When adcoms look for GPA trends in applications, do they just look at the box on the primary that breaks it down by high school, freshman, sophmore, junior, senior, and post-bac gpa, or do they actually look at the courses taken and the performance in each semester for the last X number of credit hours?
For instance, suppose someone went to college and did sufficiently bad that, 60 credits after the point that their senior GPA would start, they have a 2.7. For whatever reason, that person does not graduate, but 10 years later, they start taking classes again and, over two years/60 credit hours of full time attendance, they maintain a 4.0 and graduate with their first bachelor's degree at the end of that (so they don't have any post-bac gpa because it's their first degree).
So, what we'd see on the grid on the primary is:
Freshman: 2.4
Sophmore: 2.6
Junior: 2.7
Senior: 3.35 ([60 credits from the first time with 2.7 + 60 recent credits with 4.0]/120 = 3.35])
Post-bac: n/a
If the person had graduated the first time around and took those recent 60 credits after the awarding of their first undergraduate degree, they would have a post-bac gpa of 4.0 and the massive turnaround would be obvious at a cursory glance. However, since their first degree was awarded at the end of their most recent 60 credits, those get factored into their senior year GPA, which only rises to 3.35 because they had 60 senior level credits at a 2.7 from a long time ago. Now, this is obviously higher than the GPA for their other years, but not really high enough to impress anyone considering them for medical school admission on grounds of them being a reformed individual.
To notice the actual extent of the upward trend and turnaround, an adcom would actually have to go through their application manually and realize that they had a 4.0 over their last 60 hours/two years of full-time attendance, since it would not be immediately obvious just from looking at the grid. So, is this something most admissions committees would do automatically, or would they just look at the grid and conclude that the upward trend is not very impressive and reject without diving in deeper?
Since the huge turnaround that would ordinarily be evidence of sufficient reinvention is buried in the math, what should someone in this situation do? Should they point it out explicitly at some point in their application, or just hope that the adcom does a manual check before deciding to not consider the application further?
For instance, suppose someone went to college and did sufficiently bad that, 60 credits after the point that their senior GPA would start, they have a 2.7. For whatever reason, that person does not graduate, but 10 years later, they start taking classes again and, over two years/60 credit hours of full time attendance, they maintain a 4.0 and graduate with their first bachelor's degree at the end of that (so they don't have any post-bac gpa because it's their first degree).
So, what we'd see on the grid on the primary is:
Freshman: 2.4
Sophmore: 2.6
Junior: 2.7
Senior: 3.35 ([60 credits from the first time with 2.7 + 60 recent credits with 4.0]/120 = 3.35])
Post-bac: n/a
If the person had graduated the first time around and took those recent 60 credits after the awarding of their first undergraduate degree, they would have a post-bac gpa of 4.0 and the massive turnaround would be obvious at a cursory glance. However, since their first degree was awarded at the end of their most recent 60 credits, those get factored into their senior year GPA, which only rises to 3.35 because they had 60 senior level credits at a 2.7 from a long time ago. Now, this is obviously higher than the GPA for their other years, but not really high enough to impress anyone considering them for medical school admission on grounds of them being a reformed individual.
To notice the actual extent of the upward trend and turnaround, an adcom would actually have to go through their application manually and realize that they had a 4.0 over their last 60 hours/two years of full-time attendance, since it would not be immediately obvious just from looking at the grid. So, is this something most admissions committees would do automatically, or would they just look at the grid and conclude that the upward trend is not very impressive and reject without diving in deeper?
Since the huge turnaround that would ordinarily be evidence of sufficient reinvention is buried in the math, what should someone in this situation do? Should they point it out explicitly at some point in their application, or just hope that the adcom does a manual check before deciding to not consider the application further?
