<p>I am a pre med student at the UNC-Chapel Hill and want to take organic chemistry 1 over the summer. I was planning on taking it at UNC-Charlotte however, so that I could save the money spent on room and board. I just now learned that to do that my grade in the class will look like a Pass/Fail on my transcript and will not count towards my GPA. Is this going to look bad to med schools? My hope is that since I still have to take orgo 2 here, and assuming I do well in it, it would negate any problems with this pass/fail situation. Can someone please shed some light on this? Thanks!</p>
<p>You need to send a transcript from UNC-Charlotte which shows the grade for Orgo 1 to AMCAS. It will count on your AMCAS GPA regardless of what your UNC-CH transcript shows.</p>
<p>And anyway…Conventional wisdom would be that it is a bad idea all around. Don’t take pre-req’s in the summer. And don’t take pre-req’s at a less well-regarded school than the one you attend. Whatever your actual reason for doing so, it will look like you are gaming the system.</p>
<p>“You need to send a transcript from UNC-Charlotte which shows the grade for Orgo 1 to AMCAS. It will count on your AMCAS GPA regardless of what your UNC-CH transcript shows.”</p>
<p>Does this not solve the issue of med schools not accepting P/F for pre reqs?</p>
<p>I think people are assuming that you are taking the class P/F. I think what’s happening (and please correct me if I’m wrong) is that you are taking the class at UNC-Charlotte for a grade but your UNC-CH transcript will only show the class as P/F. As long as you can submit a transcript from UNC-Charlotte showing the grade you received in the class, it will be treated like any other summer course.</p>
<p>As long as you can submit a transcript from UNC-Charlotte showing the grade you received in the class, it will be treated like any other summer course that you took at a school with less rep than your UG.</p>
<p>curmudgeon makes a very important addition. As stated earlier in this thread, taking pre-reqs during the summer at a less prestigious school is not a good idea.</p>
<p>Alright, thanks everybody. This puts me in a really tight bind. It would be really helpful to me to be able to take the class at UNCC, but if it isn’t a good thing then it certainly makes me do a double take. Anyway, I appreciate the responses</p>
<p>^ I heard of this as well: BCPM GPA not high enough? Off the student go to pad it with as many research credits! Any “self-respecting” college then cracks down this practice in order to be fairer to other students by limiting the number of research credits the student can get. This is one way to game the system. (Hey…I can get an A without competing head-to-head against those crazy premeds in the test room. How wonderful is that?!)</p>
<p>At DS’s school, there is one kind of honor that only counts the number of straight A’s. It is understandable that many students who gun for this honor try to accumulate as many research credits as possible. (DS got zero additional research credits other than the required one for his senior project, even though he knew many of his peers did this. His philosophy is: As long as his GPA is good enough, it is fine for him.) The research credit has acquired quite a “bad rep” because of this. The other bad rap (if you are not lucky to get into a lab led by an “UG-student-friendly” PI): It sucks up all of your time like a blackhole would do. It more likely happened if the PI’s research group is a big research power house.</p>
<p>One of DS’s friends was in such a lab for quite many years, DS once told me that his friend works in that lab much more hours than a typical full-time worker does, to the extent that it almost interferes with his study and other “check item” for a premed. His friend would be an ideal candidate to pursue the academic/research track rather than the professional school track. He did get into a med school in the end (but with some struggle.) If his med school has some research group, its PI would be very lucky to have such a cheap-but-high-quality research member, if he continues to be so committed to research, i.e., spend much more time on research than on study.</p>