<p>Or, conversely, it might be the case that intro classes are harder and some advanced research classes are easier, in which case it's better to take those and therefore to be a major...</p>
<p>Statistically, your major doesn't matter - this does not control for MCAT score and GPA, meaning that it all tends to balance out in the end.</p>
<p>With the usual caveats. (Specific med schools may care, specific majors may matter, but not within broad classes.)</p>
<p>do med schools really not care what your major is either way or is this a statistical lie...as in, yes many non science majors get in to med school but many many more apply bc sooo many ppl major in nonsciences relatively</p>
<p>or an alternative is that very few non science majors apply to med school bc its not their interest so the percent acceptance within those areas is very high</p>
<p>See thread: "What should a premed major in?"</p>
<p>I took Psych 120: Cellular Neuroscience. It is cross-listed as Bio (some number). It is listed on my transcript as Psych, but it's very technical and also counts as an upper division bio course. Is it likely that this will be counted in my science GPA?</p>
<p>Don't think so, but you might get lucky.</p>
<p>If it's a course that can be used as credit towards a Bio major, then it ought to count, especially if it's cross listed. I say this because at my school (Penn) we have a department called Biological Basis of Behavior, which is essentially a hybrid of the Bio and Psych departments, and the majority of BBB classes are cross listed as Bio or Psych classes. Our premed advising says that BBB classes that are cross listed as Bio class will count in the science GPA.</p>
<p>Right, but I'm guessing that that will only happen if it's listed on your transcript as Bio.</p>
<p>Not so, as BBB is the primary listing for said courses, that is how it appears on the transcript for all who enroll in the class, and there's no problem with those courses getting incorporated into the science GPA. Now, the difference between this situation and the one mentioned earlier is that BBB at Penn is still very much a science major, differing only slightly from a Bio-Neuroscience major, whereas the poster's question was regarding a class cross listed as Psych, a non-science field.</p>
<p>Ah. Okay. At Duke, the way a "cross-listed" course works is that it's offered theoretically by both departments - for example, my Health Economics course could either have been PubPol156 or Econ156. If it were listed as Econ, that's all anybody would ever know - that it was an Econ course. The exact same course - same time, same room, same professor, same classmates - could also have been selected as PubPol, and in that case, nobody would ever know that it could have been Econ.</p>
<p>Fortunately at Duke, they're retroactively interconvertible, which is nice. But you get my point - that's why I don't think something listed as psych would go BCPM, because (if they use a similar system), there's no way anybody would ever know that they could have been selected as bio.</p>
<p>Hmm.... that's unfortunate. I suppose I should have enrolled in the class as the Bio listing... oh well =/</p>
<p>Where do classes taught under "health and exercise science" dept. fall? These courses are things like human gross anatomy, epidemiology, physiology, etc. Are they in science gpa?</p>
<p>you'd be best served talking to the premed advisors at the school, as such a department is not a common one across universities. I would be concerned about being able to count them, as i know students in the nursing program at my school oftentimes have difficulty counting some of their classes if they apply to med school</p>
<p>I personally don't know, but AMCAS has an instruction booklet that's pretty clear.</p>
<p>What is a good OVERALL gpa to be competitive at medical schools? Is 3.7 kind of low?</p>
<p>Bluedevil, is the instruction booklet you are talking about the Medical School Admission Requirements put out by AAMC?</p>
<p>Varies too wildly to be useful. Pick some schools and find their means (available in the MSAR, sold by Amazon). Decide, based on the rest of your application, whether you'll need to be above or below their means.</p>
<p>For example, if you've consistently run a clinic in Ghana for AIDS-suffering refugees, then you can afford to be considerably below WUSTL's average BCPM GPA of 3.9 and still consider yourself competitive.</p>
<p>If you've never done any research or clinical shadowing, then you'll need to exceed their averages by quite a bit.</p>
<p>Nationally, I believe the average is around 3.5 or so - but don't quote me on that.</p>
<p>No, it's not, but that would have been a very good guess.</p>
<p>When the time actually comes to fill out an AMCAS application, applicants rely very heavily on a detailed booklet of instructions, available:
<a href="http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/amcas2007instructions.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/amcas2007instructions.pdf</a></p>
<p>The specific list is on page 75, and it sounds like the classes you mentioned would be "health sciences" and would NOT fall into the BCPM GPA.</p>
<p>Thanks bluedevil!</p>
<p>Yes BDM, a lot go into physics.</p>
<p>I plan on appealing that my Semiconductors course (Semiconductor Physics), my Electromagnetics course (EMag Physics), Material Science course, Signals & Systems course (Fourier Math), etc... be included in my Science GPA. How many will be included will be determined. But the first two most definately should be. </p>
<p>I'm taking a course now in my BME Masters called Bio-MEMS which is nano-technology for biological applications. I would like this to be included since there is a lot of Biology but I am a grad student so I don't think the AMCAS includes this in your BCPM GPA.</p>
<p>What weight does the BCPM GPA have over the Overall GPA. What I mean is, if you have a BCPM GPA 3.5+ but your total GPA is ~3.1-3.2, how to med schools tend to look at this?</p>