My daughter is on the premed track at Berkeley. She is not positive if she wants to do medical school or grad school in a biology field. She knew Berkeley was a tough school when she decided to enroll but she liked the challenge and she has been working hard and enjoying the school. She had a setback this semester and got a C+ in a prerequisite class for her biology major. It is a notoriously hard class with a difficult professor. She was pretty upset about it but turns out she got the highest grade of her study group. I think its fine and I don’t necessarily think it takes a lot of options off the table for her and it is part of the process. She has more or less accepted this andmoved on to gearing up for next semester so I’m proud of how she handled it. However…
When she came home and was spending time with some high school friends who go to a solid but not nearly as tough and competitive school as Berkeley she had the opportunity to see the final for their school in this same class. Her jaw dropped. It was ridiculously easy! It was multiple choice. Despite her low grade, she thinks Berkeley has the right approach because she was forced to really engage and understand the subject and she thinks it makes her better prepared for grad school. The other school’s test just required reading the text book and remembering major points to answer a multiple choice test.
So my question is, when she applies to grad school and she is competing for spots with kids from programs that are not nearly as rigorous and seem very generous with their grades, will the admission committee consider that Berkeley is a notoriously difficult program or will they compare apples to apples. If so, she has seriously disadvantaged herself by not going to a good school that has a reputation for handing out As as opposed to Berkeley which has a reputation for hard grading and super competitive classes. I knew Berkeley was hard, I just did not realize the discrepancy between pre-med programs was so big.
In the first year to year and a half, especially in the biological sciences, there are quite a few weed out courses since not everyone in pre-med can be doctors. Your daughter will have some time in the next 3 years to show an upward trend in grades. As she progress toward her junior and senior years, the weed out process is not as bad as the early years. Also, the GRE test for graduate school will be an equalizer. Those friends of hers that went to “easier” schools might have a high GPA but may not do well on the GRE or MCAT. Also, those easier schools probably send a lower percentage of students to medical or graduate schools compared to Cal.
^^ I fully agree with the above @UCBUSCalum I took a practice GRE test just to see how it is, without actually preparing for it since I have one semester left before graduation, and I scored in the average range. I’m sure most people from Cal in the pre-med track or those applying to other grad schools would ace those exams without putting too much effort. So, all that rigor may give you an edge over other applicants in the end.
@DVmom18 ,
Follow up question anytime my kid tells me about his grade:
Where are you on the bell curve?
If everyone else got a C, then she should be fine. No option has been taken off the table.
If everyone else got an A, she should be looking for another study group.
It was Chem 3b. Lol. She did well in gen chem and 3a. Partly it was the teacher. She did do the best of her friends. My concern is that it seems so much easier at other schools. That’s why they have weighted GPA in high school because taking AP chem is harder than regular chem. I just wonder if people recognize the difference in graduate school admissions. I like they way Cal does it. I feel like these other schools are kind of cheating.
Does anyone know if schools like Cal get more credit because they are empirically harder than some of the other programs.
For the most part, medical school admissions places a premium on a high GPA, especially in BCPM subjects. A lot of schools will assert that their rigor will be taken into account.
Using WashU (son’s school) as an example, their premed website says that medical schools will take into account if a WashU student’s GPA is lower. Which I find suspicious.
Out of curiosity, I checked the course description for Cal Chemistry 3b and the equivalent chemistry class at WashU is such that in some years a 75% in the course is a strong A.
So the upshot is that you should do your best and not depend on the reputation of the school.
None of the people in my study group are particularly gifted and we are relatively lazy compared to others, yet all of us tend to perform very similarly in the exams. Perhaps the most useful skill we developed over the years is getting good at predicting the type of problems/questions that will show up in the exams.
One of my professors (with a PhD in math from MIT) told us that many students who get accepted into top medical schools are English majors. As long as they can get 3 strong recommendation letters, good scores in the MCAT and ECs, I don’t think chances are increased or diminished by the reputation of the school or the quality of the course they take (i.e community college or from a lower-tier university).
I read somewhere that admission officers are aware that maintaining a high GPA at Cal is hard, so they take that into account. But to be honest, I believe this is just wishful thinking since many students at Cal do very well despite the rigor of the programs.