Too challenging and therefore diminished prob of acceptance into med school

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fourcredits said:
There's another reason why I am not telling you what school I go to. And that's because I don't like people who insist on knowing irrelevant facts (that someone doesn't want to share) and cannot move forward without knowing those facts. I don't like such people. I have many such individuals at my Ivy and I don't care for them. I don't like their socio-demographics and their psychological make-up. I don't like their moms. I don't like their dads. I don't like anything about them. If you've ever been to an Ivy League campus, you meet many such individuals. If it bothers people that I didn't mention what school it is, then I am delighted I am causing you that agony.
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How come you are the only person at your ivy with this problem? I'm pretty sure there are SDN-ers from every ivy league school, so why only you?
 
fourcredits said:
There's another reason why I am not telling you what school I go to. And that's because I don't like people who insist on knowing irrelevant facts (that someone doesn't want to share) and cannot move forward without knowing those facts. I don't like such people. I have many such individuals at my Ivy and I don't care for them. I don't like their socio-demographics and their psychological make-up. I don't like their moms. I don't like their dads. I don't like anything about them. If you've ever been to an Ivy League campus, you meet many such individuals. If it bothers people that I didn't mention what school it is, then I am delighted I am causing you that agony.
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The reason people want to know is because then we would be better able to determine if your school is actually known for grade deflation and give you better advice about your chances of matriculating. As it is, it just sounds like you're under-performing because none of us have any solid basis for comparison so the common assumption is that you are over-stating the difficulty of your school in order to excuse your lackluster grades.
 
Deep Springs College, bro.

Except they're probably like Reed and don't believe in real grades.

By the way, do what the guy who mentioned the directional school said. Or just do really well on the MCAT, write a compelling essay, and don't be a douchebag in your interview which you'll get out of pure curiosity.
 
I think you just need to step your game up/improve/change majors/transfer to an easier school.

You seriously need a reality check. Did you ever consider that your grading scale is actually fairly reasonable and that maybe you're seriously just underperforming for med school? After all, a C is considered average at most schools, regardless of prestige. This means (hopefully) that the majority of your class' grades hover around that score.

Stop wasting time on SDN trying to make yourself feel better about your GPA.
 
NightGod said:
The reason people want to know is because then we would be better able to determine if your school is actually known for grade deflation and give you better advice about your chances of matriculating. As it is, it just sounds like you're under-performing because none of us have any solid basis for comparison so the common assumption is that you are over-stating the difficulty of your school in order to excuse your lackluster grades.
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👍
 
fourcredits said:
There's another reason why I am not telling you what school I go to. And that's because I don't like people who insist on knowing irrelevant facts (that someone doesn't want to share) and cannot move forward without knowing those facts. I don't like such people. I have many such individuals at my Ivy and I don't care for them. I don't like their socio-demographics and their psychological make-up. I don't like their moms. I don't like their dads. I don't like anything about them. If you've ever been to an Ivy League campus, you meet many such individuals. One example is my race. Kids constantly ask me what race I am and I tell them I don't believe in the construct of race, I don't believe in affirmative action, and it doesn't matter what race I am. And they simply cannot get past that. THEY'VE GOTTA KNOW my race!!! If it bothers people that I didn't mention what school it is, then I am delighted I am causing you that agony.
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You don't go to an ivy. All the ivy league schools (the ACTUAL ivy league schools) are extremely popular on this forum, and a lot of us either go there or have friends who go there. Why would this be the first time this has come up? You expect us to believe that an ivy league school has that harsh of a grading scale, recommends only 1 class your first semester, and has very few people who graduate under 4 years? You think this wouldn't be common knowlege given the impact it has on students' graduate school ambitions and financial aid eligibility?

The only option here (other than you being a troll) is the school you're in within the university is known for harsh grading. For example the engineering or business school. In that case all you have to do is change your major, so I doubt this is the case.

The more likely possibility is you're either exaggerating or trolling. I vote for the latter seeing as how you decided to include your views on affirmative action in your post for no reason, a favorite among trolls here.
 
I never understood trolling. I don't know why people troll. I think only guys with tiny dicks troll to overcome their feeling of insecurity. I don't need to troll.
 
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And it's my school, not the university, that recommends one course the first semester.
 
I hope the ones who don't have tiny dicks will focus on substantive issues - like why medical colleges need to stop focusing on GPA's and stuff like that. Those who have tiny dicks, get past your annoying inquisitiveness and need to focus on what college I attend and talk about substantive issues. Otherwise, don't bother contributing to this thread.
 
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fourcredits said:
I never understood trolling. I don't know why people troll. I think only guys with tiny dicks troll to overcome their feeling of insecurity. I don't need to troll.
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I don't believe in the construct of tiny dicks making people troll. Why don't you just get past that and focus on something relevant like what school you go to so people can give you good advice?
 
trolololol

If you're struggling taking 1 class per semester, then there is seriously something wrong with your study habits.

since we still have yet to find out WHERE you go to school, it's unlikely that anyone is going to give you honest answers besides the fact that you need to work harder. Medical schools don't care what the other students got, they only care about what you got.

and medical schools look at GPA because it's a huge portion of how well you're suited for the profession. Who are they more likely to admit (MCAT scores aside), the person with a 3.9 gpa or a person with a 2.4 gpa.
 
waterpolo480586 said:
I am just glad that with a low GPA the OP will never be a doctor
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I am glad that OP will never be a doctor because of his integrity, or lack thereof. Either that or someone has deluded OP into thinking he/she is really at an Ivy.

Brown - no dean's list
Columbia College 3.6
Columbia Engineering 3.5
Columbia GS (non-trad) 3.6
Cornell Agriculture and Life Sciences 3.5
Cornell Architecture, Art, and Planning 3.8
Cornell Arts and Sciences 3.55-3.85 (depending on credits)
Cornell Engineering 3.5
Cornell Hotel Administration 3.3
Cornell Human Ecology 3.7
Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations 3.3-3.6 (depending on year)
Dartmouth Honor List 3.63 (estimated, lowest of three tiers)
Harvard - no dean's list
Princeton - no dean's list
UPenn (all 4 undergrad schools) 3.7
Yale - no dean's list

None of those have anything 3.1 or lower and there are no Ivy's left.
 
Suncrusher said:
In retrospect I wish I had transferred to my third-tier state school and gotten a higher GPA. (I'm not bashing state schools in general; many/most of them are excellent schools. However, the state school in my area of my state is third-tier, or even worse. A friend of mine transferred there and said that in comparison, it was like going back to high school. There was pretty much zero competition for the top grade in any class. There was like 30% of extra credit on every test, even though the tests were all easy enough that no one needed any. My friend got over 100% in most of the med school prereq classes. Most of the students at this specific school probably should not have been pursuing a 4-year degree in the first place. Read the rest of my post in light of those facts for this specific school only.)

Whether or not one thinks that GPA (which is wildly unstandardized; people on SDN often claim it demonstrates one's work ethic to adcoms, but that means little to me considering that it simply takes much less work to get A's at some schools compared to others) should matter at all compared to a standardized test like the MCAT, the reality is that it does matter to adcoms...a lot. And in my n=1 experience, med schools do not give enough of a GPA boost to students who attend difficult schools, if they give any boost at all. So, looking back on my college career, I wish I had stopped whining, transferred to the easiest school I could find, and made everything easier on myself while possibly getting into better med schools. If med schools really want people who challenge themselves to the fullest, they can do it by stopping taking GPA into account in addition to seeking high-achieving future leaders and innovators by looking closely at people's ECs like they already do. Until med schools stop taking GPA into account--if they ever stop, which I highly doubt will happen because they simply need more and more metrics with which to differentiate the relatively high number of applicants they get--then pre-meds should play by the current rules of the game and do what they have to do in order to have the highest GPA! For students at some schools, that means working harder or studying differently; for students at other schools, it means ditching the insanely hard engineering major, or transferring. Yes, there are some ballers who go to the insanely hard schools and still get all A's, but people like that aren't the only ones worthy of being doctors. So the rest of us should do what we have to do in order to have the highest GPA, including transferring. I certainly wish I had done that. There's no question in my mind. If the med school application process is indeed flawed because it takes wildly unstandardized GPAs into account too much, it certainly isn't our responsibility as pre-meds to try and change that by working our asses off at difficult schools and then failing to be accepted to medical school because of our low GPAs. I doubt there is anyone out there who thinks to themselves, "Well, I'm utterly miserable in my non-physician career after my low GPA kept me out of med school, but it's been totally worth it to have the tiny amount of pride that comes from knowing that I stuck things out at a school that in my opinion was harder than other people's schools." No.

Anyway, I can't change any of this now; I'm happy with the med schools I got into and all I can do is continue to study hard and have an awesome time in med school! : ) But when I see threads like this, the answer seems pretty obvious to me...

tl;dr: stop whining/trolling and either work harder or transfer or both. Get the highest GPA+MCAT combo you can by whatever means necessary, up to and including the ritual sacrifice of babies. Just kidding about that last part.
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Post of the Decade.

The bolded part should be stickied immediately. In fact I'm going to make it my sig...more premeds need to know the truth.
 
Found it.. you attend the South Harmon Institute of Technology.
 
What sucks even worse than getting a low GPA at a top university is going to a smaller, not well-known university that is more difficult but no one knows that it is. At least we do better on the MCAT. 😎

I still don't think I'd want to trade my experience for going to a really shtty school, though. There is a school around here where everyone I know gets a 4.0 but they do terribly on the MCAT and have no research opportunities. Or, if they do get accepted to professional school, they have to retake half their prereqs because they don't count because someone wanted to teach 'medicinal chemistry' instead of biochemistry and they only offer it every 2 years. 👎
 
At the undergrad at which I finished my degree, our honors program with the engineering college was known to grade every class on a curve (even the humanities recs). Their usual load was 3-4 classes (4 credits a class for engineering ones). A lot of the pre-med friends I had in that program wound up dropping the honors program in engineering or dropping out of engineering but staying in the honors program in another major. If you're in one of those programs, I'd recommend dropping out if you're not able to get good grades with studying.

As for challenging yourself, I'd say that it's a good idea, provided you can do well in those classes or compensate with other classes (4 easy, 1 hard...). Medical school is taking 24 credits of upper division biology classes in a semester and working on top of it (we're required to do clinical activities each week in MS1 and MS2). I'm sure some of my engineering friends who stuck out the program and didn't get into medical school would have been able to handle the work load, but schools seem to want high gpas, not the honors degree in nuclear engineering...

Good luck to OP. Sounds like you need to transfer or switch out of your program (if you're honors engineering)...
 
flatearth22 said:
Post of the Decade.

The bolded part should be stickied immediately. In fact I'm going to make it my sig...more premeds need to know the truth.
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Reel it in buddy. It is good advice that you are citing, but the fact is that it is common knowledge on this board. It has been said in many ways and many, many times.
 
mmmcdowe said:
Reel it in buddy. It is good advice that you are citing, but the fact is that it is common knowledge on this board. It has been said in many ways and many, many times.
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I thought Suncrusher's post was well thought out, and I enjoyed reading it.

Looking back, I am very happy I chose to attend a state university over higher ranked private institutions known for grade deflation and such. It was a monetary decision at the time, but now I'm just happy my decisions didn't keep me out of medical school.
 
fourcredits said:
I hope the ones who don't have tiny dicks will focus on substantive issues - like why medical colleges need to stop focusing on GPA's and stuff like that.
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If you're not trolling then you're fishing. You want a particular response and you're going to keep coming back until you find one equally crazy person to reaffirm your opinion of yourself as the victim. You're getting angry because, rather than sympathy, you're getting advice, which puts the onus on you to fix your situation rather than on your school to stop cruelly denying you the GPA you deserve.

The advice here has actually been pretty good. If you have either a major or university that's famous for grade deflation then you need to choose something easier, transfer if you need to. No one is saying that your school CAN'T be hard, but if it is then its still up to you to put yourself in a better situation. Medical schools probably do need to have a better system to normalize GPAs between majors and universities and that's extremely important to remember 15 years from now when you first enter into academic medicine and start reviewing applications. Until then, though, ADCOMs might as well be a force of nature, and by complaining rather than acting you look like the guy who's bitching about the weather in the middle of a hurricane. The people telling you to shut up and find shelter have nothing wrong with their attitudes, they're just concerned for you and are offering you a sound plan of action for a difficult situation.

You also need to be open to the possibility that your school is not as unique or difficult as you think it is and the reason you're doing poorly is that your a poor student. The most likely explanation when students are having a hard time is often that they don't really understand how to study at the level of a top University. That's another fixable problem, if you're willing to fix it. The reason that people want you to consider this is that, if you do transfer, and then find out that the less prestigious University down the road is every bit as hard to ace, you will probably dig yourself an unfixably deep hole for medical school before you start focusing on your study habits while also hurting your employent prospects by trading a well known name for an average one. There's a reason diagnosis is supposed to come before treatment. Doing the wrong thing is often worse than doing nothing at all.

Of course, you could get advice tailored to you, specifically, if you actually told us your major and school. Chances are many of us know your school's reputation and a few of us might know how to survive it (or, failing that, we could advise you where to transfer). However, somehow, you've taken offense to the idea of sharing that detail so you're getting advice that assumes that you might be deluding yourself. They might be right, we can't tell without some more 'irrelevant' information.
 
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Oh and there's one more reason I'm not sharing the name of the school. I am likely to transfer, mainly because I don't like the kind of students who attend this school and I like the students at my state school much better. So, if I do end up transferring, why should this school get any positive rub off from these discussions? If I don't transfer, why should the school get any possible negative rub off. But mainly because I enjoy torturing the kind of people you all are - you're all pretty much like the Ivy League students: privileged, mean, prejudiced, small minded, judgmental, quick to take offense, self centered, etc. I hear most surgeons are like you too.
 
fourcredits said:
Oh and there's one more reason I'm not sharing the name of the school. I am likely to transfer, mainly because I don't like the kind of students who attend this school and I like the students at my state school much better. So, if I do end up transferring, why should this school get any positive rub off from these discussions? If I don't transfer, why should the school get any possible negative rub off. But mainly because I enjoy torturing the kind of people you all are - you're all pretty much like the Ivy League students: privileged, mean, prejudiced, small minded, judgmental, quick to take offense, self centered, etc. I hear most surgeons are like you too.
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😴
 
I can't believe I just read through this entire thread. What a waste of time.
 
fourcredits said:
Oh and there's one more reason I'm not sharing the name of the school. I am likely to transfer, mainly because I don't like the kind of students who attend this school and I like the students at my state school much better. So, if I do end up transferring, why should this school get any positive rub off from these discussions? If I don't transfer, why should the school get any possible negative rub off. But mainly because I enjoy torturing the kind of people you all are - you're all pretty much like the Ivy League students: privileged, mean, prejudiced, small minded, judgmental, quick to take offense, self centered, etc. I hear most surgeons are like you too.
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I can see you really took my advice to heart.
 
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fourcredits said:
Oh and there's one more reason I'm not sharing the name of the school. I am likely to transfer, mainly because I don't like the kind of students who attend this school and I like the students at my state school much better. So, if I do end up transferring, why should this school get any positive rub off from these discussions? If I don't transfer, why should the school get any possible negative rub off. But mainly because I enjoy torturing the kind of people you all are - you're all pretty much like the Ivy League students: privileged, mean, prejudiced, small minded, judgmental, quick to take offense, self centered, etc. I hear most surgeons are like you too.
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You are on a forum full of med students and future med students whining about how hard your school, how unfair your school is and you are surprised when people ask about what school this is rather than hold your hand and cry about it with you?
 
fourcredits said:
Oh and there's one more reason I'm not sharing the name of the school. I am likely to transfer, mainly because I don't like the kind of students who attend this school and I like the students at my state school much better. So, if I do end up transferring, why should this school get any positive rub off from these discussions? If I don't transfer, why should the school get any possible negative rub off. But mainly because I enjoy torturing the kind of people you all are - you're all pretty much like the Ivy League students: privileged, mean, prejudiced, small minded, judgmental, quick to take offense, self centered, etc. I hear most surgeons are like you too.
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Wait, is being called surgeon-like on a med school forum an insult now? I find it amusing that you have taken this massively adversarial approach after asking for advice (and getting it!) while also being asked for clarification so that people could tailor the advice more specifically to your situation.

Now, I'm going to try one of those insults you just used: I hear most lawyers are like you, too.

Hey, that was kind of fun.
 
I'd love to join in on the OP bashing (he's an idiot on several levels), but this thread does bring up a good point.

When it comes to undergrad, or even high school, its almost ALWAYS better to go to the easy A, less prestigious school, than the prestigious but impossible A school.

Easy A school gives you
1. Easy As
2. Time to do lots of extracurriculars
3. Sanity

Sure it's ideal to go to the most prestigious universities and still pull off everything, but not everyone is capable of doing such.
 
Nah, my money's on "parents should've made you wear a helmet more"
 
Doesn't matter as long as the construct of race believes in YOU
 
this-thread-sucks3.thumbnail.jpg
 
KLycos said:
This is why I went to a party school haha.
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Agreed.

My opinion is that patients want their doctors to be exceptional people, and not average, as you indicated based on your grades. My guess is that the school you're referencing is Columbia, though I honestly have no idea.

My question is, why didn't you ask students that attend the university, or the person bringing you on your tour why the students have such low GPA's and why A's are so rare? This is what sites like SDN and Collegeconfidential are for. If you knew going into college that you wanted to be a doctor, and that GPA's are extremely important in the admissions process, then why would you deliberately bite off more than you can chew? Even if you go a top 20 school undergrad, if your GPA is <3.3, you're DO bound.

I think you got bad advice from your guidance counselor in high school and your parents (who probably know little to nothing about medical school, or what it takes to get in), and you made very poor judgement, but you still have time to rectify it by transferring. Question is, what school would want to take you with your lousy GPA?
 
You all realize that OP left the thread 3 pages ago, right?
 
The OP shouldn't be as concerned with his GPA as he should with interviews. That being said, maybe he should truly stick with the current school, receive the low GPA, thus hindering his chances of taking wasteful interview slots from potential medical schools (and fellow applicants). The truth is, a medical school interview should be used to weed out the individuals with his/her self-alluded attitude: arrogant, pessimistic, unwilling to accept criticism/advice and easily frustrated.
 
fourcredits said:
...privileged, mean, prejudiced, small minded, judgmental, quick to take offense, self centered, etc. I hear most surgeons are like you too.
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Oh man, I almost have all of those things! Now if only I were privileged...

Surgery here I come!!! 😀
 
fourcredits said:
I hope the ones who don't have tiny dicks will focus on substantive issues - like why medical colleges need to stop focusing on GPA's and stuff like that. Those who have tiny dicks, get past your annoying inquisitiveness and need to focus on what college I attend and talk about substantive issues. Otherwise, don't bother contributing to this thread.
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Med schools have no option but to use GPA in admissions decision. When you're filtering through 6000 applications for 90 spots (like my school), what do you suggest they do? Focusing only on the MCAT allows some people who are smart but lazy to get in and then they'll get crushed but the work load. Your GPA says something about your ability to work hard for four years. Of course, ECs and other factors should be taken into account, but it's very difficult to compare candidates on the basis of extremely variable ECs.

From reading this thread I think your biggest hurdle to getting into med school won't be your low GPA (although that's not going to help you), it's your poor attitude and inability to deal civilly with other people that will hold you back.
 
physicsnerd42 said:
Med schools have no option but to use GPA in admissions decision. When you're filtering through 6000 applications for 90 spots (like my school), what do you suggest they do? Focusing only on the MCAT allows some people who are smart but lazy to get in and then they'll get crushed but the work load. Your GPA says something about your ability to work hard for four years. Of course, ECs and other factors should be taken into account, but it's very difficult to compare candidates on the basis of extremely variable ECs.

From reading this thread I think your biggest hurdle to getting into med school won't be your low GPA (although that's not going to help you), it's your poor attitude and inability to deal civilly with other people that will hold you back.
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Problem is GPA's vary so much by institutions and majors and even different classes in majors. Two identical students with identical work ethics could have vastly different (0.4+) GPA's if they went to different schools and took different majors. But because adcoms have to report the average GPA's there is no incentive for them to take lower GPA individuals.

Not to mention that better schools have a more intelligent and motivated student body (eg - My UG's 25th percentile SAT scores are equivalent to many schools' 75th percentile scores) which makes getting good grades tougher in the vast majority of courses as they are graded on a curve and A's only go to the top 1/4 to 1/3 students in the class.
 
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