Pre-Med GPA at Emory

Colleges and Universities A-Z Emory University
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Yes, definitely possible and as others have said, GPA is both a function of how hard and smart you work, and the specific courses and instructors for those courses you choose. As a pre-med, you don’t want to drop your GPA too low but you should not simply pick all the classes where students historically get the “easy A” to pad your GPA. This is especially the case for the core science classes as you should learn the material well and learn to think critically ahead of time in order to do well on the MCAT. However, keep in mind that it’s definitely possible to learn little and still have a high GPA at many schools (including Emory) if you mainly choose courses with professors that don’t teach well but give easy exams and inflate grades. However, it is nearly impossible do do well on the MCAT without a thorough understanding of the material that is tested.

As mentioned above there’s no “average” pre-med GPA at Emory, though there is data available among pre-meds who apply to med school. From what I can recall, back in 2008-2013 the average GPA of an Emory senior applying to US MD (allopathic) med schools was around 3.5. Each year about 50-55% get into at least one US MD medical school. This means that 45-50% do not get into a single US MD medical school (however, most of those will be at the lower end of the GPA/MCAT spectrum and will also apply and get into D.O. and Caribbean medical schools). I don’t have more recent numbers on hand, but generally medical school has been easier to get into the last few years (due to significant expansion of medical school spots and new med schools opening across the country, and perhaps a general decrease in the number of students interested in medicine) so these numbers may be higher now.

Also, keep in mind that what you learn in undegrad and the learning style in undergrad can be very different than in medical school. Medical school involves mainly rote memorization of large amounts of information at a rapid pace, and is unfortunately less conceptual and involves very little math. This stems from the fact that medicine is mostly descriptive and not so much theoretical. Some of the content and memorization-heavy biology classes are the closest to this (though which a much smaller volume of information).

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@collegestu816 : Emory has the curse of “too many people applying, even the not so competitive applicants”. Like other schools, the sweet spot is like 3.5/30 equiv (I don’t know how the new MCAT compares scoring wise), and Emory was apparently 85-90% placement in that range. It just suggests that Emory pre-med students are hard-headed more so than other places. I know that many similar caliber schools see much larger drop offs in pre-med interest after general chemistry, but Emory, most of them at least proceed to and through ochem regardless of how gen. chem went. And then a lot more apply “right away” before their application is most competitive. Emory has a weird pre-med culture. I honestly feel that in any cycle, maybe only 200-250 should be applying from Emory and not the 350-420.

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You did not ask a silly question and Bernie is mistaken. There are charts every year that tell you the GPA and MCAT scores of applicants and those who matriculate to med school from major schools

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@jtrice : How am I mistaken? Those charts WERE available and I mentioned them, but there is no uniform pre-med GPA calculated across Emory. Even if you took the average of GPA of all pre-meds at Emory (I don’t know how that would be possible as people drop in and out during their career. I guess you’d take a survey of those who contact PHA during junior year?), they would not be directly comparable because of how pre-healths major in different things and take different courses. Maybe if there was some publication of pre-health GPAs by major, that would be informative (I gave that), but a “pre-med GPA” is a useless thing to figure out. Maybe the average of pre-med courses is informative, but a student will not only take pre-health core courses. Go back and read what I said. I mentioned the charts, and mentioned the nuances. The OP is asking the wrong question.

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correction: I gave typical course average targets for STEM courses typically taken by pre-healths