University of Washington Grade Weighting Question

[relentless11]

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Hey everyone,

I ran into an interesting thing on the UW website, and they said that they weighted the first 3 year of your undergrad GPA. So they essentially times the GPA you got in year 1 by 1, times the 2nd year GPA by 2, and 3rd year GPA by 3. The sum of these products are then divided by six which apparently is the "weighted GPA". They exclude the 4th year since most applicants (traditional) have that year as "in progress".

My question is, what happens if you apply with a 4th and 5th year, or even with post bacc. Heh..would they multiplay year 5 by 5? (which would be awesome..lol)

Anyway, my guess is their weighting system is only intended for traditional applicants, so perhaps they look at non-trads without the weighting. Anyone have any experience with UW? Over the months, i've become more interested with UW in addition to the UC's. Thoughts, comments, questions?

Thanks!

 

[njbmd]

Hey everyone,

I ran into an interesting thing on the UW website, and they said that they weighted the first 3 year of your undergrad GPA. So they essentially times the GPA you got in year 1 by 1, times the 2nd year GPA by 2, and 3rd year GPA by 3. The sum of these products are then divided by six which apparently is the "weighted GPA". They exclude the 4th year since most applicants (traditional) have that year as "in progress".

My question is, what happens if you apply with a 4th and 5th year, or even with post bacc. Heh..would they multiplay year 5 by 5? (which would be awesome..lol)

Anyway, my guess is their weighting system is only intended for traditional applicants, so perhaps they look at non-trads without the weighting. Anyone have any experience with UW? Over the months, i've become more interested with UW in addition to the UC's. Thoughts, comments, questions?

Thanks!

Hi there,
Your best course of action is to call the school and ask rather than wonder. If you ever have a question about anything that deals with applying to a particular medical school, your best source of information is that particular school.

With the amount of money that you are investing in this process, you do not want to make any mistakes or "wonder" about anything. Call the admissions office and ask how they handle people and their who apply who have already graduated in terms of their "grade weighting system".

njbmd 😀

 

[kia ora]

a few weeks ago, I went to a talk given by Dr. Samson (the dir. of admissions). I'd swear he said that this (what you described re: gpa) was how amcas determined gpa, not just UW. I thought it was odd, too (I'm a nontrad). I also swear he said this was to put trad and nontrad applicants on a level playing field as far as calculating gpa (not his exact words, but that was his meaning...or so I thought). isn't bcpm gpa completely separate from gpa in how amcas calculates it? or are the bcpm classes included in the overall gpa as well? anyhow, I second the suggestion of giving the admissions office a call. I called there once several months ago when I was first seriously kicking around the idea of going back to school. the person who answered the phone was extremely nice and helpful. if you do find out the answer to your question, please post here and let us know!

 

[relentless11]

Hi there,
Your best course of action is to call the school and ask rather than wonder. If you ever have a question about anything that deals with applying to a particular medical school, your best source of information is that particular school.

With the amount of money that you are investing in this process, you do not want to make any mistakes or "wonder" about anything. Call the admissions office and ask how they handle people and their who apply who have already graduated in terms of their "grade weighting system".

njbmd 😀

Yea I'm prolly gonna give them a call later in the week. Just plain curious rather than anything else.🙂

few weeks ago, I went to a talk given by Dr. Samson (the dir. of admissions). I'd swear he said that this (what you described re: gpa) was how amcas determined gpa, not just UW. I thought it was odd, too (I'm a nontrad).

Yea that definitely sounds odd. It was my understanding that AMCAS just reported the scores, and let the med schools weight it in whatever way they want. However med schools do notice GPA trends, so maybe UW just decided this was the easiest way to quantitate GPA trends. Anyway, i'll try to give them a call or at least an email. I'll let you all know what I find out. Thanks for the feedback!!

🙂

 

[relentless11]

So I got an answer back from UW. Pretty much, they only weight the first 3 years of undergrad regardless if you already have your senior year grades (and beyond). Therefore if you did amazingly well in your senior year, it won't boost the weighted GPA calculation.

However, as with every other school, they also see ALL your coursework, so they will also notice these trends. So it is my impression that ultimately it amounts to the same thing. They just have a neat little mathematical manipulation to the first 3 years of work to provide another metric to the admission equation.

They emphasized they will consider everything (including post-bacc), so nothing different there. Hope that helps. Too bad they don't multiply your 4th and 5th year in college by 4 and 5 respectively😉.