<p>My college punishes a person's GPA if they get an A- (3.7 something). </p>
<p>I worked very hard and I made As in all classes (known to be quite brutal for an early reality-check to Pre-Med students), but two of them are A-. I still have a while to go but seeing my GPA go down with As is quite discouraging. Someone told me, however, that when applying to Med School they see an A as an A regardless of what follows after. Is this true? Do I have a 4.0 in the eyes of medical schools so far?</p>
<p>I get the feeling the answer to this is "it depends."</p>
<p>This is ridiculous--my school is very difficult. Why should making a 92 in my school make my GPA lower than it would be if I made the same grade at a similar university that merely decided to go with the idea that all As are a 4.0?</p>
<p>For some reason I just shake my head at this, even if Med Schools know that my school is very hard I feel like they will still merely compare my GPA with other people's regardless of where they went to school and push me down the line.</p>
<p>Hey, what can I tell you? That's the "game" of med-school admissions. It is what it is.</p>
<p>You say that your school is difficult, and I am not disputing you. Yet I would argue, and I'm sure you would agree that certain other schools like MIT and Caltech are also extremely difficult. Furthermore, I'm sure you'd agree that certain majors are far more difficult than others. Electrical engineering students have to work much much harder for lower grades than Film Studies students. Completing a degree in EE at MIT probably requires several orders of magnitude more work than completing a degree in some cheesepuff do-nothing major at a no-name school. Yet for the purposes of med-school admissions, these two situations are treated the same. Do you really think an A in Computer Systems Engineering at MIT should be treated the same as an A in Underwater Basketweaving at SouthEast Moron State University? Yet for the purposes of med-school admission, it is. I think that's far more unfair than what you're dealing with. </p>
<p>Look, lots of ridiculous things happen in the premed process, chiefly because certain majors and certain schools are far far easier than others, and yet med-school adcoms don't really care. Adcoms want to see high grades, and don't really care about how you get them, as long as you get them. That's the game of med-school admissions. It is what it is. My only advice is that if you don't like it, then maybe you should take easier classes at an easier school.</p>