Senior Year....does it matter?

[goulet]

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do grades you receive senior year have any effect on med school applications? since amcas already calculates your science/cumulative gpa, i can't see that senior year grades would be too crucial...am i wrong?

 

[ti89]

Well if you get waitlisted or don't get in you are going to want to keep it as high as possible I think

 

[Sondra]

do grades you receive senior year have any effect on med school applications? since amcas already calculates your science/cumulative gpa, i can't see that senior year grades would be too crucial...am i wrong?

If you have to apply more than once, the grades you make your senior year will be on your next application. I know of two schools in my area that ask for a final transcript verifying that you finished your BS/BA before attending med school. They base incoming scholarships and financial aid on your GPA and MCAT scores. I do not know what they would think of someone who didn't try at all during their senior year. I would think that if you made A's and B's, you would be okay. I doubt they would kick you out, but I would be thinking about the long term effects of lowering your GPA, and not just getting in to med school.

Why would you try really hard for three years and then give up your last year? I continued to work hard just for the Latin honors. I didn't want to put a bad ending to years of hard work.

 

[IgweEmeka]

This is a really good question that I have pondered for quite a bit now. Part of me is tempted to just do what I need to do to get by, i.e. get a B because I did not try hard enough. I know for sure that I would not be getting any C's, I am not going to relax that much. Also, we have to take into consideration that we would be traveling for interviews and would be fully immersed in the whole med school application madness, so that could be a distraction in itself. I know for sure that I would not be doing half as much volunteering and all that other extracurricular stuff that I did for the last 3 years. I would definitely do clinical volunteering though.

 

[Law2Doc]

Well if you get waitlisted or don't get in you are going to want to keep it as high as possible I think

That's certainly the case -- and lots of people use senior year (and thereafter) to pull themselves up to a competitive level. Also if you do get accepted, it's usually conditional on getting C or better in all remaining courses, so you can't slack off totally.

 

[silas2642]

do grades you receive senior year have any effect on med school applications? since amcas already calculates your science/cumulative gpa, i can't see that senior year grades would be too crucial...am i wrong?

Yeah, so don't blow it. As others have pointed out, if you don't get in this time around, your grades do count on next year's round of applications. It's not a good thing to have a downward trend of grades. Also, a lot of medical schools reserve the right to withdraw an acceptance based on a students poor performance in their 4th year. A little drop in the gpa probably won't hurt you, but going from straight A's to B's and C's most definitely will. My advice is to put some oomph into those last two semesters.