I just finished my freshmen year of high school with a cumulative gpa of 3.6. I was wondering if this low gpa would hurt my chances of getting into a good pre-med college. Do I have enough time to bring up my overall gpa to a 4.0 by the time I have to start sending college applications?
Statistical speaking you can’t get a 4.0 unweighted but if you do well going forward, you can have a great GPA by the time you are ready to apply to colleges. It’s too early to be making any predictions but there are a lot of great pre-med schools out there.
If you are struggling freshman year in high school and have a 3.66 unweighted GPA, Harvard may not be a “good fit” for you.
That said, you CAN increase your GPA if you follow “jay biegelson theory of small pieces.” Google it, click on the first entry, and a Word doc will download with a document that includes some very good advice, starting with . . .
Try it, and see if it works for you next year. Best of luck to you!
There is no such thing as a pre-med school or even a pre-med major. You can get to med school if you excel at any one of tons of colleges (including GPA, MCAT, other research/internship experiences) and with any major (as long as you take the required classes)
It is way too early to think about specific colleges. You just have one full year’s GPA and you have no standardized testing. You also need to recognize that HS should be an experience in and of itself – a time of learning and growth and not just a 4 year college application prep experience. It is good to take school seriously and know that college will be on your horizon, but it is too early to start planning for specific colleges.
For now you should focus on:
–Working hard, learning, and doing as well as you can in the most challenging curriculum you can manage.
–When the time comes study for standardized tests.
–Continue your involvement in activities you care about and work towards making meaningful contributions to those activities.
–Enjoying spending time with your family and friends.
When the time comes asses your academic stats (including GPA, standardized tests, course rigor) as well as your financial needs and apply to a wide range of reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable (you will have to run a net price calculator for each school you consider) and that you would be happy to attend. There are many wonderful schools out there where you can have a great 4 year experience and get where you want to go in life.
Echoing happy1: though there are a few actual premed schools, at most colleges, you can major in anything at all and go to med school. You can cover prerequisites for med school in college, while majoring in whatever, or you can do one of the many post-BA programs for that purpose.
Enjoy high school and please try not to put this kind of pressure on yourself. With a 3.6 you would still find plenty of great colleges to go to.
Harvard is a wonderful school for students interested in applying to med-school, however there are higher ranked colleges (UNC) where 95% of students applying to med school are accepted. May I suggest you keep an open mind, and with a 3.6 GPA after freshman year, look to other colleges for an alternative path to your goal.
@gibby Just want to make a general comment that people be careful with medical school acceptance rates quoted by admissions. It may sound obvious, but it is very important to understand exactly what goes into the numerator and denominator of the ratio as not all schools calculate med school acceptance rate in the same manner. For example:
–Some schools have more “weed out” classes than others reducing the number of students who continue on the pre-med path for four years (lowering the denominator).
–Certain colleges have committees which pre-screen and recommend med school applicants. These committees generally only recommend students who have the stats, experiences etc. to make them very strong candidates for med schools. Students who are not recommended are left out of the equation. In contrast, other colleges support all of the students who want to apply to med school. So while the schools with the pre-screening will have a higher acceptance rate (because of the lower denominator), a schools that support all students may be preferable.
–It is important to know what constitutes a med school acceptance for the med school acceptance rate. Some colleges just count US allopathic med school acceptances and other schools include acceptances to DO, overseas, podiatry etc. programs in the numerator leading to a higher med school acceptance rate.
Thanks @happy1, with a daughter headed to med school in August, I do understand a bit about the med school acceptance rates stated by undergraduate programs. I also understand that at many colleges like Harvard, where my daughter went to undergrad and which the OP dreams of attending, the vast majority of students who enter college thinking med school end up choosing something else due to the stress and competition at such a tippy-top school. In fact, many students who COULD have attended a school like Harvard might actually have a better chance at med school by being at the top of their class at a lesser ranked college than by being at the bottom of their class at a more prestigious school: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/9/26/the-real-premed-requirements/
@gibby I didn’t mean to suggest that you misunderstood anything but I do think that for people new to the pre-med world, that it is important for them to ask the questions needed to fully understand what is behind the statistics. As I said in post #3, I completely agree that any number of solid colleges can provide a good path to med school.
And congrats to your daughter.
I’d take stories you’ve read about UNC acceptance rates with a grain of salt since that stat does not come from UNC itself.
happy is absolutely right about some ivies who take the best kids and put them in their own pre-med track, for those students, the acceptance rate is high but it’s competitive to get in and if you’re not in that program, you don’t get that support. A friend of mine discovered this at Yale, his daughter got in and she went elsewhere, this reason being one of them.
And another college quoted acceptance rate with a little footnote - assuming you had a certain gpa and mcat. As mikemac said, take with a grain, if not shaker, of salt.
^^^I didn’t say that.
you said this right? “Certain colleges have committees which pre-screen and recommend med school applicants. These committees generally only recommend students who have the stats, experiences etc. to make them very strong candidates for med schools. Students who are not recommended are left out of the equation.”
I was commenting that the recommended students get the support for med school and others don’t - get left out of the equation.
@theloniusmonk I did obviously say what you copied and pasted from my post – but 1) I said nothing about Ivy schools in particular and 2) I said nothing about selected students getting put on their own track – the committees I referred to evaluate students way down the road and determine which students to support when it is time to apply to med school. It is not a case of students being put on a different track throughout their undergraduate years.
Apologies if I wasn’t clear.
The real question is whether you can earn the needed high grades and MCAT score in college needed for med school admissions. There are a LOT of colleges that can get you to med school. The question is more whether you are up to the required level of work.
^^^ Correct. Just as course rigor varies among high schools, there are also varying levels of course rigor at different colleges. Some colleges, such as Harvard, believe they are teaching to the gifted and talented students of this world, so to challenge those “best of the best” students professors are encouraged to pour on the work. Some courses normally taught over an entire year at another college are taught during one semester at Harvard. LS2 (Evolutionary Human Physiology and Anatomy), which is the Bio course recommended for students interested in pursing medical school is a good example. The course is jammed packed with things you wouldn’t be asked to do at another college, like identifying every bone in the human body by week two in the course, something many students don’t have to do until medical school! Yes, it’s a fabulous experience, but very few students actually get A’s in the course. http://scholar.harvard.edu/adamfrange/files/life_sciences_2_evolutionary_human_physiology_and_anatomy_syllabus_2012.pdf.