GPA trend: relevent or insignificant?

[Guest Turg82]

Hello everybody I got another question for you:rollin

 

Which of the following scenario do you think is most favorable?

Keep in mind that the average GPA of best two years will be relatively the same:

 

a) Having GPA that is constant throughout your undergrad.

 

Having GPA that is excellent for first two years of undergrad but miserable last two years.

 

c) Having GPA that is quite low for the first year but will continually rise to a very high GPA for the last year of undergrad.

 

d) It does not matter since the admission committee only care about the average GPA of your best two years period.

 

too much practice for MCAT... everything must be in a form of multiple choice:lol

[Guest sparkle]

Hi Turg82,

 

mmm...trick question, eh? Well, I will have to go with answer © - having a low 1st year GPA and continually rising to a very high GPS for last year. This is understandable as many students adapt and grow throughout their undergrad years. There are schools that look at trends in your GPA. For example, UBC in particular will look at trends and they calculate your GPA in three ways: pre-req GPA, overall GPA, and the last 60 credits GPA. U of O also has a weighed GPA calcuation in which your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years are progressively weighed more heavily. Now, I would also have to say answer (d) is also viable. Some schools will elimintate your lowest year (i.e. UofA) and some only look at your best 2 years (i.e. Western...I think). Now, as tricky as your question is, I would also have to say (a) is a good answer, provided that your constant GPA is admirably high So I guess that means answers a, c, d, and not b.

 

Good luck on the MCAT!

[Guest aneliz]

I don't think that there is a single right answer to this question... and many schools calculate your GPA in different ways to emphasize what they feel is important (and this varies with different schools).

 

For example, some schools just do a cGPA...and count all of your courses that you have ever taken equally... I don't think that they look at them by year at all...so they wouldn't notice any trends.

 

Some schools weight the GPA...so the courses that you took in 3rd year are worth 3x as much as those from 1st year.

 

Some schools will drop your worst courses as long as you take a full course load.

 

Some schools look at each year individually and calculate an independent GPA for each year. They then look at ONLY your best two years... but they don't look to see if the best two years are your first two, last two, or some other combination.

 

So, I guess there needs to be another option on your multiple choice (all of the above, depending on the school). Most schools don't care....the only problems I see are if your last two years are significantly lower, you will have difficulty at the schools that weight your senior years higher in a wGPA calculation.

[Guest peachy]

I just can't imagine how the answer to this question would be useful to anybody! It is always advantageous to have better grades, and if you did poorly before, you should always try to do better. I hope nobody is sitting down and deciding which year to have crummy grades in....

[Guest thecod]

i would say A. consistency is best, providing your gpa is high (somewhere arounnd ~3.75+)

[Guest coastal79]

agree with peachy, who cares? You've got what you've got.

[Guest noncestvrai]

I'm with the peach too.

 

Remember that GPA is like your genotype, it is hard to change, so make sure you keep it high.

 

noncestvrai

[Guest BlackNeon]

Choice A. If you can pull off a high GPA all the way through.