Even though AACOMAS takes the higher grade to breakdown your GPA, your entire transcript will be available to the school so they will still be able to view both grades.
Oopps.
I didnt mean to say it was “easier” as it isnt. Just a better way to address the GPA issue. Although AACOM does send out full transcripts, the two colleges i talked to about it locally told me they simply look at the GPA and see students who retake classes as people who recognized a weakness and addressed it.
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Even though AACOMAS takes the higher grade to breakdown your GPA, your entire transcript will be available to the school so they will still be able to view both grades.
This isn’t exactly true Jeff. According to the Assistant Director of Application Services, Jennifer Richardson, AACOMAS calculates the GPA using the MOST RECENT course.
We’ve discussed this before and the original post can be viewed HERE.
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Even though AACOMAS takes the higher grade to breakdown your GPA, your entire transcript will be available to the school so they will still be able to view both grades.
This isn’t exactly true Jeff. According to the Assistant Director of Application Services, Jennifer Richardson, AACOMAS calculates the GPA using the MOST RECENT course.
We’ve discussed this before and the original post can be viewed HERE.
Hi Geoff,
uh oh I can’t find any thread in that link; it comes up empty for me.
Anyway, aren’t both statements true? I.e. AACOMAS calculates GPA using most recent course (in the event of duplicates) and the schools still have access to one’s old, bad grades?
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Terry,
I would strongly suggest molecular biology, before the MCAT if you can.
Larry
Hi Larry,
For the record, I have only physics left to take. That’s part of my problem; my courses are already water under the bridge. Luckily, at my current school (Harvard) physics is supposed to be one of the easier courses to do well in so I’m considering staying there for that reason. Plus, I’ve already started the class once so I kind of know what it’ll be like.
Thanks Geoff. I stand corrected regarding the GPA calculations. However, the point I was trying to make was the schools will have a full transcript available to them. The schools will be able to see BOTH courses! Come interview time (depending on the school) you may have to explain both courses.
Hey
I also wondered about this so i called them
They told me that every school you apply to gets exactly what you send them. So the answer is yes. The schools get your former grade and your new grade in any class but the GPA calc. is only with the newest/highest grade.
So good points mentioned here. You may very well have to answer questions about why you did badly in the first attempt. Now, if your in an interview you’ve already passed the “got the numbers to get in issue” so i would simply suggest being honest.
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Thanks Geoff. I stand corrected regarding the GPA calculations. However, the point I was trying to make was the schools will have a full transcript available to them. The schools will be able to see BOTH courses! Come interview time (depending on the school) you may have to explain both courses.
Absolutely! The schools will see all of your grades regardless of some grades not being used for GPA calculation. We all know that the GPA is used somewhat in our applications and the higher the better. I don’t know about repeating a course to get the GPA higher though. Personally, I’m not going to do it. If I need to raise my GPA I’m going to do it by taking advanced courses and kicking a$$!
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uh oh I can’t find any thread in that link; it comes up empty for me.
Hmmm… that’s weird… it still works for me. Is anyone else having problems getting to that page that I linked to?
Geoff,
The link worked for me, however the link inside that linked thread does not come up, but from the looks of your message it isn’t needed.
Larry
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Hmmm… that’s weird… it still works for me. Is anyone else having problems getting to that page that I linked to?
Hi Geoff,
This link works. Notice that the only difference is that yours says Page 0 and mine is Page 10. I don’t even know what “page” means. Interestingly, searching for message #10120 netted me nothing except your recent posting in this thread. This whole ubbthreads system reminds me of Organic Chemistry… no one truly understands it…
So, while I have been told by professors that I should not repeat courses but rather take upper level courses and do well in them, it sounds as if at least for osteopathic applications, retaking and doing well in a course is a good idea. So retaking general biology and raising a B to an A would make my application more competitive?
Hi Terry,
I don’t think I’d spend time trying to raise a B to an A. I mean, technically a B means that you have a good mastery of the subject. If you had grades below a B I’d probably say yeah, go ahead and repeat them, but I think the idea of doing upper-level classwork is probably a better one. Are you planning to take anything besides physics this year? I know some med schools want biochem now and HES offers a two-semester series of that. Could you do that? and/or some higher-level bio courses?
As for the masters idea… I guess that’s probably something I’d address to the med schools you are interested in, how much of a boost that might give you. My other question on that would be whether the masters degree would actually help you with any other career aspirations, i.e. if you don’t pursue or get accepted at med school, will having the degree allow you to find a job you’re interested in or is it something that doesn’t really have any practical application… I don’t know much about these programs myself, these are just questions that pop up in my mind.
Good luck with your plans! I’ve decided to forgo orgo at HES this fall… wanted to take a psych class instead, but they’re not offering the one I need this year. Oh well, will miss the Harvard quad!
Hi RCD,
As a computer programmer I’ve thought about a masters in biology. A degree certainly would be a useful credential if I were to give up on health care and go into bioinformatics, which would build on my software engineering skills. However I’m just not particularly interested. But people get real excited when I mention the idea. Medicine to them sounds like a strange fantasy, but this sounds plausible, so they jump on it and start gushing about what a great fit it would be. People are funny sometimes… 
I’ve signed up for Physics and biochemistry. I started physics once before but dropped it because of impending baby and concerns about focussing and getting better grades. So much for that idea. My grades sucked anyway; I should have just stayed in. Plus, HES physics is reputed to be one of the easier courses to get an A in. Because of that I’m having trouble deciding whether to switch schools or stay put.
Is orgo required for your program?
I’m also signed up for massage therapy this fall. Now this is something I can get excited about!
Anyway thanks for your msg!
Cheers,
People are funny. Once I decided to go from medicine to nursing suddenly people were telling me how great nursing is. Couldn’t figure out whether they were trying to console me (um, yeah, I didn’t switch from pre-med because I couldn’t handle it, it was a personal choice regarding what I want from a career) or because, like you said, medicine seems like this strange other world to some people and nursing isn’t (?). Grr… oh well. Smile, nod, move on 
The programs I’m looking at now don’t require orgo… I actually still wanted to take it because I really enjoyed chem and it sounded interesting, but I’m having a hard time spending money on classes that aren’t essential at this point. So… it’s human growth & development at the local CC for me. Would have preferred to take it at HES, but it’s not offered there this year.
Good luck with the massage therapy! My best friend from HS just graduated from a program (up in ME). I was able to score some free massages as a result 
Hope you enjoy it!
Let us know how everything goes…
-R
Yeah, a classmate switched from pre-med to PA this spring and ran into some of that. PA? Uh, so why PA? her pre-med friends would say. “friends” I mean.
I’m stoked about massage therapy. I went to an introductory workshop and we paired off to do a beginner treatment on each other. My partner was a family physician so we had a merry time. She’s really psyched about homeopathy and meditation and wants to add MT to her bag of tricks.
Isn’t it great how we’ve hijacked the MCAT topic?
Well I took a 2nd MCAT diagnostic yesterday, the 3R from the amcas website, and got it “officially” graded by their system. The result was more encouraging than my first effort: 14 verbal, 7 physical, 8 life science.
Once again, I hadn’t yet reviewed my gen chem and bio, so I regard this as a “practice practice” rather than a realistic indicator of my ultimate performance.
This time, though, I did it under more realistic test conditions, in a quiet library with a stopwatch, and I managed to complete almost all the answers within the time limits. I am also learning some tricks about the passages; some of the questions aren’t based on the passage at all, so it was possible to answer 2-3 of the questions after only a cursory glance at the passage!
I’m also figuring out that the MCAT isn’t about understanding passages; it’s about answering multiple choice questions accurately. There’s a subtle difference. Rather than master each passage, I tried to squeak by with the barest minimum reading that I could get away with. In many cases, I was able to shave minutes off my study of a passage and still get a good score.
Also, unlike what I’ve heard many people say here and elsewhere, I found the MCAT kind of fun!! Go figure. I’m really looking forward to my Kaplan class and completing physics and see how things pan out in the spring. Now if I could just figure out how to do better on my course exams… 
I agree MCAT questions can be like puzzles, particularly for the first few hours. And I think half the purpose of the passages is to distract you with stuff you don’t need to know. I think you’re on the right track here! Woohoo!
Hi–excuse my ignorance, but how did you get your practice mcat graded “by the system”? Did you pay for the test or grading?
Thanks,
Barb
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Hi–excuse my ignorance, but how did you get your practice mcat graded “by the system”? Did you pay for the test or grading?
Thanks,
Barb
The amcas website has a mechanism for automatically grading your practice exams. You just key in your answers and press “grade”. It can give you a full report of the results broken down by topic. There’s one free exam there right now, 3R, and a few others that you have to pay $80 to access. Check it out:
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/start.htm
Good luck,