Study Abroad Transfer Credit Question

[smmossey]

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Hi all. So I am in sort of a weird situation and was wondering if anyone here can help me out. I am studying abroad in London my last semester at my university. Currently I have a 3.67 cGPA and a 3.7 sGPA. Unfortunately I got a 23T on my first MCAT, but am hoping to do better on my retake in the spring when I get back from studying abroad.

Here is the issue I am running into. As I said I want to retake my MCAT in late may when I return. This would mean studying while abroad, which is already a bad choice in itself but the only one I have considering I only want to take 1 year off before medical school and still want to remain competitive. The school I am going to is on a credit/fail system. This university has a agreement with my university in that all classes are accredited by my university. This is great news because while I wish to learn while I am over there I want to experience the culture, and especially study for my MCAT again. However, one of my pre-med advisers told me that even though the courses are credit/fail I still need to report my grade's to medical schools. This worries me immensely, and sort of sounds just plain wrong. I would normally trust my pre-med adviser if she hadn't steered me and many student's in the wrong direction many times. It just doesn't seem right to me and several people have told me this is not the case, and that they simply transfer as credit. The thing that makes me think it is not correct is that when I filled out the application for the first time there was a place for courses that were pass/fail.

I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this. I have worked so hard the last 3.5 years that I don't want to ruin it by thinking that C's will transfer simply as credit, and then having a bad gpa factored into my good one. Also this would be an especially bad "slap to the face" because I only needed two courses to graduate, and instead decided to take 5 and study abroad thinking they were credit/fail.

I can probably get A's over in London, but that would require me to almost abandon my MCAT's. Thank you all for your input, I am just really nervous about this.

 

[Catalystik]

AMCAS doesn't consider foreign transcripts, though they sometimes want it submitted. That won't be necessary in your case as you can request an exemption. Whatever is on the transcript of your primary university, that is what AMCAS will put on your application transcript (namely P/F). Even if you fail, it has no impact on your GPA.

See page 72 of the AMCAS Instruction Manual: http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/amcas2009instructionmanual072808.pdf

 

[smmossey]

This is great news! All my science courses are complete, and all the courses for my major so these will simply be general education courses required for my university. This removes a great deal of pressure. Thank you.

 

[Catalystik]

Happy to help!

 

[gallodeportiva]

I studied abroad as well, and the grades I received at my school abroad were transferred to my university in the USA as P/F, and were verified on AMCAS as such. You're pretty much in the clear with that! London is an amazing city and I hope you somehow find motivation to study for the MCAT while you're there - I think if I tried to do that I would have failed miserably. Good luck!