<p>Hi, I am a physics and math sophomore double major with a 4.0 at a flagship state uni, and I'm wondering if it would be detrimental to lose my 4.0 by taking tough math grad courses next semester. I took 15 credits this fall, and I will be continuing the second semester of the physics and math courses I took this semester with an extra physics class this spring. I also am fairly active in math and physics clubs and will be volunteering at the hospital.</p>
<p>I know that GPA is very important to top med schools, but if I get a 3.7 every semester until I graduate, I'll still end up with ~3.9<br>
Is there anything "magical" about a 4.0? I've heard that med schools don't care about what classes applicants take, so I won't get any special treatment for taking such a rigorous schedule?</p>
<p>When medical schools (AMCAS actually) calculates the GPA (actually they only verify it), the grade from any graduate level course will not be included in the calculation of your UG GPA. It is included in the separate graduate level GPA, which is usually not as important as your UG GPA.</p>
<p>In a sense, the medical schools do not favor those late boomer students who do poorly in UG but do great in graduate school only. (Unlike in politics, there is no such thing as “born again” in the admission game. It is likely because there are too many qualified medical school applicants but there are just not many qualified politicians —Aren’t all senators millionares as this is the unwritten basic requirement to belong to that class. LOL.) If you do great in both UG classes and the graduate classes, e.g., graduate with BS/MS degrees in 4 years, it may give you some boost. (but still not much as having a great EC.)</p>
<p>With this said, GPA only needs to be good enough. Being too premed/grade centric may ruin your college academic life.</p>
<p>It is my understanding that if the student is an undergrad at that institution and is not earning a graduate degree than these courses are weighted just as much as any other.</p>
<p>When DS was applying to medical school, his premed committee specifically sent out an email to UG premeds, in which it is said if a class is noted as G (meaning the graduate level class), its grade should NOT be included in the UG category grades on AMCAS application. At least this is the rule at his college. I am not sure whether AMCAS has means to enforce this rule if the premed committee (which know the course listing better than AMCAS) does not volunteer to enforce this.</p>
<p>Another rule related to GPA is that, if a course is jointly offered by two departments, the student has a deadline (likely the end of that semester) to specify which of the two departments he wants for this course to be listed under on his transcript.</p>
<p>Hmmm…Some courses may be listed as both U (undergraduate) and G (graduate). I am not sure whether the student has the similar choice when he enrolls in such a class. If yes, most may choose U unless that student wants to be graduated with BS/MS.</p>
<p>Most who graduated with BS/MS in 4 years (there are 5-10% who graduated from DS’s major who did this) seem to fare pretty well in the medical school admission. However, DS knows some BS/MS whose UG GPA may not be as good as those who graduated with a BS only and he suffered a little bit.</p>
<p>For the benefit of current/future premeds, does anybody know whether the statement below (made by i<em>wanna</em>be_brown, Thanks!) is true? I am not 100 percents sure about whethere it is true or false. It seems to be in the grey area.
In general, it appears medical schools unfortunately like to see how a student performs in the large, sometimes inhumane (e.g., can barely hear what the professor says) freshman/sophomore premed classes where the grade comes from, say, 25% first mid-term, 25% second mid-term, 50% final, and homework (if assigned at all) 0%.</p>
<p>If a course is not designated as a graduate course, there’s no way for AMCAS to know it’s a graduate course. The only grad course I took at Cornell was a 600-level bio course, which was factored into my undergrad GPA by AMCAS just like any other class.</p>
<p>D1 (also was a math and physics double at our state flagship) took 2 graduate physics courses (biophysics and grad quantum) and those courses WERE included in her AMCAS sGPA/cGPA. She was not working toward a graduate degree and although the courses had grad level course numbers, they counted toward her undergrad degree.</p>
If a student getting a BS/MS degree in 4 years, the graduate-level course he takes does apply to a graduate degree. This is because the college requires such a student to designate which courses to apply to his MS degree.</p>
<p>I think I might have been overly obsessed with the fineprint of the rule. Almost all students who complete a BS/MS in 4 years show their above-average academic intensity, and likely they will not be “punished” by doing so. In other words, it is not the same between the following two scenarios: 1) Complete a BS or BA in 4 years and then complete a MS in two years 2) Complete both BS/BA and MS in 4 years.</p>
<p>D. has mentioned taking something at Grad. level, but I do not remember what it was. Anyway, whatever you take, all will be counted. There are few with MS degrees as well as PhD and JD’s (lawyers) in D’s Med. School class. I have no idea how GPA is calculated in these cases.</p>
<p>So would anyone recommend taking the second semester of a grad class with 5 other classes at the risk of losing my 4.0? I did get an A in the first semester, but it was a little risky since he let us replace our test grades with the final. Up to the final, I had a B.</p>
<p>If the undergrad gpa’s are the same (which is all that really matters), I would suggest that professional schools just don’t care if someone obtains a BS/BA+MS in four years or 5/6. (Of course, the 6 year student is likely to have a lot more intensive research than a fast-track undergrad, but then, maybe not.)</p>
<p>Bluebayou, What I was trying to say is that the amount of time to reach the same academic achievement matters when a live person looks at the transcript.</p>
<p>Many years ago, there was a a rumor that at some prestigious private college, some students from a weathy background might take as few classes (especially the science pre-reqs) as possible in order to maximize the chance of obtaining a very good GPA. This is because their family can afford more than 4 years of tuition. Professional schools noticed this and started to crack down on this. A variation of this scheme is that a student may take only 1/2 - 2/3 of all pre-reqs during four years in a prestigious college while majoring in non-science and then finish up the remaining pre-reqs at a lower-tiered college after graduation and claims that he changes his career path after he has graduated from college. He therefore takes “less risk” than his peers do.</p>
<p>This does not apply to OP because what OP plans to do is, within the same number of years, to achieve either the same (if we believe that what matters is UG GPA only) or more (if we think when a live person, instead of a computer, eventually looks at his transcript, he might notice it and it may give him a tiny boost.)</p>
<p>OP, a great GPA (>3.7/3.8) can get you in the running, but other qualifications can get you in, especially for “top/research” medical schools. If you are really very obsessed with pure very high level academics, I wonder whether a PhD program may be a better fit for you (just a wild guess on my part.)</p>
<p>Yes, I understand your point, but I don’t think such a “live person” really cares. Undergrad gpa is the primary criteria. Yes, a 6 year undergrad schedule looks worse than a traditional four-year schedule (absent family/personal circumstances that require the student to work to pay the family bills). Just bcos a longer graduation schedule can be a negative however, does not mean that academic acceleration is a positive. </p>
<p>Of course, a college with a Committee might reward such a fast-track student with ‘most rigorous schedule, highest recommendation’ possible, but that is a different issue from the adcom looking at the transcript.</p>
<p>But in any event, nothing in the applications are ever equal. A five year MA/MS student will have one extra year to become involved in relevant ECs than a four-year BS/MS. Or, a five-year student may matriculate to a top research program to obtain his/her Master’s, rather than staying at Regional State U. Perhaps a better rec from a prestigious prof?</p>
<p>^^That being said, I do believe that adcoms look to see if a student has loaded up his/her app with non-major science courses, i.e., physics for poets. Other than that, they’d have no real way of knowing if a hume/lit class was really rigorous or a gpa-booster for D1 athletes. (At my undergrad, Phil was one of the hardest majors on campus --lower gpa than some science majors-- but two of the Phil courses were full of jocks, one of which was upper division. They were just really easy grading profs.)</p>
<p>BTW, “paper making” class was one of D’ss most time consuming as any art class would be. I have warned her about it, but she did not care, she wanted to take some art at college. Sometime you just need to go for whatever your heart desires, at least, it will show a real person behind all the stats hoopla. D. did get an A, but she has spent anourmous time, which she enjoyed though. She was happy to have an “art” class and she learned that it will be the only one art class in college for her. So, was not exactly wasted.</p>