<p>So i am a freshman biology major and my school has a tough grading system where a B-is a 2.8 and a B is around a 3.0 and there is no in between for the grades and i have been getting B+ and B- grades in my sciences and the rest of my classes with the exception of a 1 credit class that i got a C in and my first semester GPA was a 2.97 and on track to get about a 3.0-3.4 this semester I was appalled that the grading system would be so stern and want to know if this is what its like at all colleges or whether medical schools will look at this and take it into account when they are looking at my transcript compared to other people who may have a different grading system where a B- may be worth more and there for those people will have a higher GPA. I am dedicated to becoming a doctor and now starting to understand how hard the work will be but i am more then up to the challenge. Can anyone help me out on this? Also can anyone give me insight on whether they look at my science GPA more then my actual GPA so if the science GPA is higher then my normal GPA how would that look. Not that I'm slacking just better at the subject matter. Thanks so much any advice is appreciated</p>
<p>A B earns 3.0 quality points at most schools. Your school’s grading system is not unusual at all.</p>
<p>When you apply to med schools thru AMCAS, AMCAS will recalculate your GPA if your school uses a grading system that is not typical. </p>
<p>AMCAS grade conversion guide here:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/students/download/181676/data/[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/students/download/181676/data/</a></p>
<p>Med schools look at both your cumGPA and sGPA. cumGPA is used in the initial screening (done by computer at many schools), but both will be looked at by the adcomm later on should you be considered for an interview invitation.</p>
<p>I think a B is a 3.0 everywhere. I don’t even get what you mean by your grading system being stern or harsh. At Brown there are no +/- so your GPA is made up of an average of 4.0, 3.0, and 2.0. If your school routinely sends applicants to med schools, then they will have some idea how things work.</p>
<p>Okay thank you! I guess I am still getting thehang of things here</p>
<p>
However, Brown more than makes up by showering A grades on the kids. According to the following CBS News story, two thirds of kids get A’s at Brown!
[Grade</a> Inflation: Colleges With the Easiest and Hardest Grades - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37243170/grade-inflation-colleges-with-the-easiest-and-hardest-grades/]Grade”>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37243170/grade-inflation-colleges-with-the-easiest-and-hardest-grades/)</p>
<p>OP, if you are getting 2.8 for a B-, you are doing better than kids at most schools, where a B- is only a 2.7.</p>
<p>
However, Brown more than makes up by showering the Kids with A grades, apparently. According to the following CBS News story, two thirds of kids get A’s at Brown!
[Grade</a> Inflation: Colleges With the Easiest and Hardest Grades - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37243170/grade-inflation-colleges-with-the-easiest-and-hardest-grades/]Grade”>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37243170/grade-inflation-colleges-with-the-easiest-and-hardest-grades/)</p>
<p>2/3 of grades given out means it’s not counting people who go pass fail or who fail classes in the denominator. This is also the highest number I have ever seen for us. Usually the number hovers in the 45-50% range.</p>
<p>Also, brown is a highly selective school. If you don’t grade on a curve and force students to fight for As it’s not surprising that lots of students would do well.</p>
<p>Also, I only had to take classes I wanted to take. Iffy much harder in those than I would have in gen Ed requirements.</p>
<p>
I don’t begrudge the kids at Brown. Unfortunately, other highly selective schools like Princeton, Cornell and JHU have pretty harsh curves. Medical schools, however, don’t seem to care for such mundane things. For them, an A is an A…</p>
<p>I agree, no reason kids at Princeton, Cornell, and JHU should be fighting with each other for grades and there’s a reason that most medical schools don’t do it.</p>
<p>In regards to the 50% number: [More</a> than half of grades are now A’s, data show ? Brown Daily Herald](<a href=“http://www.browndailyherald.com/2008/11/18/more-than-half-of-grades-are-now-as-data-show/]More”>More than half of grades are now A's, data show - The Brown Daily Herald)</p>
<p>Nothing you can do about grading system. Just work harder and get better grades. Nobody can penalize you if you get all answers correct. So, here is your goal. Big thing at D’s UG was that they were not giving any additional credits for “+”, nothing above 4.0, but subtract for “-” as in “A-”. This actually ended up being very helpful as Med. Schools strip additional points for “+”, as in A+. So, look positively at every challenge, and do not focus on things out of your control, like grading system. Keep in mind that no matter how challenging UG is, Med. School is much much more challenging even for those with college GPA=4.0 and high MCAT scores. So, the harder you have to work in UG, the better you are prepared to working even much harder in Med. School.<br>
As far as grading system goes, that is why they use MCAT score as a common denominator in addition to GPA.<br>
And if one is so concerned about grading system, then research before choosing your UG…yes, should have asked current student BEFORE attending, it is too late now.</p>
<p>
That’s more of a norm than an exception. The only top (20) school that I know off, which gives a 4.3 for an A+, is Cornell. Cornell, however, unlike the rest of the Ivy schools with the exception of Princeton, is stingy in terms of the number of A’s. As you said, a 4.3 for an A doesn’t matter because AMCAS ignores that anyways.</p>
<p>Do we have good data for average GPAs from a specific undergraduate school?</p>
<p>The good folks at [National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://gradeinflation.com%5DNational”>http://gradeinflation.com) try their best to gather the GPA data from various sources. They are successful at varying degrees with different schools.</p>
<p>I am pretty familiar with JHU since my son goes there. JHU’s average GPA tends to be <3.3. I am also reasonably familiar with Cornell, since my son’s HS sends no less than 20 kids there every year. A lot of my son’s classmates are there. Cornell’s average GPA usually hovers around 3.3.</p>
<p>With apologies, I’m going to repeat myself three times in one post.</p>
<hr>
<p>Short version: While kal’s right about the facial numbers (JHU really does give out lower grades than Brown), I would caution people against using this single metric to evaluate undergrad.</p>
<p>Remember, the key will be how you perform. Considering average grades is one of many things to consider in that process.</p>
<hr>
<p>Intermediate version: Based on gradeinflation.com, kal’s right on the facial numbers: It is true that Cornell and Hopkins seem to give out lower grades than the three schools I looked at as comparisons (Duke, Harvard, Brown).</p>
<p>However, I’d urge students against relying excessively on this single metric, because (1) I’m not sure how reliable it is, (2) more selective schools SHOULD have higher mean GPAs, and (3) medical schools seem to expect different GPAs from different undergraduate institutions, which may or may not be correlated with difficulty. (4) The data doesn’t correct for coursework. Maybe Hopkins grades are lower because there are more engineers in the pool than at Brown.</p>
<p>**Here’s the key takeaway: Remember, you are not going to be the average student at every school you attend. You might do better at Cornell than you would have at Harvard; you might do better at Duke than you would have at Brown. A lot of considerations go into your grades: how happy you are, what you’ll be studying, what your peer group will look like, and how competitive the student body as a whole is. </p>
<p>The school’s average grades are one small element of what your grades will be, and your grades are just one of many components of actually getting into medical school.** I’d urge you to pay attention to other criteria in picking a college.</p>
<hr>
<p>Really Long Version:</p>
<p>2.) Students at more selective schools will often have higher GPAs, but that doesn’t mean that it’s actually easier there. When I plug some hypothetical numbers into excel to make them consistent with gradeinflation.com, it looks to me like Harvard gives out roughly 5.8% more A’s than Cornell.</p>
<p>So that sounds bad, but it’s very easy for me to imagine that there’s an extra 5.8% of the class that’s smarter than me at Harvard as compared to Cornell, meaning that <em>I</em> might find it harder to earn an A at Harvard.</p>
<p>I did some work on this among undergraduates who eventually applied to law school using LSAT scores to control for student body variation (imperfectly, obviously). I found that Hopkins really did seem to give lower grades (-1.25 SD), Harvard was intermediate (-0.92 SD), Duke and Cornell were next (-0.69 SD), and Brown really was the easiest of the bunch (-0.17 SD), but still harder than average nationally.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/331537-grade-inflation.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/331537-grade-inflation.html</a></p>
<p>3.) Back when schools still released such things, we noticed that different schools had different mean GPAs among students admitted to medical school. Penn was around 3.4; Duke was around 3.55; Stanford was around 3.6; MIT was around 3.7. It seemed that medical schools treated different schools with different standards. </p>
<p>So if medical schools aren’t going to treat grades the same way anyway, then we have no idea what a 3.24 from Hopkins actually means relative to a 3.45 from Harvard. Will they think Hopkins is harder? That Harvard is harder? That 0.2 points is trivial anyway? We have no way of knowing how they’re going to handle this gap, so it would be a shame to over-weight the gap in picking an undergraduate institution.</p>
<p>I absolutely support the BDM’s: “Remember, the key will be how YOU perform. Considering average grades is one of many things to consider in that process.”
I would say further, DO NOT CONSIDER average grades at all. Rather choose the place where you belong and have a goal of straight As. Having the highest goal always help. Do not have a standard of 3.5. However, it does not mean that you should avoid challenges. No, not at all. Challenge is a good thing that will push you work even harder. There is no tricks here. Too much calculations takes fun out of the process. UG is to enjoy the process a lot and achieve your goal mostly because of enjoying your 4 years. Do not position yourself to be misearable. If you are in misery, get out, not your place, not your major, not the right study technique, not your crowd of friends, wrong schedule…whatever, something is not working for you, got to figure out what. The average GPA and the school’s grading system has very very little to do with it.</p>