<p>I was just wondering if med schools view an A- as on par with an A or if an A- looks bad. I just earned an A- in an Honors 200 level Biology course in my first semester freshman year.</p>
<p>Not on par, but you’re fine. One A- wont hurt.</p>
<p>A=4.0, A-=3.7, the higher the GPA the better! You’re not expected to have a 4.0, and some A-s here and there won’t be any big deal :)</p>
<p>I feel lucky…at my school an 90-100 is an A …87-100 for science classes:) maybe they take that into consideration?</p>
<p>It’s worse than an A but better than a B+</p>
<p>They don’t care if 87-100=A for science classes at your school and 95-100=A for the school down the road. A=A, A-=A-, etc.</p>
<p>Man that’s harsh! If my school applied the pluses and minuses I would have something like a 3.4 or 3.3, but my actual is 3.7</p>
<p>Well then you lucked out! Keep up the good work!</p>
<p>@samd1993,
</p>
<p>It’s a two edged sword. You don’t have A- but you also don’t have B+.</p>
<p>^ haha very true didnt think about it! lol but i know I prefer our system because all my A’s are 95 or below , I thought i was going to be a laid back environmentalist and then changed my mind halfway through</p>
<p>I have to disagree with kristin5792…if an entire college runs on a certain grade scale, the medical school will certainly know it. My school adjusts from professor to professor with letter grades so they will compare an A to an A. Also, if a schools grading is easier (90-100=A) then competency with the material will be translated on the MCAT…for example, a 3.4 at a school where 94s are As could possibly do better than a 3.7 where 90s are As. An A is an A anywhere, but school rigor doesn’t add just a 0 to the admissions equation…</p>
<p>I agree with the above although if you think it’s as simple as what number the cutoff for an A is you are mistaken. At Brown, it was usually that the classes with lower cutoffs for A were more difficult.</p>
<p>I can see how they might know about the grading scales at Brown (and presumably Emory), but I think it’s unlikely that every adcomm knows about every school’s grading scale for every class–and I was intending to talk about the specific point values that the poster mentioned. I’m sure they know general trends, especially from UG schools where they typically draw matriculants. But I doubt they know (or care) about the specifics for each and every school…if for no other reason than I sure hope there are more important pieces of an application for a real live human to review than whether or not that 3.5 is as meaningful as this 3.6 based on how the professors at that university grade things compared with how professors at this university grade things.</p>
<p>^well said…also, how much of a difference due pluses and minuses really add? By the end of your 4 years would you really have, just by chance, all A-'s ? And even if you did, the B+'s you got would add more of a boost compared to the other grading system.</p>
<p>Agree with Kristin on post #13.</p>
<p>If you get all A-, your 3.7 in GPA would be good enough for med school admission purpose. If it turns out you do not get into any, your GPA is unlikely a reason</p>
<p>Some applicants may mistakenly believe the strength in one area, say, GPA, ould make up their insufficiency in others. It will not, IMHO. This is why being a successful premed is hard. Your close to 4.0 GPA won 't save you if you are seriously lacking in other key area. I think BDM once said med school prefers a student who seemingly does not devote all of his time and energy to classroom work (as demonstrated by the intensity of his other activities during the school year) and still get good enough grades. They do not like those grinds who curl up in the library all the time. His reasoning, as I believe, is that if a student needs 100% of his capacity to get good grades, what can such a student do after he is in med school where the school expects the student to do more in the same amount of time?</p>
<p>The TDMSAS application for Texas state medical and dental schools converts A-'s to A’s. As a result, many students at my college can live by A-'s and 89.5’s, which can be seemingly unfair if a student consistently makes actual A’s. However, B+'s are translated to B’s, which can affect some students. Just some food for thought.</p>
<p>I heard that in one year, either business or engineering at UT -Austin tried a new way to select the students. (Likely it was the business school.) They set an academic criterion. If an applicant meets the criterion, he will be among the pool of applicants from which the school will draft their admitted students using a lottery system. I heard they think they will have a more balanced class by getting some students who are not at the top of their graduating class.</p>
<p>Often times, academics is not everything. In a sense, med school admission is sometimes like this because it pays a lot of attention to other qualifications. As regard to academics, the applicants only need to be good enough (which is not easy btw) so that they are eligible for entering the next phase of admission process. Since 3.7 GPA is good enough for med school admission purpose in general, I do not think med schools care so much whether you got an A or an A -.</p>
<p>^You are correct in that was the Business school which used that process. </p>
<p>A 3.7 may be good enough to get into a medical school, but the median GPA’s at what could be considered the top tier medical schools across the country and Texas (BMC and UTSW) are 3.9’s according to MSAR.</p>
<p>Just one data point here. DS 's TMDSAS GPA is noticeably higher than his AMCAS GPA. I think this happens when we are talking about GPA in the range of 3.9+. Such students tend to have very few grades lower than A- (if any) . As a hypothetical example, a student with one-third of his grades in A- and two-thirds in A will have 3.9 AMCAS GPA but 4.0 TMDSAS GPA.</p>
<p>BTW, in case this is not clear to some CCers: MSAR reported the GPA of accepted students while US N&R reported the GPA of matriculants. This is the reason why the stats of top med schools as reported by MSAR are almost the same. The yields of many schools are often lower than 50%. This is also a reason why med school admission is very yield sensitive. (So show but not tell how much you love each school you apply to - the challenging part is to make them truly believe you.)</p>