Should I explain some transcript peculiarities in secondaries?

[Heliobacter]

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I posted before about taking a more difficult intro to physics sequence that was mandatory Pass Fail at my school, and people said that that would be okay, but now I'm working on secondaries and wondering if I should explain it and other things about my transcript that may be a little weird to people not at my school.

Context: I'm a traditional applicant at a pretty well-known school.

However, I have 20 P/F credit hours on my AMCAS grid (and 103 graded credit hours). My school encourages taking a P/F course every semester, and has said that mandatory P/F courses would still count towards medical school requirements. Should I provide a disclaimer about how this is not abnormal at my school? One thing I am especially worried about is that both of my physics credits were P/F, and I was thinking that I could provide my reasoning for taking the sequence over the traditional graded pre-med physics sequence (more mathematically rigorous, didn't want to repeat material from AP physics, originally considering picking a major that specifically required this sequence, etc).

Thanks for any input!

 

[Goro]

This might be good fodder for the "anything else you want to tell us that isn't included in your app? Prompt

 

[LizzyM]

Do you have a committee letter? I've seen this explained in committee letters from schools like MIT.

 

[Heliobacter]

Do you have a committee letter? I've seen this explained in committee letters from schools like MIT.

I do have a committee letter, but I have no clue what they put in it and not a lot of premeds chose this option. Should I still try to explain it for "anything else" prompts?

 

[LizzyM]

Does your school send a lot of pre-meds to med school. Is it a pipeline school? If so, med schools are likely to know this about your school. If not, you could offer an explanation in the "what else do you want us to know" portion of the secondary.

 

[Heliobacter]

Does your school send a lot of pre-meds to med school. Is it a pipeline school? If so, med schools are likely to know this about your school. If not, you could offer an explanation in the "what else do you want us to know" portion of the secondary.

According to the AMCAS tables, my school has about 200-250 applicants a year, so that means that I might not have to worry about this, right?

 

[LizzyM]

I'd guess that the schools you are most likely to apply to see at least a dozen students from your school every year. That makes it likely that they'll know of the school's peculiarities.