Misc Questions....GPA and other stuff...

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>Q. Another poster mentioned taking a W and then retaking the class again later. So, what is the deal with a W on the transcript? </p>

<p>Q. Will med schools be super bothered if there is a W and then the course is retaken later for a good grade? (The student that I know of got the Swine Flu shortly after the semester started, dropped a hard class because she had to miss too many classes, then took the class the next semester.)</p>

<p>Q. Will med schools care if there is a W because the student changed her major and no longer needed to take the class that she withdrew from? </p>

<p>Q. Will the student have to submit some kind of explanation about the W? If so, where/how/when would she do that?</p>

<p>*Yeah, I’m just glad that D2 (who’s taking her MCAT this Sept and will be applying for fall 2013) has a BF who is not at all interested in any medical field. *</p>

<p>It’s such an unpredictable issue…on one hand, no one even knows if the couple is still going to be together in the near future…it’s hard to choose a med school/pharm school/whatever based on a relationship.</p>

<p>My S and his GF have been together for almost 3 years. They are pretty serious, so who knows!!</p>

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<p>The default assumption is that the student withdrew from the class to avoid a failing grade.</p>

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<p>All of this boils down to one thing - how will the medical school know why the student withdrew? Without any explanation, adcoms will go to the default, which is not very complimentary to the applicant. To avoid having an adcom assume the worst about you, you need to provide a succinct and appropriate explanation. It should be available somewhere on the application, whether that’s in a LOR, the personal statement, or whatever space is given for the “Anything else we should know about you?” question.</p>

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<p>*Q. Another poster mentioned taking a W and then retaking the class again later. So, what is the deal with a W on the transcript? </p>

<p>The default assumption is that the student withdrew from the class to avoid a failing grade.
*</p>

<p>I TOTALLY get that that would be the default assumption (in a vacuum of info - at first glance). </p>

<p>However, if the student is straight A’s, and gets an A in when the class is retaken, and includes a mention that the class was dropped for a good reason. In this case, the student got Swine Flu and missed too much early on (if you remember, last year, students with Swine were told to stay away from class because of epidemic fears), so dropped before a test was even taken. So, would the assumption or “bad taste” be the same? In another case, I know a student who had to drop a class because it was at a time that conflicted with her job (and the job wouldn’t accomodate). She took the class the next semester.</p>

<p>I totally can understand that if a student has a variety of grades on his transcript that the assumption would be that the material was too hard and the student was failing, but I don’t necessarily think the assumption would be the same if the student had a near-perfect GPA (and got an A when the class was actually taken).</p>

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<p>Sort of on point. </p>

<p>My D missed 3 of the first 4 classes in P Chem her last semester in college due to interview conflicts. Class 5 was a test. :eek: She notified the schools that were still in contention of the schedule change (and the dropping of her Chem Major). </p>

<p>I remember that Yale ( after interview invite, maybe after interview, but certainly prior to acceptance ) specifically wanted a letter from her PChem prof “explaining” the circumstances surrounding the W, but that may have been because she offered it up. (As in “Hey. I can get a letter from my PChem prof that says I dropped it before the first test because I didn’t know my :eek: from a hatrack. Do you want that?” ) Maybe some other schools did , too. But I simply don’t remember.</p>

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<p>Curm- that’s a good time to have been at Rhodes, hard to imagine any chem classes at Cal that had less than 1200 being taught that term (3 sections, but all curved together), so that letter would have been unavailable as the whole thing would have likely been unnoticed by the prof!</p>

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<p>Q. Is aamc.org a kind of clearinghouse for most med school applicants? (Would “clearinghouse” be the right word to describe? If not, what?) They’re the ones that recalculate GPAs, as I recall. </p>

<p>Q. Do students do their applying thru aamc.org as well? Is it like the Common App for med school?</p>

<p>Q. Do they receive all the LORs, too? </p>

<p>Q. If you have any other info about what aamc.org does, please include. :)</p>

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<p>Yes, they do, with exception of a few places. (Texas med schools have their own completely separate application process, the TMDSAS, IIRC.) </p>

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<p>AMCAS does offer a LOR service. (They collect all the LORs–both paper and electronic-- and send verified copies onto the applicant’s schools.) But not all medical schools participate in the AMCAS LOR service. See here for a list:</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/amcas/faqs/63226/faq_amcasletters.html[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/amcas/faqs/63226/faq_amcasletters.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Basically AMCAS is a professional standards, certification and advocacy organization for medical schools.</p>

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<p>Thanks!!..</p>

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<p>For LORs, one thing that can work well is to sign up for an Interfolio account (comes with the TX app if you are doing that) and have LORs sent their whenever the writer is ready. This gives you the opportunity to acquire them before signing up for AAMCAS and before the profs leave for the summer.</p>

<p>Some schools asked for their own evaluation forms etc and it was hopeless to get any summer responses from the profs!</p>

<p>For AAMCAS:</p>

<p>The applicant will fill out all their personal info, ECs, volunteer Hx, every class name & grade by term, plus the POS to AAMCAS along with a base application fee & a fee per school.</p>

<p>The applicant will have a certified transcript from ALL colleges attended- degree school, CC, CC during HS, summer school, random classes done anywhere- every single one.</p>

<p>The LORs will be submitted (I believe you can submit all of them to Interfolio and then send from there to both AAMCAS, TX, etc</p>

<p>The applicant will choose the list of schools to which they apply; you can add more schools after the initial submission. If some one takes a late MCAT, they usually would be advised to submit early with only their state school, then add others when they see their score.</p>

<p>AAMCAS will verify the transcripts match what the student input into the app. This can take 3-6 weeks at the busy times, that is why you apply early.</p>

<p>Once your application is verified it is released to your schools.</p>

<p>Then you hope to be invited to complete secondaries at the schools.</p>

<p>You need to follow up with all the schools to make sure every form, etc (photos) are received.</p>

<p>If doing TX, it has a May date, the nationwide app is June 1st or so, for the first date of submission. They are similar, but different character counts. As I recall the POS for TX is shorter and the ECs & short answer sections are longer. Fun! But good practice for secondaries.</p>

<p>Prep- if you know your school list, you can spend this spring term reviewing the past year’s secondary questions on SDN and prewrite many of your answers. Some schools change them, but many times the same premise can answer different questions, it is thinking and coming up with a creative and authentic answer under fierce time pressure that is tough, so having anything pre-thought is helpful!</p>

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<p>*For LORs, one thing that can work well is to sign up for an Interfolio account… and have LORs sent their whenever the writer is ready. This gives you the opportunity to acquire them before signing up for AAMCAS and before the profs leave for the summer.</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>I just want to make sure I understand…</p>

<p>Q. So, if a student is - say a sophomore - he can set up an Interfolio acct now, then he can ask current profs to write LORs and have them submitted to Interfolio. And, then, at the end of junior year, you can have the LORs that were submitted to Interfolio sent to AAMCAS?</p>

<p>Q. And… (if you’re not apply to TX schools)…you can send one set of transcripts from all the colleges you attended to AAMCAS, and they will provide the info to the colleges you apply to?</p>

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<p>Adding to the above post’s Qs…</p>

<p>Q. When your undergrad does that Committee Recommendation, does that go to AAMCAS and then AAMCAS forwards it to each school? Or what?</p>

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<p>Yes, that’s how it works. AMCAS independently verifies the transcripts and matches the transcript against the information the student has entered into his application. (And woe to anyone whose application information doesn’t EXACTLY match the transcript!)</p>

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<p>Yes. And if your son’s school does use a committee letter, then he probably won’t need an Interfolio account. </p>

<p>At D2’s school, the committee asks the applicant for a list of references. The committee then contacts the recommenders and has each fill out a form. The committee will only consider the information they get on their own forms and doesn’t look at letters that don’t use their form. (Anal, but them’s the rules… Of course, YMMV. Check the rules at your son’s school.)</p>

<p>At D2’s school, applicant must notify the committee and provide the information required by March 15th in order to get a committee letter. Students who decide later (April 15th is the hard cut-off date.) may or may not get a letter, depending on the how much time the committee has that year.</p>

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<p>And one other thing…</p>

<p>All med school applicants must undergo a criminal background check. You need to allow approx 2 weeks for that. Your application isn’t complete until the check has been completed.</p>

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<p>Q. how soon before the app process can you do the background check? I assume that if you do it “too early” then the info won’t be considered “current”. Could you start it - say - March of junior year if you’re applying in the summer?</p>

<p>Q. Really dumb question…how does one go about having a “background check” done on oneself?</p>

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<p>The background check is done by the schools I think, and good luck if you’ve lived abroad. As I recall DD had one done (had to fill out special paperwork) after being admitted. She was stuck in a big catch 22 in dealing with a multitude of years living abroad. Lucky for her her interviewer was also the dean of admissions and helped her do some stuff outside of the official firm. Somehow the firm that did the USA official background check could not access anything outside the US, but did not want to give a final report without that and also did not want to let DD provide local police reports from abroad. Red tape!</p>

<p>I don’t think you do it, I think only the school to which you are admitted does it</p>

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<p>Hopefully someone can clarify since WOWMom says that you need to allow time for that. Why would you need to allow time for that if each school does it?</p>

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<p>IIRC, D1 had to have it done as part of her AMCAS application. There was a place on AMCAS once you start a file where you could sign up to get one. She only had to have it once and it was sent out to all the schools that required it. It was definitely NOT done after she had received secondaries or after acceptances. Hers was done before her applications were sent.</p>

<p>And March is too early. I think you need to wait until the AMCAS (or TNDSAS if you’re using it) application opens.</p>

<p>D1’s background check didn’t require an interview, but it did require fingerprinting and included a credit check. (Your kiddo will get fingerprinted when he takes the MCAT too.)</p>

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<p>Regarding background check: I think DS started to do it after he had been admitted. I do not know the details but he asked our help to find out where he had been since he was born. As we found it, it is not an easy task when your family moved around many times. The tricky part is to know exactly when you moved into and out of a place. My guess is that as long as an applicant provides them (who are they? AMCAS? TMDSAS? or the school? I have no idea) this info, they will find out whether he/she has had any criminal records since birth.</p>

<p>Hmmm…I do not know the fingerprinting part. I will ask him when I have a chance.</p>

<p>There is some chance that the background check could be done much earlier as WOWM said. This is because DS tends to forget this kind of thing. An example: He forgot when the match day was. He could not remember whether he actually participated the match process (by ranking the schools which interviewed an applicant on TMDSAS’s computer system) either. “Nobody has notified me of the date. How would I know about it?” Oh, boy. I wonder how many times he has logged into either AMCAS or TMDSAS since last June (I bet it is not many times!)</p>

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<p>Hmm, I has been a year and a half and I did not actually do it, so I am fuzzy, but I recall the dean at DDs school being involved in the final process and it seems it all happened at once. I know, bright idea, I will ask DD!</p>

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<p>Just heard back from DD, she applied both through AMCAS & TX, she did not do anything with a background check until she was admitted. When the issue arose with her check (they could not get info for time abroad), she spoke to her specific school, not AMCAS. YMMV</p>