My D will begin her junior year in an Ivy League college. Their pre-med courses are very had, often with median GPA of 3.2 or 3.0. So her GPA is just around 3.5. I checked StartClass.com. There are barely any medical schools accept students with lower than 3.5 GPA. Should she quit pre-med?
Maybe. MCAT score?
What is her SGpa so far? Some times the lower division pre-med courses are weed out courses and has a low average GPA. The higher level courses have a higher average Gpa and can make up her lower division losses. Each school is different.
What is her major? If it is bio or bio related, if she cannot make the med school she needs to be prepare for graduate school.
Thanks for your reply. Her major is Politics and Government. I think her science GPA is around 3.2-3.2. Is it true that GPA from different schools will be treated differently?
She hasn’t taken MCAT. She plan to take gap years. Because her major is politics.
@Passion2018 I am by no means an expert on this, but if your daughter is above the average GPA for those at her school, she should be better off than it seems. I would also find it surprising if med schools viewed a 3.5 at an ivy league the same as a 3.5 at a community college as I’m pretty sure it is accepted that it tends to be much harder. I would recommend looking into the application history of those from your school into med school and what GPA’s they had etc. Best of Luck!
@PetEngineer Good advice. Thank you so much!
@Passion2018 No Problem!
Without an MCAT score this is a pointless discussion. If she scores in the 80th percentile (the med student average) the chances she doesn’t get in anywhere are quite significant. No one will care that the 3.5 is from an ivy. If we’re talking 95th percentile or greater on the MCAT, now that 3.5 from the ivy doesn’t look so bad.
School name does matter a little to the private medical schools (not the public ones), but it’s not like investment banking or consulting where they won’t even look outside the big dogs. >3.5 from state flagships and other top 50 private Us will be more appealing than a 3.5 from an ivy league. Those average GPAs you see for med schools include a lot of ivy leaguers and you’ll notice they are still very high.
A 3.2 sGPA and the fact that she’s a humanities major - where grade inflation is considered to be worse, certainly isn’t helping her either.
What’s your state of residence? That also will have a huge impact on where she might get in if her stats don’t improve.
Her major from her school has a median GPA of 3.4. It’s not inflated. We are in NJ. Why would the state of residence matter? Thank you for your answer.
State of residence matters because one’s home state med schools are always an applicant’s best chance for an admission.
Some states have very strong in-state bias in admission to the state’s public med schools. All of NJ’s public med schools do have a moderately strong to extremely strong in-state bias.
Cooper-Rowan 76% instate
Rutgers --98% instate
Rutgers RW Johnson – 91% instate
https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/factstablea1.pdf
AAMC has some data about the number of applicants by state, the number of matriculants by state, the average stats of matriculants by state of residence, how many residents attend in-state vs an OOS med school.
New Jersey (2015-16 data)
1924 applicants and 858 matriculants
404 matriculated at in-state med schools ; 454 matriculated at OOS med schools and 1066 did not matriculate anywhere
https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf
Stats of NJ residents (2015-16) who matriculated into a med school (both in-state and OOS)
Average GPAs --3.69 (overall); 3.63 (science); 3.76 (non-science)
Average MCAT --32.5 ( ~513 on the new MCAT)
https://www.aamc.org/download/321502/data/factstablea20.pdf
@WayOutWestMom Thank you so much for the valuable information.
You should roam around in SDN, there is a section for candidates to post their stats and schools they applied to and schools they were successful. Plenty of Ivy Leagues over there. I saw one from Columbia with slightly lower stats to your D did not get in even with the Caribbeans. Ivy League does not get rights to go to med school with lower stats. My niece from MIT did not make it.
If you are low on gpa, your MCAT must be more than the old 36.
One thing about Political Science is that gpa does not count much, especially for one from Ivys. One prime example is George Bush, the president. ^ I’d say try more pre-med courses and think taking it as electives. Perhaps the upper level courses are easier in that school for pre-med to make up. Worst to worst, you still can get a job in CIA!
The issue isn’t a 3.5 from a CC vs a 3.5 from an Ivy. No one applies to a med school from a CC. They apply from a 4 year.
When all is said and done, and it’s time for her to apply, she will not get any special consideration because she went to an Ivy. There’s a parent here whose child attended a top 5 school who had no luck getting into a MD med school with a 3.5 GPA.
The issue is the SCIENCE GPA is a 3.2. That will need lots of work.
Luckily, she’s going to take a gap year… She’ll need to maybe change her major or at least find space to add in a bunch more BCPM classes to bump BOTH GPAs…particularly the science GPA. Each BCMP class that she gets an A in will be a “two-fer”…bumping both GPAs.
Note to high school prospective premeds…
This is the risk of going to a tippy top school as a premed. All the classmates will be tippy top students, YET the profs will not be handing out a bunch of As in the premed prereqs. Even at the schools that have grade inflation, weeding still exists in the pre-req’ts…because they weed both premeds and engineering majors.
All the premed prereqs are hard at every school. They all will have lowish median GPAs in the prereqs classes because weeding is everywhere. But…the difference at non-tippy-top schools is that nearly every classmate in the premed prereqs will not have been super-stars at their high schools…so you’ll have a better chance of emerging with A’s.
I think there is often a disconnect when prospective (serious) premeds choose tippy top schools. They think…I’ve never gotten a B in my life…so I’m not going to start now. And…they don’t “do the math” and realize that if everyone is a superstar and the prereqs classes are only going to award A’s to maybe 20% of the class, their chances are now much lower. Impossible? No. More difficult? Yes.
She should pack her last year (s) with both major /general classes where she can get A’s to bring that GPA to a 3.6-.7 and science classes at any level where she can get A’s to being the xcience GPA as much as she can.
Thank you for your advice. Yes, she will try. I miscalculated her sGPA. It’s 3.35 now, not 3.2… Her sGPA was close to 3.5 before she took Orgo1.
Its entirely possible to catch up, good luck.
^ that’s pretty normal, everyone’s GPA takes a hit with orgo. The trick is to come back from it. 