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GPA CALCULATION UALBERTA MED SCHOOL???


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Hi there! 

I'm a first year science student at the U of A and I'm hoping to go into medicine (although I'm currently freaking out)... 

On the Ualberta website, it says that they will drop the lowest year for students if that year isn't the only one that has 30 transferable credits (which is 10 courses for the whole year), meaning I'd need to be taking at least two years of 10 courses each if I wanted any of my years out of undergraduate to not by counted in cGPA. 

However, I'm having an absolutely shitty semester right now because I'm working part time and attending full time school and got stuck with some pretty bad professors. I'm talking I got a 60% on my chemistry 101 midterm and a 55% on my bio lab exam... 

So, if I were to take at least 2 courses in the spring and summer term (because that's counted as full time right?), would they drop my worst semester and replace it with the spring and summer courses for that same year? 

Like if I retook chemistry 101 and stats 151 in the spring and summer, would they count it towards my cGPA instead of my first semester of first year?? 

PLEASE SOMEBODY ANSWER because when I called they couldn't explain it properly and I am still a little confused. 

 

 

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Perhaps I am mistaken, but I think you may be misunderstanding this a bit. Per the UofA website: 

“To calculate cGPA, we include all transferable post-secondary coursework to which a grade was assigned while the student was enrolled full-time (by UofA definition) during the academic year (September through April) or full-time during the Spring and Summer terms (May through August). For undergraduate students, to be considered full-time you must complete 18 transferable units of course weight (ucw) during the academic year (September through April) or 12 ucw during the Spring and Summer terms (May through August).

Most courses in undergrad are 3 credits, so you’ll need 6 classes a year to be considered full-time (not 10, necessarily) and 4 courses in spring/summer if you want to have additional coursework count towards your GPA. I’d caution you against doing the spring/summer idea unless absolutely necessary as it is highly condensed and it will also eliminate any sort of “break” you would otherwise get. Undergrad is hard, first year is big learning curve, but doing a full year without a break could cause burn out in some. Not saying you can’t do it, but just evaluate if you actually need to. Another thing that students will do to help their GPA is take 1-2 courses in spring/summer that are more challenging because the GPA won’t count when applying to med (but that includes if you do well in the class). As for dropping your lowest year: 

“For applicants presenting 4 or more full-time academic years (September through April) of transferable post-secondary coursework, we may exclude the lowest academic year from calculation, provided that it is not the most recent full-time academic year, nor the only year in which the student earned 30 ucw.

This means that your first, second, or third year could have the GPA dropped. Your fourth year is automatically counted. To apply for ualberta med they expect you to have at least 1/4 academic years where you take 10 classes (30 ucw). They do this to evaluate your academic performance under a heavy course load. The academic year that gets dropped can be any year between 18-30 ucw(except fourth year). You just can’t drop a year if it is the only year where you had 30ucw. Technically, you only HAVE to take one 30 ucw academic year to fulfill the requirements for applying to ualberta med. However, you have to consider the requirements for your program and to graduate. 
 

I hope some of this made sense. If not, just let me know and I’ll elaborate. :) 

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