post-bacc GPA

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
1

Hello, I am wondering if and how repeated courses (from pre-bacc) are taken into account when figuring a post-bacc GPA.

2

AACOMAS (DO school applications) takes the higher grade. AMCAS (MD school applications) includes both.

3

Thanks. So, if a class is not necessary for med school admission, I would be better leaving a previously low grade alone to avoid having the earlier course effect the post-bacc GPA. It is in Spanish I.

4

Also, while I’m thinking about it, do schools have a minimum number of hours when figuring the post-bacc. I have seen 60 hours, or last 60 hours tossed around. If so, and I only have 59 post-bacc hours, would a school just choose the next class from my last semester before my degree or what?

5

Hmm…here’s the clearer picture:
Original bachelor’s grades are one average, and then broken down for the schools by year. Post-bacc is another average. ALL your undergrad courses are also averaged into one big massive undergrad GPA. There’s also a separate grad GPA if you have grad school courses.
I wouldn’t waste time on re-doing a non-science course at this point. Just knock the pre-med pre-requisites out of the park.

6

So, post-bacc GPA is subdivided between undergrad and grad courses? That would really help me out.
Also, I got an A in Exp Writing, but it was during my degree program (7 or 8 years ago). Should I take another writing course such as Adv Exp Writing in order to have a more current English course grade?

7

So far I haven’t seen that anyone cares how recent your English grades are. English doesn’t change nearly as much as biology. Do the fun stuff instead! (Not that English isn’t fun…)

8

Quote:

So, post-bacc GPA is subdivided between undergrad and grad courses? That would really help me out.
Also, I got an A in Exp Writing, but it was during my degree program (7 or 8 years ago). Should I take another writing course such as Adv Exp Writing in order to have a more current English course grade?

Oh hell no, only take another non-science course if you’d like to and it would substantially enrich your life.
You are over-analyzing this. The big huge GPA that Denise refers to is broken into BCPM (bio, chem, physics, math) and AO (all other). These numbers are aggregates of old and new grades. And while of course you don’t want your AO GPA to suck, neither do you need to stress about it if it’s not too awfully different from your BCPM.
Also as Denise says, each year of your college experience is divvied up into separate lines. So, for example, my freshman year of college I took Chem 1 = C, Calc 1 = B, Calc 2 = C. My BCPM was pretty pathetic. Fortunately it got better.
The courses I took AFTER receiving a degree, in other words my post-bacc stuff which was all prerequisites, were listed on a separate line. If you’re not taking them as part of a graduate degree program, I’m not 100% sure they’d be separated out from your other post-bachelor grades, but I’ll defer to the folks with more recent experience on that.
Mary

9

Thank you.

10

About post-bac grades: AAMC lumps everything you have taken after your first undergraduate degree together as “post-bac”. The only grades that are separated out are the graduate courses. If you have graduate courses from more than one school those are lumped together under “graduate.” Hope that helps clear up some of the questions.
Lu