<p>I probably won't get a definitive answer for this question but I'm still gonna ask.</p>
<p>Here, my question is just concerned with gpa, and lets dont worry about other stuff (MCAT, EC, etc).</p>
<p>What is a gpa for medical school that you won't have to worry about as being too low? A gpa that you can be comfortable with and that wont get in your way for med school.
Is it like 3.8?</p>
<p>3.8 is a good number.</p>
<p>there is no safety GPA. There are plenty of people who have 4.0's and wont get into medical school. There are also people who have 3.0's or a little lower and get into good medical schools. There are so many factors that are looked by the adcom's that you can't be certain you will get in with X gpa. </p>
<p>However, the average gpa of matriculants to allopathic med school is ~3.6, so to be competitive, ideally, you want to have a gpa higher than that.</p>
<p>I'm not trying to ask what gpa will get you or not. I'm asking by what point of gpa, can you not worry about having to raise it anymore, and just concern about other stuff? And what is allopathic med school?</p>
<p>I doubt an adcom would see any difference between someone with a 3.8 and a 4.0</p>
<p>a GPA of 3.4 or higher is what you should aim for. Anything lower than say, a 3.1 and you're looking at zero interviews.</p>
<p>Don't know for sure about GPA vs acceptance at most schools, but at Cornell, you're pretty much guaranteed to get into a medical school (based on survey results) if your GPA is 3.4 or higher (generally the ones who didn't get into at least one school were the ones who scored below 30 on the MCAT)
As for what allopathic med schools are, it's what people generally think of as a med school (I think 9/10 people go to allopathic schools). You go to an allopathic school and graduate, you get an MD</p>
<p>You go to an Osteopathic school, you get a DO... but you're still a doctor!</p>
<p>corbis11 is wrong.</p>
<p>According to several admission officers, the consensus for GPAs goes something like this: States universities usually will reject applicants with a GPA or Science GPA less than 3.0; Ivy League schools will reject those with scores below 3.5 and private schools ( the most flexible ones ) will keep it at no less than 3.3</p>
<p>I would say that a 3.8 is pretty safe if you apply to the right schools. Just remember that the MCAT counts a lot more though. ( keep it at above 10 )</p>
<p>According to my premed advisor</p>
<p>You need a 3.6 for a legit shot at medical schools.</p>
<p>3.4 and under will hurt you
3.6 is a neutral gpa
3.8 or higher will help you</p>
<p>This varies a great deal from medical school to medical school and less so from undergraduate to undergraduate program. Science GPA and Overall GPA are both important.</p>
<p>There most certainly IS a difference between 3.8 and 4.0, ceteris paribus.</p>
<p>How much is that difference? Is it like a 33 MCAT and a 36 MCAT?<br>
Is it worth going to an "easier" state school (but still decent) to pull that 4.0 instead of a good private (like Rice, Grinnell), and get 3.6/3.8? (would that differ for the adcoms?)</p>
<p>The rigor of the undergraduate school is taken into consideration but I would say rather subjectively and when there is not a big GPA difference. This is the problem that a lot of premed students from the U of Chicago have ( where a 3.4 is a very high GPA because of their known grade deflation )
This would be significant while compared to a 3.6 (perhaps ) of a less challenging state school but not to a 4.0 from what I have heard.</p>
<p>Anyway, some one attending a top university may be more likely to be
involved in ECs , community programs etc because of their availability and this certainly helps tip the balance.</p>
<p>An MCAT of 36 is a lot more impact than a 33, comparing a GPA of 3.8 and 4.0. Remember, MCAT has a lot more weight.</p>
<p>Ky-anh Tran:
The way I was told is that the rigor of your undergrad school is considered, but only to an extent. Basically, the undergrad universities are divided into categories. Schools within a category are all evaluated pretty equally. So, for example, the top 30 or so in the country are all viewed relatively equally (i.e. a 3.7 at Northwestern vs. a 3.7 from UCLA vs. a 3.7 from Rice are pretty much the same), but then there are those lesser known state schools, where adcoms know the rigor is less, and these are NOT viewed equally to those more well-known schools (i.e. a 3.7 at Rice is better than a 3.7 at University of Random). Although a 4.0 at U of Random would definitely be impressive, adcoms know that the caliber of students at highly-ranked privates are higher, and they keep this in consideration.</p>
<p>(and yes, there is a difference between a 4.0 and a 3.8... 4.0 = no mistakes haha)</p>
<p>This sounds good but unfortunately isn't borne out by the data. Schools within the same tier (Stanford, Duke, Penn) do not have identical or even similar mean accepted student GPAs -- Stanford and Duke are pretty close but Penn is substantially lower (lower is better). MIT has a pretty high mean student GPA, even above the national mean, while Davidson has a very, very low one. It's clearly NOT rigor that they're considering, nor is it prestige as measured by acceptance rate.</p>
<p>What are they measuring? I have no idea.</p>
<p>BDM, by any chance do you know if UC Berkeley has high or low gpa compared to other top tier schools?</p>
<p>BDM,</p>
<p>A lot of that variation in accepted student gpa may lie in where the students apply to medical school, state vs private, number of applications...</p>
<p>It does not necessarily mean that one needs different gpa's to be a competitive applicant to the same medical school from different undergrad institutions.</p>
<p>That's quite possible. The question is, then, why are MIT students refusing to apply to lower ranked medical schools?</p>
<p>Do they have better alternatives? The kid from Nowhere State doesn't have any other options so he'd better get in somewhere, while the MIT kids can all go be chemical engineers so they didn't actually want that badly to go to medical school?</p>
<p>Does MIT only produce undergrads who are interested in research careers, in which case 1.) the branding of their medical school matters a little bit more, and 2.) a PhD program will suffice anyway?</p>
<p>Or is it poor advising?</p>
<hr>
<p>Alternatively, maybe MIT just gives higher grades than everybody else...</p>
<p>UCB's performance is simply not on par with private schools. Their inflated statistics are pathetic despite the inflation. We've had numerous discussions and frankly they're an easy target to pick on -- I mean, seriously, managing to have selection bias in your data and STILL look bad is a pretty impressive feat.</p>
<p>See post #44 here: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=283354&page=3%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=283354&page=3</a></p>
<p>See an entire thread here: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=149508%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=149508</a></p>
<p>I tell an anecdote here: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=256537%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=256537</a></p>
<p>Yeah, I don't know about MIT. I suspect all of the above may apply. People who go to MIT probably do look at only a few medical schools as being comparably prominent to where they went to college. It may be easier for a kid at U Kentucky undergrad to be glad to apply to, and attend, her local state med school.</p>
<p>People with strong non medical career options might figure (bizarrely in my opinion) "if I don't get in a top 10 school, then I don't want to go to med school"</p>
<p>I think MIT's grades are fairly in line with other elite colleges. Rumor has it student work very hard to get those grades, but the gpa's themselves are about what you might see from a similar mix of engineering, science and social science students from the handful of similarly prestigious colleges.</p>
<p>It could be an interaction of the above with advising that perhaps steers them towards scientific research.</p>
<p>The latest premed stats from MIT show an average GPA of 3.6 and average MCAT of 33. This does not seem much higher than other top schools. It's too bad other schools aren't as free with their data as MIT.</p>
<p>Other interesting facts: MIT females are much more likely to apply to medical school than MIT males. The lowest accepted GPA was 3.1 and lowest accepted MCAT was 25.</p>
<p>Somebody with an MCAT of 15 and somebody with a GPA of 2.6 actually applied to medical school (and was rejected by all). There is absolutely no screening!</p>
<p>
[quote]
show an average GPA of 3.6
[/quote]
This is a drop relative to their previous report of 3.7, which is a good sign for them.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This does not seem much higher than other top schools.
[/quote]
The difference between a 3.7 (or even a 3.6) compared to, say, Penn's 3.35 or 3.4 is very high.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's too bad other schools aren't as free with their data as MIT.
[/quote]
<a href="http://prehealth.trinity.duke.edu/appendix/2006HPACAnnualReport.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://prehealth.trinity.duke.edu/appendix/2006HPACAnnualReport.pdf</a></p>