Separate gpa for the last 60 credits in admissions?

[Apparition]

I heard that besides sci and overall gpa, adcoms have a separate gpa for the last 60 credits of undergrad that carries more weight than the cumulative gpa for four years. Anyone knows if this is true?

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[Jalby]

nope. There might be one school out there that does it, but the transmitted AMCAS doesn't even break down the GPA by the year. They would have to pull out a calculator and do it themself.

 

[ek6]

if you did better the last half of your college years, it'll show on your transcript anyway. and yes, adcoms of course like to see an upward trend in your grades. thus an "upward" 3.4 could be better than a "downward"3.6...you get what I'm saying. anyway, I think the AMCAS form calculates year by year GPA's.

this 60 credit separate GPA is something I haven't heard of though, but I think it's futile for the above reasons.

 

[medhopeful08]

i didnt' know that the transmitted AMCAS doesn't break down GPA by year...is this true?

 

[TRUE]

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing the GPA broken down by year.

 

[Lux Aeterna]

Are you guys sure? I am positive when I interviewed I saw my interviewers file and I saw my GPA breakdown.

They have to show GPA by year, or else I wouldn't have gotten 1/2 of my interviews! (I bombed frosh year, but did really well the next three years, but my average is still relatively low b/c of that 1 year [ a bunch of Cs] ).

Plus some of my interviewers commented favorably on my increasing trend. I think it is on there.

 

[tautomer]

There has to be SOME way for them to see your GPA from each individual year. If not, how could they see an improving trend (or decreasing) that they speak of so often if they didn't.

I wonder what top schools would say about an applicant who had an average GPA (3.4-3.5) but had almost 4.0's his/her late sophomore and junior year- if they think "wow, he's improved that much, let's accept him," or GPA is a GPA, and it just doesn't meet our average: (trash).
(assuming everything else is tip-top)

 

[exmike]

I think the OP means schools that focus primary on jr/sr coursework. Actually, many graduate programs DO do that. For example, all of the UC public health programs I applied to asked specifically for my jr/sr GPA (i.e. last 60 units). Fortunately my last 60 units was good enough to exceed their averages for admission. Using my CumGPA wouldve made getting in much harder.

I have a sharp uptrend in my GPA and no school will ignore that, and I credit some of my success in this app cycle to that. In fact many interviewers noted specifically my much better junior/senior grades.. While no medical school may explicitly state that they use only the second half of your undergrad GPA, it goes without saying that doing better as time progresses is always a plus in your application.

 

[Lux Aeterna]

Originally posted by tautomer

I wonder what top schools would say about an applicant who had an average GPA (3.4-3.5) but had almost 4.0's his/her late sophomore and junior year- if they think "wow, he's improved that much, let's accept him," or GPA is a GPA, and it just doesn't meet our average: (trash).
(assuming everything else is tip-top)

Hey, this is me! so n=1

I applied to 8 top 10 schools, and got interviews at 4.

If anyone is in this situation and is planning on applying this summer and wants to talk about it, feel free to PM me. I almost didn't apply to those schools, but I'm sure glad I did!