md2011 said:My bachlor degree is from a foreign university, and the university doesn't have the service of sending the transcript out. But it does provide a sealed envelop. Will this be all right with AMCAS? Plus, the grades are all in 100 scale, do they need to be converted to 4 points scale by an official American translation service company, such as WES? Thanks!
The previous poster is correct: AMCAS will not use foreign transcripts to obtain your GPA and, in fact, their fine print states that you should ask for a trascript waiver. I did something a little different. I arranged for an official transcript to be sent by my undergraduate institution to WES as well as arranging for WES to send an official evaluation to AMCAS. AMCAS did not verify my evaluated grades (assign a GPA and say "we agree") but they did leave the evaluated grades on the AMCAS form for schools to see. Realize that you will essentially be applying without an undergraduate GPA and this will get you screened out by many schools. A foreign undergraduate degree is a huge stigma. You can do three additional things to help: 1. arrange for official WES transcripts to be sent to the director of each medical school admissions committee. 2. repeat your prereq's (chem/bio/phys/english) in the U.S. 3. make sure you have 60-90 credits completed in the U.S. or Canada (varies for different medical schools). To maximize your chance of admssion, it's best to do all three. Good luck!md2011 said:My bachlor degree is from a foreign university, and the university doesn't have the service of sending the transcript out. But it does provide a sealed envelop. Will this be all right with AMCAS? Plus, the grades are all in 100 scale, do they need to be converted to 4 points scale by an official American translation service company, such as WES? Thanks!
Usually a one-semester class plus lab is between 4 and 6 credits (usually 4). Your U.S. transcript will tell you but my guess is that your community college experience will amount to around 32 credits. Be sure that you have lab credits for chemistry, biology, physics, organic chemistry. That is also critical. Your MIT transcript, similarly, will state how many credits you have. For my graduate work in the U.S., AMCAS and all the medical schools I applied to counted my research credits as well as formal classes. Most schools asked me for 90 credits. One or two asked for 60 credits. I had 91.md2011 said:I did take bio/chem/org chem/eng in community college. I wonder how credit hours are calculated? How many credit hours are counted for 2 semester biology? I understand taking courses at community college is an disadvantage to me, but the place where I lived is too far from any 4 year college, and I have a master degree from MIT, so I figured it might be ok. I just scored 33N (13Phys, 11Bio, 9 Verb) in April 06. What should I do to improve my chance into med school?
Thank you very very much in advance.
Scottish Chap said:Usually a one-semester class plus lab is between 6 and 8 credits (usually 6). Your U.S. transcript will tell you but my guess is that your community college experience will amount to around 24 credits. Be sure that you have lab credits for chemistry, biology, physics, organic chemistry. That is also critical. Your MIT transcript, similarly, will state how many credits you have. For my graduate work in the U.S., AMCAS and all the medical schools I applied to counted my research credits as well as formal classes. Most schools asked me for 90 credits. One or two asked for 60 credits. I had 91.
I only had U.S. graduate schools credits plus 8 credits of a prereq. that I was missing. Most schools told me they will accept a mixture of U.S. graduate schools credits and prereq's to satisfy the 60-90 credit requirement. However, there were schools that wanted only U.S. prereq's and no mix of graduate credits. I did not apply to those schools.md2011 said:I read somewhere saying that only undergraduate credits are counted, is that true?
Scottish Chap said:I only had U.S. graduate schools credits plus 8 credits of a prereq. that I was missing. Most schools told me they will accept a mixture of U.S. graduate schools credits and prereq's to satisfy the 60-90 credit requirement. However, there were schools that wanted only U.S. prereq's and no mix of graduate credits. I did not apply to those schools.
The U.K. is the same way....almost impossible (and I really mean it when I say this) to get above 85% and all exams are cumulative, no curving, with 100% weighting on one exam for the whole year's work. Get the WES evaluation ASAP and don't fret anymore. It's impossible to predict what you'll get.md2011 said:I am reviewing my transcript of the foreign undergraduate, and realize that most of my grades are in 70's and 80's. My professors at undergraduate university had very strict grading system, lots of times the whole class of grades are square rooted and multiply by 10 to bring up most students's grades to above 60. There was never scaled grades. My university actually is the top university in the country. But with such low grades, I wonder how WES going to convert it, are they going to give them to B's and C's? If that is the case, am I better off to waive the undergraduate transcript?
Scottish Chap said:The U.K. is the same way....almost impossible (and I really mean it when I say this) to get above 85% and all exams are cumulative, no curving, with 100% weighting on one exam for the whole year's work. Get the WES evaluation ASAP and don't fret anymore. It's impossible to predict what you'll get.
md2011 said:I am reviewing my transcript of the foreign undergraduate, and realize that most of my grades are in 70's and 80's. My professors at undergraduate university had very strict grading system, lots of times the whole class of grades are square rooted and multiply by 10 to bring up most students's grades to above 60. There was never scaled grades. My university actually is the top university in the country. But with such low grades, I wonder how WES going to convert it, are they going to give them to B's and C's? If that is the case, am I better off to waive the undergraduate transcript?
md2011 said:I am reviewing my transcript of the foreign undergraduate, and realize that most of my grades are in 70's and 80's. My professors at undergraduate university had very strict grading system, lots of times the whole class of grades are square rooted and multiply by 10 to bring up most students's grades to above 60. There was never scaled grades. My university actually is the top university in the country. But with such low grades, I wonder how WES going to convert it, are they going to give them to B's and C's? If that is the case, am I better off to waive the undergraduate transcript?
md2011 said:I am reviewing my transcript of the foreign undergraduate, and realize that most of my grades are in 70's and 80's. My professors at undergraduate university had very strict grading system, lots of times the whole class of grades are square rooted and multiply by 10 to bring up most students's grades to above 60. There was never scaled grades. My university actually is the top university in the country. But with such low grades, I wonder how WES going to convert it, are they going to give them to B's and C's? If that is the case, am I better off to waive the undergraduate transcript?
