With Year 1 of college winding down at UF for my freshman D, she is starting to face a dilemma. She is planning to go to Grad school to pursue Physical Therapy after she gets her BS. These grad programs are very competitive and only take a fixed amount of students. One of the primary admission considerations is college GPA.
Question:
- Do grad schools look at what college a person got their undergrad at? Any weight to that?
- If not, why would a student just go to an “easy” non stretch school to get a nice high GPA in preparing for grad school?
My D loves UF and does not want to leave, but getting a high GPA may not be possible for her.
Regarding your question 2, less selective colleges tend to have less grade inflation.
Grad schools will look at what college it is, but not not in a fine grained way.
For a PT program your daughter needs to do pre-med level physics / chemistry / biology, plus psychology and stats and a few other things (comparative or human anatomy is recommended as it gives the student a jump start)
The pre-med courses are pretty standardized across the US, even in “easy” non-stretch schools, and there is a good reason that they are called ‘weed-out’ classes! On top of that, there is the GRE (which means upper division science courses) and observation hours (typically 200+ hours). Even if the school is ‘easy’, preparing to be a qualified candidate for PT grad school is not.
As for GPA, most grad school programs break out the GPA requirements. For example, the UF PT program says the the average GPA for the pre-req classes (the 5 above) is 3.6, with a 3.8 for upper division classes.
A graduate program admissions professional will certainly understand the difference between a 3.5 at Harvard and a 3.5 at local community college, and evaluate them differently. Same with less extreme variances.
Grad school admissions isn’t fundamentally different than undergrad. Student performance is evaluated in context of school rigor.
From what I have seen, professional programs like a PT programs, even medical school, there isvwry little if any consideration for a school’s rigor. Or for the rigor of the students undergrad major. In fact, unless a student is truly a top of the top student taking the hardest courses and excelling in them, I would recommend for undergrads with such competitive professional schools in mind to avoid taking the most difficult courses or going to undergrad schools where the grading curve is tough. A B at Johns Hopkins undergrad does not an A at community college make in the same premed course.
The same goes for majors like engineering where grade curve is notoriously tough. You just are not going to get a huge break on the GPA requirements because you are took difficult courses. It simply doesn’t work that way. Any quarter you get for difficulty in curriculum and reputation of undergrad school is going to only make a very very small difference in admissions to gpa driven grad programs, particularly professional ones. I’ve seen many many students from highly selective “name” under grad colleges get flushed out from admissions to such programs even from non flagship state schools and small unknown schools. That gpa number is critical.
The big exception to this is in academia itself. Going to graduate school in any of the liberal arts a a PHD candidate involves a process where recommendations from a college department, a known expert in a field can carry enough weight to override a low gpa or even a low GRE score. In those disciplines, a special talent, interest or work, as noted by a mentor or a researcher can make a tremendous difference. An overall low gpa can often be disregarded when there is exceptional qualification in a niche field. I’ve seen this happen many times and my peers in academia have confirmed this. Not so, however in the professional and certificate programs.
Actually, no. Grad school admissions is fundamentally different than undergrad. Although It varies by the type of grad school (eg, taught masters v research masters v PhD) and field (eg, law* v PT), most grad courses look at student performance more in the context of the course to which the student is applying, than the rigor of the undergraduate school from which the student is coming.
This is particularly true of STEM courses, where the material covered - and the degree to which it is covered- is highly coordinated by the field. The 101 versions of bio / chem / o chem / physics (which are requirements for a wide range of majors) are sufficiently standardized across universities that most medical schools in the US will only accept them from a US or Canadian university. Bio 101 from nowhere State U will be accepted by med schools who won’t accept the equivalent from Cambridge. Many grad schools won’t accept the community college equivalent either (the PT program at UKy, for example, specifies that the core pre-reqs must be taken at ‘pre-med’ level, and can not be taken at a community college). STEM subject harmonization also exists across majors. For example, the physics major at every accredited college in the US will meet all of the pre-reqs for applying to a grad program in physics; the Physics GRE score speaks to the level of mastery of the topics. Coming from a more rigorous or more extensive program can still have its advantages (you may have been pushed harder or been able to take more upper level courses) but the playing field is more level than the fixation on ‘prestige’ would make you think.
*Note that Law is the outlier of grad school admissions: there are no subject-specific pre-reqs and no experience required- just the LSAT. Perhaps not coincidentally, the 1st cut in law school admissions is indeed typically the LSAT- to a much greater extent than the SAT is for undergrad. For pretty much everything else that I can think of, you have to have some subject-specific background.
pipped at the post! my post (#5) was in response to post #3
@carolinamom2boys
Your thoughts?
I work in a different allied health profession. My specialty grad programs look at the total student application. So…GPA, LOR, GRE scores, ECs. I don’t think the name of the undergrad school is a defining factor.
My D will test this theory from your posts above and will be taking a summer CHEM class at a NJ school (approved of course by UF) and see what kind of rigor this will be versus the core BIO/Physics she took this year.
I have also heard students sometimes will take the same class second time to boost their GPA, but I will post this question another day.
@HappyNJOOS
Your kid might find the “rigor” at one school for one course to be different than for the other school…but this does NOT mean that PT programs use the name of the undergrad school in their admissions decision making.
Actually…her GPA might be higher at the school with less “rigor” (which is such a subjective term)
I used to volunteer to read med school applications for a top US medical school many many years ago. I can honestly tell you that we paid very little attention to the undergraduate college that a student went to. The main criteria we looked at was science GPA, overall GPA and MCAT score. During committee discussions we looked holistically at each applicant. But the committee is filled with people of varying backgrounds, so there is no way we would know the intricacies of each college in the US.
No doubt there were many engineers with deflated GPAs that were unfairly compared to students with less rigorous majors. But there was no way for us to fairly ‘adjust’ across different majors, different colleges and different life circumstances. We did take this into account, but there was no magic formula.
@sgopal2 Thanks, this is the info I was really trying to seek out. I want to make sure my D has a Plan B and Plan C if her science GPA will not be a 3.0 or better.
I don’t think it is as simple as UG school doesn’t matter. For example, if you look at the schools that send the most students to medical school, it is full of top tier colleges. P{art of that of course is that most of the students at the top tier colleges are more capable students than those at second tier (true second tier not excellent schools ranked in the 50s or 60s). That would suggest their MCAT scores would generally be higher to start with.
A very bright kid that goes to a lower ranked, less academic school and gets a top MCAT score with near perfect grades and lots of research/shadowing may get into med school. But it stands to reason that a kid with top MCAT scores and less than perfect grades would have a better chance from a school ranked in the top 20 than from one that is considered to be not very challenging in academics.
Not sure that a blanket statement that lower ranked schools have less grade inflation is accurate. What is the basis for that? MIT and Princeton are both known to not have much grade inflation.
agree with @thumper1 - and will add that the ‘rigor’ of a class (even in the same subject) can vary within a school, nevermind between schools (#ratemyprofessor). Not to mention how subjective ‘rigor’ can be. A class can be ‘hard’ (massive amounts of homework, lots of very detailed tests) without being rigorous (developing mastery of the subject area). Frankly, it is easy to be hard and hard to be rigorous (been there/done that- and fwiw, writing an exam that tests mastery not just memory is really hard!).
We’ve got a DPT program at my employer. UG institution doesn’t matter, as long as it’s a 4 year. What does matter is grades, GRE, experience. Why? As noted above, material covered in gen chem, o chem, gen bio, A&P is fairly standardized. Also, any program that seeks placement beyond the UG level or answers to an outside accrediting body (CPA or Actuary exams, NCLEX, etc.) has to have sufficient rigor so their students can be certified and/or get placements.
It may stand to reason, but that does not appear to be the case (see post #10, among others). A super tippy-top obviously stands out (Harvard and Yale take as much as 20% of their classes from themselves, and the 2nd biggest cohort is from the other). Although it is true that “if you look at the schools that send the most students to medical school, it is full of top tier colleges” as you note that just says that schools with a lot of ambitious, high achieving students send more kids to med school than other schools. On the other hand, if you look at the list of colleges that med school students come from, it is much, much more varied. For example, like Harvard, VCU takes a high % of its students from its own undergrad population.
Discussions on the pre-med forum section suggests that MCAT and GPA are used for an automated first cut to determine which applicants go on to human readers. So a GPA below the automated first cut, regardless of what college it is from, means rejection.
@HappyNJOOS Will she be taking the class at a 4 year institution or a CC?
My daughter is an industrial and systems engineering major(ISE), but she wanted to minor in business. The minor requires ACG 2021, “Introduction to Financial Accounting”, which is a notoriously rigorous class at UF. Accounting and Finance majors have to earn a B to continue in the class, and it’s a struggle. Even the engineers dread the class. She was able to get permission to take it at a local CC over the summer (while Business majors are required to take it at UF).
She easily earned an A, and it was one of the easiest classes she has taken. The class covered the same material as UF’s, but the tests didn’t go into the same “depth”. Needless to say, now the “word on the street” is for ISE’s to take the #$% class over the summer at some other school…
Rigor isn’t only the material covered by the class, but how much depth they go into and how rigorous is the testing.
At UF, there is no grade forgiveness. If you re-take a course, the new grade doesn’t replace the original grade, both grades will be on the transcript. Sometimes you are required to re-take a class (a major that requires at least a C or better in a “critical class”), Otherwise, you usually need approval to re-take a class. Other schools may have different policies.
^The similar class in UT engineering is physics - it was that way in 1980 and it still is. I struggled and got a C one semester and a B the other. My son took it at Austin CC and made As. I wish I had done that!
And even if a college allows for grade replacement, the AMCAS and PTCAS require all grades be reported. So if one retook a class, one still must report both grades on those apps.