<p>I am going to an Ivy school. My GPA is not that great! Low 3+. I took a bunch of hard courses. Now preparing for MCAT. I have some good research n sports activities. Hoping to do good in MCAT. Do you think a good MCAT score can make up to some extent for my GPA from a "hard" Ivy schcool? But what is the definition of a good "MCAT" score in this context? Need some positive feedback please. I need to make a list iof schools that I will target for admission.</p>
<p>I hate to bring this up in your thread, but I wanted to stress that there are disadvantages to going to an Ivy (or other higher level institutions). This gpa issue is one of those. </p>
<p>Back to you OP. It really depends what med schools you are looking into. For the “top” medical schools, you’re gonna find many kids who have both the grades and the mcat scores. Have you considered medical schools in the caribbean? or Ireland? I’m not saying you should be putting yourself to that level or anything but I don’t really know how medical schools will react to that gpa. I think you should consider lower tier schools, maybe a couple of mid-tier and higher level ones based on your MCAT and EC’s. Hope that helps!</p>
<p>bsmd - can you please list some of your “lower tier, mid tier and higher level” schools? Just want to see if I am in sync with your thinking. And given the GPA I have, what MCAT score is good for these schools?</p>
<p>What school do you attend? Some are much more heavily grade inflated than others, such that a, say, 3.4 at Cornell is much better then at, say, Harvard.</p>
<p>Unfortunately my school has a grade deflation. Do you think the admission process will factor that into the equation?</p>
<p>Lower tier, in my opinion, would be schools in the caribbean, ireland, and in the US you can look up the ranks on US news. Mid-tier would be schools like VCU (I’m actually attending an 8 year program through this undergrad school and med school) and other schools within ranks 50ish to 100 on US news (if 100 exists, I don’t remember how far the ranks go). High tier would, of course, be the Ivies, Stanford, UCSF, etc, but as I think you’ve experienced, there’s not always a benefit to going to those schools.</p>
<p>As for grade deflation, my opinion is that it won’t play that big of a factor. But I have yet to experience anything like that, so I may not be a legitimate source here.</p>