Summer school grade and GPA

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>Hi. It's really ashamed to ask this kind of question, but I just want to make it clear. </p>

<p>I took (well, my parents forced me to take) a summer course in chemistry and I received a horrible grade in that course. </p>

<p>I have tried hard to maintain my current college GPA close to 4.0, but i have heard that med schools will look at ALL grades an applicant has gotten in every single college course he/she has completed. </p>

<p>Will med schools really require the applicants to send their ALL grades, and if they would, how does my poor grade from a summer course likely to affect my overall chance?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

2

<p>

Yep. They do require all grades. And it will hurt just as badly as any other course. Sorry.</p>

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<p>How about if I repeated the chem course in my college? Does the summer school chem grade still show up in the transcript?</p>

4

<p>You must submit ALL transcripts from any post-secondary institutions you’ve taken courses at, so yes, it will still show.</p>

<p>What class was it? Was it a med school pre-requisite (general or organic chem)? And what is your definition of “horrible” grade? If you got a B or a C, it’s not worth retaking. In fact, very few things are worth retaking, because if you do poorly again it will elicit a reaction of “they did bad the first time, and couldn’t do well taking it for a second time?” If you do well, it’ll be “of course they got an A, they took the class once already.” Unless it’s a med school pre-req, it’s best for you to move on to other courses (perhaps another higher level chem course) and show you can do well in those.</p>

5

<p>It was gen chem. I took it during the summer between the end of the HS and the first semester of college. It’s my fault that I did not take it seriously since I was not fully motivated, but after all a C+ was the result.</p>

6

<p>Damn dude…</p>

<p>Good luck keeping your GPA to a 4.0 if you can’t ace get Chem (even without putting effort in).</p>

<p>Medical school is INCREDIBLY COMPETITIVE!! When I say incredibly competitive, I mean it. If you want to go to a good medical school, you have to work really hard. How hard? Hard enough to make your eyes bleed. No kidding.</p>

<p>Just to tell you a short story. My buddy has a 3.94 GPA, a bunch of research and volunteering and hospitals, member of many clubs, goes to UMass Amherst. He applied to UMass Worcester and just recently got rejected. I mean, he goes to the UMass system and gets rejected. Applying within school systems is a safer way to get acceptance to programs, such as medical school. </p>

<p>What does this tell you? There are students better than him. It may not always be the case. Now with Obama heading the country, if you are black/hispanic you get the priority. If you have an applicant that is white, like my buddy with a 3.94 and a black applicant with a 3.6, they will accept the black guy just because he is a “minority” in the field. </p>

<p>So, if you are a white college student, you have to basically be perfect, which I think is absolute ********. Not fair. But what can you do?</p>

<p>Just gives you a perspective of how hard you really have to work. I mean, a C+ isn’t something to be worried about now. I presume that you are a freshman in college. You can try and retake it. </p>

<p>Just remember, don’t settle for ANYTHING less than an A. Anything below A is failure. Don’t get B’s, you won’t have a chance at a good medical school (or any medical school for that matter).</p>

<p>Again, as for the C+, retake it. However, don’t settle for anything less than an A.</p>

7

<p>The above advice is nonsense. The national average GPA, even for white candidates, is in the range of 3.5-3.6. He’s also wrong that retaking it will erase the grade anyway. If a 3.94 got rejected, it’s not because of the 0.06 GPA. It’s for other reasons.</p>

<p>Students who work hard enough “to make your eyes bleed” as undergraduates are not the kind that med schools want anyway.</p>

8

<p>sorry dude, that’s just the way it is. Hate on it all you want, call it nonsense. It’s the truth. There are many people that want to be doctors, kids that have BOTH perfect grades and GREAT extra curriculars and such. So basically, you WILL work. There is no way around it. Also, being minority favors you, a lot.</p>

<p>By the way, I NEVER said that the grade will be erased. It just won’t be counted in the GPA.</p>

9

<p>Even though BDM doesn’t need any backing and is much more of an expert than I am, I’m just going to throw in the fact that I agree with him.</p>

<p>Sproles, getting into med school does require good grades and other activities, but I’m not sure where you’re getting most of your ideas from.</p>

10

<p>I get the ideas from… experience maybe?</p>

<p>Applying to medical school is different now than it was 5 years ago. There are more students, better candidates and obviously stricter standards. </p>

<p>I am not an expert. I may be wrong. BUT, I know what happened to my friend and it’s pretty shocking.</p>

11

<p>

</p>

<p>This is flatly erroneous. The grade will be counted even with a retake.</p>

<p>

And again, I emphasize that the data obviously contradicts your advice. White matriculants had a mean GPA of 3.69*. Your friend did not get rejected because of his GPA.</p>

<p>Maybe his MCAT score was bad. Maybe he’s a terrible interviewer or a bad writer. I don’t know. Most likely, he’s a fine candidate and you’re looking at ONE school and drawing an erroneous conclusion from an incompetent sample size. But his GPA was not the problem.</p>

<p><a href=“http://aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/table19-mcatpgaraceeth09-web.pdf[/url]”>http://aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/table19-mcatpgaraceeth09-web.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>(3.69 is higher than I expected, but it’s still much lower than your argument implies.)</p>

12

<p>You just lost all your credibility. If you get a C+ in one class, and you retake it, it will still be present on your transcripts but WILL NOT count towards your GPA. The new grade will count towards your GPA.</p>

13

<p>“U.S. Medical Schools.”</p>

<p>Great. What does it tell you? The last time I checked not all Medical schools are equal.</p>

14

<p>This is an interesting question to me, and interesting answers.
20-odd years ago, when I was taking my pre-med courses, I took one course at Hopkins summer school. Many, if not most, of the students in the class seemed to be taking it “for practice,” meaning that they were just taking it so that they could get a better grade when they took it “for real” at their home institution in the fall. I don’t know if they had enrolled not-for-credit, or were planning to just conveniently forget to report the grade, or whether they weren’t required to send the JHU transcript with their applications, or what. </p>

<p>(I will say, it helped the curve enormously that a lot of the class wasn’t giving it their all. I could have gotten an A without taking the final.)</p>

<p>I guess one can’t do that any longer?</p>

15

<p>anecdotes from a friend =/= experience. Maybe he only applied to one school? I got rejected at my state school too but accepted elsewhere. Just because you don’t get in everywhere doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the system or your application.</p>

<p>Also, if you can get into a US medical school, you can basically get into any medical education system in the world that accepts internationals.</p>

<p>The only schools that replace grades and don’t count them towards your transcript GPA are DO schools not MD.</p>

<p>Finally, Obama hasn’t changed any policy on URM applicants. Its been this way for a long time and he has yet to (and really doesn’t have much power to) change that.</p>

16

<p>Sorry, I might be wrong about the “perfect GPA” thing. I didn’t actually check anyones GPA, so he may be lying to me.</p>

<p>You never know who is telling you the truth.</p>

17

<p>sproles134,</p>

<p>It is another interesting topic raised by mmmcdowe. Would you be able to share more info on if your friend got accepted by other medical schools. I recalled seeing another case on CC about a medical school applicant (with high GPA and MCAT) got rejected by every medical school he applied. I think it would be a useful case for future students to learn and avoid.</p>

18

<p>Yes, he did get into other med schools. I think University of Miami was one of them.</p>

<p>I didn’t mean that you would not get into Medical school with a “lower” GPA, but you won’t to the “better” medical schools.</p>

19

<p>Depends on what a good GPA is for a given school and what else you bring to the table. A lot of nontraditional applicants have lower GPAs (often because of rampant grade inflation now) but rock out the MCAT and end up at great schools because of that.</p>

20

<p>You need to stop exaggerating the difficulty of med school admissions. The average GPA even at top med schools is in the 3.8 range. If your friend didn’t get into a med school with a 3.94 GPA, it was due to one of the multitude of other factors that med schools consider (some of which are highly subjective). A 3.94 will not get much more consideration than a 3.8 GPA in med school admissions. A 3.8-4.0 GPA is considered very good already. Beyond that, med schools will begin to look at other factors in differentiating applicants. </p>

<p>A C+ is not a good grade but you will have around 25 grades at least by the time you apply so no one grade is going to sink your chances at any school.</p>