<p>I'm a junior pre-med student at University of Michigan, and am applying to med schools after I graduate so I can use my senior year to boost my cumulative and science GPA. One of our main pre-health advisors was telling me that if I was to do that, one thing that schools look at is for you to have 20 credits of science GPA over 3 semesters with a total GPA of 3.5 or above. </p>
<p>I've never heard of this before, and after searching for it on the forums and through google I haven't come up with anything about it. And if I were to follow this rule, I'd have to max out both of my semesters senior year with science classes. I'm already planning on taking a few both semesters senior year, but to follow this rule I'd have to take about 3 more than I was planning.</p>
<p>I'm just wondering if anyone has heard of this rule to find out if it is legitimate at all, and if med schools actually take this into consideration. If I'm going to be stressing myself out my senior year I want it to be for a good reason.</p>
<p>Veteran posters on this forum will tell you that your overall and science gpa should be at least a 3.5, and you should have at least a 30 for a MD admission.</p>
<p>I understand that my regular and science GPA should be around 3.5, considering that’s about the average for MD school acceptances. However my actual GPA and science GPA would be about 3.35 and 3.15 when I graduate. This is because of the rather cliche fact of me messing up my freshman year. But since then I’ve gotten my act together, and the upwards trend in both my GPA’s should look pretty good I think. Without factoring my freshman year in, my GPA’s would be about 3.65 and 3.4 I think. But the past is the past and I can’t change that.</p>
<p>But I’m still trying to figure out if this 20 credits rule is real. If it doesn’t seem real I may be able to load myself with 3 science classes each semester instead of 4 (in addition to other classes).</p>
<p>Adding up all the required pre med science courses should easily total 20 hours of coursework. How many semesters it takes to achieve that could vary from student to student but would take at least three semesters for most students. I’m not sure what you’re questioning here???</p>
<p>One guess is that he is talking about a post bacc program?</p>
<p>That said, a 3.35 and 3.15 are not going to cut it for Med school admissions unless you are a URM and even then they are both very, very low…I don’t believe that your upward trend will mitigate the reality of what the actual GPAs are. Sounds like you woke up to reality a little too late.</p>
<p>Maybe it was a nice way of discouraging you from applying?</p>
<p>20 credits (which we call hours) of science wouldn’t even cover the prereqs at my school:</p>
<p>Intro Bio with lab: 5
Upper level bio with lab: 4
Chem 2 with lab: 3
Chem 3 with lab: 3 (together chem 2 and chem 3 satisfy inorganic/general chem requirements)
Orgo 1: 4
Orgo 2 with orgo 1 lab: 5
Physics 1 with lab: 4
Physics 2 with lab: 4
English: 5
Math: 5
(Biochemistry: 3)</p>
<p>That’s 42 (45 with biochem) hours right there, and that’s just satisfying the prereqs. I really don’t know how you could get away with doing less than half that, even if you were in a post bacc program. Maybe your school’s credits are different than mine though.</p>
<p>I was a bio major, and I have about 60 hours of science classes on my transcript. I’d say the 20 credits/3 semesters/3.5+ would be about the absolute minimum science you could take–and I bet even that little science would be challenging.</p>
<p>If you have to max out your schedule to allow for a total of 20 credits of science classes…are you sure you’ve fulfilled the prereqs?</p>
<p>I am afraid Eadad is correct. The upward trend will not be noted because no human is likely to ever see the application since applications with GPAs in this range are generally filtered out by computers that screen applications and identify those below a certain GPA or MCAT score for immediate automatic rejection.</p>
<p>Every student who has just graduated from high school and will start college this fall as pre-med students should read this thread. The number of class valedictorians and national merit scholars that are convinced they are going to be doctors some day vastly exceeds the number of available seats in all U.S. medical schools each year and the competition for admission is brutal. </p>
<p>Pre-meds must be prepared to perform at the highest level they are capable of from their first day on campus as a freshman pre-med through the day they graduate from college. One bad year or even one bad semester can do irreversable and fatal damage to a student’s chances of ever being accepted at even one U.S. MD granting medical school as appears to be the case with the OP of this thread.</p>
<p>On rereading the OP I wonder if the advisor was telling him that he would need to take an additional 20 hours of sciences over three semesters and maintain a 3.5 or above just to mitigate the very low GPAs.</p>
<p>As I said earlier, could also be a nice way of discouraging the OP.</p>
<p>eadad, I certainly hope you’re right! I could see how an advisor might tell an applicant who’s planning to apply after graduation that he or she would need 20 hours of science credits/3 semesters of science credits, at a 3.5 GPA or better, on top of the premed prereqs. </p>
<p>I read it as that’s what’s OP thinks is needed to apply to medical school, and I hope I’m wrong!</p>
<p>Sorry for the confusion guys, I meant that my advisor was talking about the most recent 3 semesters for science classes. I’ve already fulfilled all of my pre-med prereqs and most of the classes for my majors. At this point I’m just taking extra upper-level science classes to raise my science GPA as far as it can go before I graduate.</p>
<p>I realized my stats at this point (end of my junior year) are too low to apply so I pushed it back one year, but I’m trying my best not to have to push it back any further. I’m not hoping to get into any top-tier med schools, but hoping that my upwards trend and good sophomore/junior/(future) senior year grades and my almost average GPA and sGPA when I graduate will get me interviews for lower tier and/or some mid-tier med schools.</p>
<p>This reminded me of another question I’m uncertain about. My advisor told me that in addition to cumulative and science GPA, apparently AMCAS also breaks down GPA/sGPA by year (fresh/soph/jun/sr) for med schools. Does anyone know if this is true too?</p>
<p>I believe AMCAS does, but it won’t help you during the initial screening process since med schools don’t actually look at anything but your overall GPA/sGPA. (It’s done by computer. No human eye actually looks at your app until much later in the process. And if you do have a year of poor grades, you had better have an really good explanation for them in your PS–something that also won’t get seen until much later in the application process.)</p>
<p>I’m glad AMCAS does that, but it’s really unfortunate that I’d probably be screened out before admission committees would even look at that. Also unfortunate is that I don’t really have a good reason for my freshman year grades. As one poster said, I just woke up to reality a bit late. After I metaphorically “woke up” I’ve been on top of my game since then, but it’s hard to recover my GPA from freshman year still.</p>
<p>The applicants report the grades of all courses taken each year; but I doubt AMCAS would break down GPA by year.</p>
<p>I think the upward trend of GPA does not matter as much as in college application. To put it bluntly, I think medical school adcoms try very hard to find if there is any blemish somewhere in your application, not try to find any merit in your application and to forgive your weakness somewhere else. (If you have some special hook, it may be the other way around.)</p>
<p>Also, everybody knows the grades for upper-division classes (esp. smaller classes) tend to be higher at many schools (esp. for some majors).</p>
<p>Looking at my copy of AMCAS for the “2011 entering class”</p>
<p>The page says “Verified Grade Point Averages.” 3 columns: BCPM, AO, Total. In each column, there’s a space for GPA and a space for number of hours. Your BCPM, AO, and Total GPAs and hours toward those GPAs are reported for high school, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, postbaccalaureate, cumulative undergraduate, and graduate work separately (so my grid shows 5 GPAs for BCPM, 5 for AO, 5 for total)</p>
<p>Additionally, there’s a row for supplemental hours that says “P/F-Pass; P/F-Fail; AP; CLEP; Other”</p>
<p>There are 5 GPAs for BCPM, etc… I was mistaken then.</p>
<p>I only looked at DS’s primary application briefly at one time, when he asked me to help doublecheck whether he had entered his course names/grades correctly. This is my only contribution to his application (other than help fund his interview trips – additionally convinced him to apply to AMCAS schools also just in case.)</p>
<p>Hmm…no wonder the premed advisor at his school specifically asked the students to put the grade of any graduate-level course under the graduate course category.</p>