<p>Anyone know what's most important for getting into medical school? I mean, the correct answer is probably everything, but I was just noticing the somewhat low GPA averages for some of the medical schools listed on the US news list.</p>
<p>University of Washington, the top primary care medical school in the country, has an average undergrad GPA of 3.65. I'm not someone with a 4.0 who can say that's terrible or anything, and no one can call it terrible.</p>
<p>I just noticed though that the acceptance rate to that same medical school is 7.2%.</p>
<p>Compare this to undergraduate schools, like Harvard for example. Higher acceptance rate, but a 3.65 is deemed by CC people as unacceptable in most cases.</p>
<p>Now the answer to that is that college is harder, but still, 7.2%.</p>
<p>Is volunteering a bigger factor than I imagine?</p>
<p>What's going on here, it seems ridiculously hard to get in based on acceptance rate, but easy for GPA.</p>
<p>The answer is that college is way harder. I'm one of the fortunate ones because I have a 3.9 in college and a 3.98 back in HS. The avg. GPA for freshmen at Cornell is 3.0 (most of these freshman had 3.8+ GPA's in HS) which means the average freshman experiences a 0.8 drop in their GPA from HS to college.</p>
<p>A 3.65 gpa in college is godlike. Maybe not for pre-med but for your average major at difficult schoosl 3.65 is godlike. Ask a Cornell Engineer.</p>
<p>It has to do w/ the curves. I took honors gen chem my freshman year. The class is designed for chem majors. In fact, one of the recommendations to get into the class was that you received a 5 on the AP test so just about everyone in the class was a chem genius. Even so, because of the way the class is curved, more than 50% of the students had to get B's or lower.</p>
<p>3.65 is good. I wouldn't call it great. You will still find plenty of students w/ 3.8+.</p>
<p>It also depends on major. Engineering and science majors have it tougher. My science GPA is only around 3.84 while my GPA in non-science classes is 4.0+ (I've never received lower than an A in a non-bio/chem course through 3 years at Cornell) even though biology is supposedly my strength.</p>
<p>One thing about UWash is that it is a state school. Therefore, they will accept people from the state of Washington and have to admit a certain percentage of in-state people. This drives down their GPA average because unlike Harvard, which is private, Washington has to open its doors to less-qualified in-staters before it can open the door to more-qualified out-of-staters.</p>