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GPA and MCAT scores are usually the first items that an admissions committee looks at when evaluating a student’s application. Grades and MCATs combined may carry 65% to 70% of the weight in the admissions decision. Admissions committees want be sure that, if you are accepted, you will be successful academically in medical school and ultimately on your National Boards. The National Board exams are taken at the conclusion of the second and during the fourth year of medical school. MCATs play a bigger role in the admissions decision now that students are required to take shelf exams during their clerkship years. MCATs have proved to be a positive predictor of a student’s ability to pass these exams.

Be sure that you have completed all the medical school prerequisites prior to sitting for the MCAT. The MCATs are offered many different times over the course of the year, so do not feel pressured to take them until you are ready. In April of the junior year, students are normally finishing either physics II or organic chemistry II, preparing for finals in all their other courses, getting ready to apply to medical school, and studying for the MCAT. Take your time and think about taking the May, June, or even the July exams. That will give you the opportunity to finish time to study for the MCATs without either feeling so much pressure to do it all at once or sacrificing your spring semester grades.

If you know that you have difficulty with standardized tests, or if you perform poorly the fist time you take the MCATs, consider taking an MCAT prep course through Kaplan or the Princeton Review. Often, however, time and financial restraints prevent routine enrollment in MCAT prep courses.

If your MCAT scores are not what you had hoped, try to pinpoint your area of weak performance, but do not focus exclusively on that area as you prepare to take the exam again. You may need to bring your Verbal Reasoning scores up, but this should not be at the expense of Biological Science or Physical Science. Try to stay balanced in preparing for the exam.

If your GPA, particularly your science GPA, is not as high as it should or could be to apply to medical school, or if your grades fluctuated greatly over the course of your college career, consider completing a master’s degree in the hard sciences before applying to medical school. There are several one-year master’s programs that you might want to consider. For instance, the programs at Boston University, Georgetown University, and the Johns Hopkins University all have a reputation for preparing students well for the medical school curriculum. These programs allow students to take medical school courses with current medical students and provide the pre-med students enrolled in these special master’s programs with very good medical school advising.
Other strong “record enhancing” programs are at Drexel University and Duquesne University. Applicants looking to address a lower GPA are not limited to these programs. Any graduate program offering a master’s degree in the sciences would be a possibility. Discuss your options with your pre-health advisor. There are also special programs designed for students under-represented in medicine, such as Southern Illinois University’s Medical/Dental Education Preparatory Program (MEDPREP).

If you came late to the decision to enter medical school or did not take the science prerequisites as an undergraduate, look for a postbaccalaureate program designed to give students interested in medicine the prerequisite courses they will need to apply to medical school. Check out the AAMC’s

postbaccalaureate premedical programs search engine information on various programs. There are programs available that focus on applicants making a career change, applicants who need to enhance their academic records, minority applicants, and economically or educationally disadvantaged applications.

Click here to view the AMCAS Essays for Acceptance Webinar and discover how to create an effective, compelling AMCAS essay.

 This post is excerpted from 101 Tips on Getting Into Medical School by Jennifer C. Welch, who has served as the Director of Admissions at SUNY Upstate Medical School since 2001.

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If your grades were weak during a particular semester or year, it is important that you address this somewhere in your application or in a letter to the admissions committee.

Do not leave it up to the admissions committee to determine what was going on in your life during that time. The committee will notice the inconsistency in your grades.  They will wonder whether you are trying to hide something, and may question your ability to perform consistently well academically. Do not make excuses about what was going on, just be honest and straightforward.

Admissions committees look for a progression of grades. They want to be sure that, as you take more challenging courses each year, your GPA continues to rise. When evaluating applications, in an effort to select students for their next incoming class, the admissions committee wants to be assured that if you are accepted, you will consistently work hard and be successful in medical school. If there was any extenuating circumstance that affected your academic performance, such as an illness or the loss of a close family member, share this information.

Related Resources:

• Tips for Medical Students with a Low GPA, a blog post.
• Five Fatal Flaws (and how to avoid them in your personal statement)
• Write Your Way to Medical School, an ebook.

This post is excerpted from 101 Tips on Getting Into Medical School by Jennifer C. Welch, who has served as the Director of Admissions at SUNY Upstate Medical School since 2001.

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An “A” isn’t what it used to be, according to an Inside Higher Ed article last week, “Grades on the Rise­.” At private universities all around the country, more and more students are getting As and are graduating with higher GPAs.

According to Stuart Rojstaczer, former Duke University professor and founder of Gradeinflation.com, and Christopher Healy, an associate professor at Furman University, the national mean GPA at a collection of universities has risen about 0.1 points each decade, starting in the 1960s (with an exception of the 1970s). Mean GPA in the 1950s was 2.52; in 2007 it had risen to 3.11.

Rojstaczer and Healy offer a few explanations for grade inflation. One is that college administrators want their students to do well, to get into top grad schools and to secure good jobs. Another reason is the “pervasive use of teacher evaluation forms.” You can tell a teacher all you want that there’s no connection between grading and a student’s opinion of a professor, but in the end, the proof is in the pudding—professors who grade more leniently get more positive evaluations. A third explanation relates to student expectations: When a student purchases a rather expensive education at a top university, he or she will expect to get the highest return on investment—a C average at Harvard (a rare, but possible circumstance) is no where nearly as valuable as an A average. Admins don’t want unhappy customers.

Other data from Rojstaczer and Healy’s study shows that:

• GPAs at private institutions are on average about 0.1 points higher that at public institutions among students with identical SAT scores at each.
• GPAs at private institutions are on average about 0.2 points higher than at public institutions among students who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class and had a high school GPA of at least 3.75.
• Students who major in the humanities or social sciences have higher GPAs that engineer majors.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

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Academic part of your Grad School application includes Under-Gradate Transcripts, GPA (Percentage) and GRE Scores.

You will learn how Academic factors are used during profile evaluation by Graduate School admission committee.

Grad Student Profile
Every student profile will fit into one of the following category

Low GPA, Low Scores
High GPA, Low Scores
High GPA and High Scores

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Post from: Happy Schools Blog

Academics = Transcripts + GPA + GRE

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It’s late February, already in the ebb of the current MBA admissions season.  As such, it’s the perfect time for people considering applying next season to break out of hibernation and start tackling a part of the process that is often shortchanged: school selection.  

In ten-plus years of MBA admissions consulting I have found that a large percentage of otherwise highly capable and focused people basically wing it when it comes to this list.  “I’m just applying to all the top ten.”  Top ten according to what source?  “I realize now [after R2 deadlines have passed] I was overreaching.  Are there any good schools I can still apply to?”  Probably.  “I’m applying to H/S/W, with Duke as my safety.”  Duke as your safety?   By starting to plan your list of prospective schools now, you can avoid these and similar problems (yes, these responses are all problems). 

By taking a thoughtful, systematic approach to school selection, you will save time, money, and effort (even if you expend more of all initially).  You will save precious energy for the applications.  You will be able to start planning school visits and recommendations, two things that often get tangled up when approached in the heat of the application season. 

Over the next month I will present a series of blog posts providing tips and approaches to developing a solid list of schools.  Each person’s needs are unique, and there is no one formula that works for everyone, so it will be less a step-by-step process than a guide showing what questions to ask yourself, how to answer them, and make decisions accordingly.  We’ll cover assessing your profile; determining your needs, wants, and dislikes; the role of rankings; how many schools to apply to; and other topics.  We’ll also provide examples.

Ready?  Here are a couple of things you can and should do right now to get started on the school selection process for next season:

• Capture on paper or whatever electronic medium you prefer those random thoughts that have been floating around in your head, e.g., “top 10”; “friendly to older applicants”; “strong quant focus”; “need to be able to fly home to my ailing mother in an hour.”
• Read blogs of MBA students not just at schools you’re already interested in but from a wider array, to get a subjective feel for different programs and your responses to them (pay attention to your responses!).
• If possible talk to MBA students and ask them about their school selection process; what went well and what proved difficult or problematic; what they would do differently.
• Visit schools now!  Visit schools you know you are interested in (you can always re-visit later), schools you might be interested in, even schools on the margins.  It’s the perfect time: schools are in session, you’re not pressed by the application process yet, and it’s close enough to application time for your insights to be relevant if you discuss them in essays.  Take advantage of any travel you may do for business or pleasure to schedule a visit, rather than trying to cram everything in the fall – a time when you’ll be even busier than usual with applications plus work.  Moreover, visiting now gives you time to digest and reflect on the experience.

By Cindy Tokumitsu, co-author of The Finance Professional’s Guide to MBA Success, The Consultants’ Guide to MBA Admission, The EMBA Edge, and author of numerous MBA articles and the free, email mini-course, “Ace the EMBA.”  

Related Resources:

• Best Practices for MBA Admissions Webinar
• MBA Ranking Report

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Have you applied to medical school and not received a single interview?  If so the most likely reasons are (1) Your application was submitted too late or (2) Your credentials were not competitive.

Waiting till September to submit to AMCAS and December to complete your secondary applications is a sure way to limit your chance of gaining an interview.  By waiting to such a late date, you defeat yourself as the interview spots are mostly filled before your application was verified and complete.  Don’t make this mistake again.

The second reason is much more complicated.  What does it mean to NOT be competitive?  All applicants know it is a numbers game to get into medical school.  Each school has their own equation using various criteria to assess applicants.  These criteria include academics (undergraduate and graduate GPA), MCAT scores, clinical/research exposure, service commitment and leadership skills.  Among these criteria, GPA and MCAT scores carry the most weight.  If you have a GPA less than 3.0 you will often not be considered further.  Even if your application is strong throughout, a low GPA will often hold you back.  

Post bac programs are an excellent way to prove your academic aptitude to admission committees.  Many programs types are available at both the undergraduate (certificate and post-bac) and graduate (MA, MS and certificate) levels.  If your undergraduate science GPA is below of 3.0 then you need to repeat your pre-med requirements.  If your undergraduate science GPA is average (3.0-3.3) it is likely not competitive and a graduate program may be more suitable for you if you want to improve your chances of interview.  Post-bac programs are an excellent way to raise your science GPA if you are ready to put all your effort into succeeding.  Many schools offer such graduate programs and by completing one and earning a high GPA (>3.5), then you can prove your academic aptitude that may have been the weak link in your undergraduate record.  Completing any post-bac program requires you to WORK to achieve the highest GPA possible.  Remember, attending a post-bac program requires both a personal and financial commitment, however, success will definitely allow you to have a more competitive application moving forward.   

By guest blogger Theresa Davies-Heerema, Ph.D., who has advised many medical and dental school applicants during her career in post-graduate education.

Related Resources:

• 5 Fatal Flaws
• Sample AMCAS Essays

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