I am considering finishing my BA at UPenn’s College of General Studies. Is anybody familiar with this? Does anybody now how this program will be looked upon from Medical Adcoms in comparison to regular Arts and Sciences graduates from the University?
tell us more about it. How is it different from any other degree from Penn?
Mary
Well - Technically the only difference is the simplified admissions process. You aren’t competing against the traditional applicant pool for admission to the school, thus a good chance of admission for good students. I am just wondering how prestigous medical school admissions commitees will view this. Here is some info about the program.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/CGS/undergraduate/ba/
If you do the coursework and do it on par with other UPenn students then I would think there would not be much difference in an admission committee’s mind between your record and someone who got in to those classes via a different process; they are interested in whether you can do the work more than anything. I think also considering that it sounds like you are a “re-entry” student this is actually probably one of the more challenging options you could take on, which would be to your credit.
However, I speak only in generalities and can’t say for sure any better than you could, probably; I would guess that UPenn has some experience explaining this program to graduate and professional schools and you are probably best off going to talk to whoever does this… e.g, if there’s a premed committee, or advisors, they could talk to you about how this issue has figured in people’s applications.
good luck
joe
Thanks Joe,
I was thinking the same thing but just wanted to see if anybody had any first hand experience with this or knew of somebody that went through the program.
Nabeel