<p>I left my country because we had tons of problems and strikes that were affecting our school work. we did only 25-30% of the program in the two years I spent there and the grades were rushed. I had to transfer 60 credits (2.9GPA) to the US but they are pulling my grades down. Most of them are electives and I will spend 4 years in college in the US (130credits). </p>
<p>I was wondering since I am having mostly As (No Bs) and my institutional GPA is 3.95, would the grad schools forget about my transferred credits that are pulling my GPA to 3.5? Note that both 3.95 and 3.5 are shown on the transcript.</p>
<p>GRE: 168-167-6
GPA 3.95 (4 years in USA) and 3.54 (US+Transferred)
Research: 7 months in plant pathology and 2years virology</p>
<p>Top Universities I am interested in:</p>
<p>Harvard BBS and Medical school
Yale BBS and medical school
Standford Medical school and Science phD (didn't check one yet)
Upenn, Duke, John Hopkins
Purdue Microbiology
Ohio Microbiology
University of Minnesota Medical school and Microbiology</p>
<p>The grad admissions and med school admissions advisors are your current college or university can help you find out about this. Ask them. They know where students with GPAs like your institutional GPA have ended up and they know where other transfer students who came in with not-so-hot GPAs from their first college/university ended up. Have a nice long visit with your current PI about your goals as well. For Ph.D. programs, sometimes who your professors know (and the letters your professors write) are more important than anything else.</p>
<p>As an international student, it will be much harder for you to get into US med schools than grad schools. If you need financial aid for med school, your chances drop even lower. It is generally a bit harder for internationals when applying to PhD programs (because some funding comes from sources where the students have to be US citizens/permanent residents), but in general you would have a much better shot at grad school. Grad schools are also less GPA-focused than med schools in general, I think. A 3.5 GPA, with those extenuating circumstances, would be just fine for most if not all PhD programs. Your GRE scores are also very good. You have the numbers for grad school, but the most important/differentiating part of a PhD application is the research experience. What experience do you have on that side of things?</p>
<p>But I agree with happymomof1 - talk to the grad/med school advisors at your university for more specific advice.</p>
<p>You should ask yourself what you really want</p>
<p>1) prestigious medical schools or</p>
<p>2) PhD program or</p>
<p>3) being a physician.</p>
<p>Each of them are independent of the other. You can reasonably achieve #3 without either 1 or 2. So what’s your priority? There are going to be about 13K graduates this year from US medical schools. From top to bottom, they will all be “Doctors”.</p>
<p>Where do you get that you need to get into a “prestigious” medical school? Do you want to teach?</p>
<p>I will apply for non prestigious schools (I never said I wouldn’t) but my question was about my chances in getting to top schools and not the others.
In addition, I am applying to both med schools and phDs. Nothing prevents me from applying to two programs and decide later which one I want.</p>
<p>Lavida92, what is your immigration status? </p>
<p>If you are not classified as a domestic student (citizen, green card, certain refugee/asylee statuses), you need to know that many medical schools in the US do not admit any international applicants at all. Some that do admit them will require payment of all four years of tuition up front.</p>
<p>You are posting in the undergraduate section and will be better off browsing the grad school forum and the med school forum. But the first post is most relevant.</p>
