Should I take "easy" classes to boost BCPM?

[scota]

Like intro astro, aids, disease, etc, etc. I was thinking of taking astronomy this summer.

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[scota]

Anyone else thinking of doing this?

 

[ghgi8]

those dont count towards bcpm

 

[Spitting Camel]

those dont count towards bcpm

Yes they do! and depending on how low your Sci GPA is, it may be a good idea to take them.

Just make sure their titles are Bio ###, Chem ### and Physics ### just to make sure they will pass the verification process.

 

[ghgi8]

woah in that case lets start a list of easy bcpm classes

 

[Pinkertinkle]

Astronomy for sure.

 

[scota]

Come on, there must be more of you out there who would like to or have padded their BCPM....

 

[Medikit]

They can tell, but if it's not obvious that you're doing it, it would probably help.

 

[NRAI2001]

I think some classes are really obvious gpa padders (nutri sci, astro, geology....) but others may not be so obvious, its sometimes possible to find some easier upperdiv courses.

 

[NRAI2001]

So is any science course counted in the BCPM gpa?

Or are just the lower div prereqs counted?

 

[scota]

As long as they meet AMCAS' guidelines, they count. Upper and lower division.

 

[KNightInBlue]

Come on, there must be more of you out there who would like to or have padded their BCPM....

Yeah, I know people who have done this, unfortunately it was too late for me. But classes like Human Biology, Environmental Biology, easy math classes........basically any bio, chem, phys or math class thats offered for nonscience majors at your school should be a breeze to ace.
Also, I agree with the suggestion that the name be evident enough to prove it as BCPM class in order to pass verification by AMCAS. Obviously if you designate Philosophy of Human Person as a bio class, its gonna get flagged.

Overall, forget about the ethical/moral implications, fact is if it will boost your BCPM, take it and ace it.

 

[Spitting Camel]

Anyone who voted no just doesn't want you to raise your GPA. Don't listen to them!! Take one booster class a quarter.

 

[uclacrewdude]

jesus christ dude, you must be functionally ******ed.

i already told you, on multiple occaisions, not only that you should, but exactly what kinds of classes, or comparable classes, you should take at ucla.

MCDB 30 - cancer
MCDB 40 - hiv/aids and stds
MICRO 12 - bioterrorism, as long as youre not declared bio yet
MICRO CM133 - biotech
ASTRO 3 - intro astro
ASTRO 6 - beginning of the universe
E&SS 17 - dinosaurs, i dont remember if geo classes count as physical sciences, but its still friggin awesome.

 

[Spitting Camel]

jesus christ dude, you must be functionally ******ed.

i already told you, on multiple occaisions, not only that you should, but exactly what kinds of classes, or comparable classes, you should take at ucla.

MCDB 30 - cancer
MCDB 40 - hiv/aids and stds
MICRO 12 - bioterrorism, as long as youre not declared bio yet
MICRO CM133 - biotech
ASTRO 3 - intro astro
ASTRO 6 - beginning of the universe
E&SS 17 - dinosaurs, i dont remember if geo classes count as physical sciences, but its still friggin awesome.

Maybe he forgot!

 

[btowngirl]

jesus christ dude, you must be functionally ******ed.

i already told you, on multiple occaisions, not only that you should, but exactly what kinds of classes, or comparable classes, you should take at ucla.

MCDB 30 - cancer
MCDB 40 - hiv/aids and stds
MICRO 12 - bioterrorism, as long as youre not declared bio yet
MICRO CM133 - biotech
ASTRO 3 - intro astro
ASTRO 6 - beginning of the universe
E&SS 17 - dinosaurs, i dont remember if geo classes count as physical sciences, but its still friggin awesome.

A UC med school advisor came to my school and specifically mentioned that adcoms are aware of GPA booster classes and that it looks bad. They know you are taking it to get an A, instead of taking a more challenging class or one that you really want to take. They do not like applicants doing things whether it is taking certain classes or participating in ECs just to get into med school.

 

[Spitting Camel]

A UC med school advisor came to my school and specifically mentioned that adcoms are aware of GPA booster classes and that it looks bad. They know you are taking it to get an A, instead of taking a more challenging class or one that you really want to take. They do not like applicants doing things whether it is taking certain classes or participating in ECs just to get into med school.

I think HIV/AIDs, Bioterrorism, and Cancer all sound interesting. If they happen to be easy, so be it. I've only taken 2 bio electives my whole college career and those were "human reproduction and development" as a freshman and "Biomedical ethics" as a sophomore. I wish I could have taken the classes I mentioned above, but again, they are for non-majors. If you take a whole quarter of those classes, then yes, that will look like a cop-out, but taking one a quarter on top of your regular load is not bad.

By the way, was this advisor from UCSD? That same advisor said that the PS has to be immaculate or it's "very bad" There were 2 mistakes in mine and I still got accepted to Irvine. I think THAT med school advisor was speaking on behalf of THAT med school.

 

[btowngirl]

The advisor was from UCSF, I think, but it was a huge panel. The GPA booster classes I was refering to are astro, nutrisci, etc. and other known easy classes at your school. Apparently, adcoms are familiar with the courses available at certain schools and know the notoriously "easy" ones. I am sure this is especially true for UC medical school adcoms who know a lot about UC classes since they get tons of UC applicants every year.

 

[Fermata]

Geology....rocks for jocks.

 

[scota]

Hey UCLACrewDude,

I've already graduated from UCLA. Thanks for the suggestions though. I'm going to a CSU for pre-reqs, so their course offering are way different.

 

[UCLAstudent]

Psychobiology

 

[scota]

Do you guys think this class would count for BCPM? "ANTHROPOLOGY 101 - Human Biological Evolution". Thanks...

 

[PrettyMz4Christ]

Hello everyone, I'm new 'round here.
I have a quick question on this same topic. Would a stats class be included in your BCPM? What is the criteria on the AMCAS for determining what classes fit into this? Thanks.

 

[footcramp]

Anyone who voted no just doesn't want you to raise your GPA. Don't listen to them!! Take one booster class a quarter.

i agree. either that or they're dumb

 

[footcramp]

Hello everyone, I'm new 'round here.
I have a quick question on this same topic. Would a stats class be included in your BCPM? What is the criteria on the AMCAS for determining what classes fit into this? Thanks.

it would count under math, which is under bcpm.

 

[scota]

Anyone else...?

 

[Realest]

yeah definitely - adcoms aren't going to look that closely at your app - the numbers are what's most impt...they'll prolly spend 2 minutes tops in the initial review (think about how many apps they get) ... so you better have the numbers to grab them first. people that sacrifice their grades for harder classes thinking that adcoms will take this into consideration are totally mistaken - this isn't high school. it's only when you're up against Sally Smiles with the same exact GPA and credentials that they'll scrutinize your app for course selection, in which case you may want to disguise these easy courses that you're taking (for example, i'm taking a 2 credit neurobio seminar, 400 level, but it's a guaranteed A - adcom's won't know this tho because it's a new offering, and it still sounds challenging) I think taking more classes that are worth fewer credits per class is also a good strategy to boost your GPA...and if you can get credit for research, that's usually a guaranteed A too.

 

[StartingLine3]

Sometimes the difficulty of a courses depends greatly upon the professor and not the title. At my school, Molecular Biology is considered one of the easiest courses taught by the Biology Department because of one of the professors that generally teaches the course. His tests are taken directly from his simplification of material lecture notes and reports can be turned in ahead of time to be pregraded with the ability to make corrections to increase score. He is also insane about giving bonus points - when I took the course extra credit was offered for attending lectures by potential job candidates, watching the DNA Helix series produced by PBS during special class sessions, and attending reviews for tests. The section of the class taught by him is extremely difficult to get into with only 24 spots and usually filling up during early registration in a matter of hours.

 

[Gleevec]

Depends. If your school has a committee letter, rest assured that your school's counselor will see a bunch of easy classes and mention something about your course selection. Conversely, if you took a bunch of hard courses, your counselor will write that in as well. Adcoms pretty much go by the course difficulty assessment that school's counselor provides, since the latter knows whats easy/hard, etc.

If you dont have a committee letter, then it probably doesnt matter.

 

[hnaftel]

Take whatever class you want to take. An A is an A. Any reasonable adcom member will not look at a good grade as a negative. They really won't.

 

[flighterdoc]

A UC med school advisor came to my school and specifically mentioned that adcoms are aware of GPA booster classes and that it looks bad. They know you are taking it to get an A, instead of taking a more challenging class or one that you really want to take. They do not like applicants doing things whether it is taking certain classes or participating in ECs just to get into med school.

Med School Advisors are not adcoms, and they're NOT your friends. They don't give a rats as& if you get into med school or not, it's not their career. They just want to have a high percentage of those they recommend make it at a prestigious school. They're full of ****.

Once an adcom gets your application, they'll know EXACTLY what you did. However, getting them to actually see your application is the key. Secretaries (or worse, students) will screen out anyone who doesn't meet certain cutoffs - sci GPA, MCAT, etc. So, while a 3.6 sci gpa is good, having a 3.9 sci gpa is way better - at least to get your app to the adcom. Since the AAMC has defined the rules of the game (classes taught by the science division are science classes) use the rules you your advantage.

 

[NRAI2001]

Med School Advisors are not adcoms, and they're NOT your friends. They don't give a rats as& if you get into med school or not, it's not their career. They just want to have a high percentage of those they recommend make it at a prestigious school. They're full of ****.

Once an adcom gets your application, they'll know EXACTLY what you did. However, getting them to actually see your application is the key. Secretaries (or worse, students) will screen out anyone who doesn't meet certain cutoffs - sci GPA, MCAT, etc. So, while a 3.6 sci gpa is good, having a 3.9 sci gpa is way better - at least to get your app to the adcom. Since the AAMC has defined the rules of the game (classes taught by the science division are science classes) use the rules you your advantage.

I m just wondering is public health considered a science? You said that classes taught by the science division are science classes, but what if you took a science class under a non science division (ex:bio psych....)

What do adcomms look at more, ur overall gpa or ur BPCM gpa?

 

[BubbleBobble]

Just a word of advice. When you take a class explicitly because you think it's easy and you'll do well...you often don't do well. This may because you don't put enough effort into it, or because you do too many other things that semester, or whatever.

And frankly, it would be a crying shame to get a poor grade in class where you don't learn anything.

 

[hypersting]

A UC med school advisor came to my school and specifically mentioned that adcoms are aware of GPA booster classes and that it looks bad. They know you are taking it to get an A, instead of taking a more challenging class or one that you really want to take. They do not like applicants doing things whether it is taking certain classes or participating in ECs just to get into med school.

This is bull .... not because I'm doubting that this person said that, but because adcoms don't have so much time to spend on an app. They get tons of applications and use very rough measures to weed through them. For example, a few years ago, a study was done at Penn's undergrad. Their average time per application was 1 min 42 seconds. Certainly pad your BCPM, however, many school look at your pre-req GPA. If they see a huge discrepancy in your pre-req vs your BCPM GPA, especially as a nonscience major, they may investigate your course selection more closely. By all means, take classes and professors that will get you the best grade. Anyone who speaks of this not looking good, only wants to reduce the competition.

 

[scota]

Thanks...

 

[Pinkertinkle]

To answer the question of "Is so and so BCPM" refer to page 30 of the AMCAS handbook.

http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/2005instructionbook.pdf

And no, public health is considered HEAL (Health Sciences) and not a part of BCPM. Of course you can classify your PH class as BIOL if you believe the content to be BIOL, but be prepared to justify that decision.

 

[cali99boy]

Bump this. I'm registering for Fall right now and would like some "easy" science classes lol