heavily, but, either way, the effect is the same.

Bear in mind, that, in the end, the actual calculation is not the be all and end all, because all schools admit students with a range of GPAs, so, rather than focusing on which schools might do a recalculation, it might be more productive to just do the best you can and then apply to targeted schools based on your whole application, rather than targeting schools that do a recalculation that benefits you. Remember, lots of schools that don't recalculate might also be interested in you! Good luck!!

 

[gonnif]

A very few schools have a formal mechanism to recalculate GPA based on the post-bacc, SMP or other later work. Wayne State used to have a formal application that a candidate needed to fill out to do this. Some schools have a formal part their evaluation that will weigh later work. Many, if not most has guidelines to evaluators to take into account grade trends, postbacc work. Virtually no school looks at a single GPA number and makes a determination solely based on that, even schools with "hard" cutoffs. Only premeds focus on single GPA as that is what gets reported in MSAR. Please not factors that medical schools considered from AAMC survey of schools