Saberial Posted August 19, 2006 Report Share Posted August 19, 2006 Just had a quick question about entering recommended courses. Most of the 'recommended' courses are at the introductory level. I did many higher level courses such as advanced organic and inorganic, etc in which I did extremely well compared to my 1st, 2nd year courses. My question is, which ones do I enter as the GPA difference is substantial? Should I enter them both? Thanks in advance for help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happy2bme Posted August 19, 2006 Report Share Posted August 19, 2006 Unless I am reading the current application materials wrong.... At the University of Calgary you MUST enter ALL courses you have ever taken at any and all postsecondary institutions. You can not pick and choose which courses you want them to look at. Even if you leave out courses, they will show up on your transcripts when the office receives them, so you can't hide any bad marks. From these marks they will use your best two years if you are OOP for the special formula, after that they look at your entire record and application. Recommended courses are just that, recommended. Good luck with your application! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saberial Posted August 21, 2006 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2006 Ahh, I think you misunderstood my question. My intention is not to 'hide' any bad marks because as you mentioned they show up on my transcript. My question was whether nor not I should enter the higher-level biology and chemistry courses as recommended or not in ADDITION to the introductory courses they list as 'recommended'. But, I've found the answer to my query. Thanks for your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happy2bme Posted August 23, 2006 Report Share Posted August 23, 2006 Sorry I can't see what the new application looks like without signing up as an applicant. Does it actually have space to input "recommended" courses? The old application never had anything like that. We just had to input every course, the grade and the course weight and degree obtained etc. Sorry I didn't mean to insinuate that you were trying to hide "bad marks", I was just trying to say that all courses needed to be put down on the application, although it did come across that way, I do apologize. This forum has become very quiet since the switch over, hopefully there will be more action come Fall. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p0tus Posted August 23, 2006 Report Share Posted August 23, 2006 Hah hah I think that's because most of the regular posters got in this year, Happy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuantum Posted August 23, 2006 Report Share Posted August 23, 2006 Just had a quick question about entering recommended courses. Most of the 'recommended' courses are at the introductory level. I did many higher level courses such as advanced organic and inorganic, etc in which I did extremely well compared to my 1st, 2nd year courses. My question is, which ones do I enter as the GPA difference is substantial? Should I enter them both? Thanks in advance for help! Well the University of Calgary has a table of recommended courses you can find on page 9 of this: http://files.myweb.med.ucalgary.ca/files/62/files/unprotected/Applicants_Manual_for_On-Line_Application.pdf . You'll notice that most of these courses are first or second year courses. So, for stuff like intro. biology, that'd be considered recommended and the rest of the upper level biology wouldn't be the recommended. I think once you take a look at this chart, it should explain things a bit better. All the courses that can fulfill these recommended courses should go as 'recommended' the rest should not. I hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgray2 Posted August 23, 2006 Report Share Posted August 23, 2006 lol ... because i was super geeky, i made up a fake ucalgary account anyway with no intention of submitting it. but it looks like everything's the same as last year except for the references. so what i can say is that when it comes time to submit your application, you get to see a copy of what the adcom sees. if you don't like it, you can hit back and change a few things around. this is helpful when you're trying to cut out lines from your essay because it's too long (ie., you don't want to waste a whole line on a single word), or when you're trying to adjust your marks. when you enter in your recommended courses, you will have to enter them in under generic subheadings. for example, biol231, a recommended course, will be transformed only to "biology". you can kinda cheat a bit and look at the course content as the descriptor. chem351 (o-chem) can be transformed to be represented as "organic chemistry". i didn't actualy take stat211 (or whatever the statistics course was), rather the psychology version of stats. but i labeled my psyc312 as "statistics" rather than "psychology" anyway. what you will find is that they will look at the recommended courses under the heading "biology" or "chemistry" or "organic chemistry" etc. however, if i remember correctly, they will take only the last two courses labeled as "bio" or "chem" etc to give the adcom your "recommended course" gpa. (ie., in your case, for the biology/chem etc. courses, the adcom will see a 4.0 if you did really well in your upper year bio/chem etc courses as opposed to the not-so-4.0 that you received in your first year intro bio courses. if you got a D in you upper level biology of evolution class, you could categorize that as an evolution/ecology class rather than a biology class ... note that they do have the option of seeing your entire transcript. but it's key to have high numbers in your recommended course list because the file reviewer most likely will not spend that much time on your application, let alone on your actual transcript. so it's nice to put your best foot forward here. that's why just before submitting the application, you should play around quite a bit first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saberial Posted August 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted August 23, 2006 No worries, Happy. I didn't phrase the question in the best of terms either! I e-mailed Susan Taylor and she suggested to just put in the recommended courses and that the adcom will see that I did better in the upper-level classes. jgray2: That's good to know that they will look at my upper level courses when giving the adcom my recommended GPA. The reason I ask is because it makes a huge difference in my application. I was not serious about school my first two years which resulted in a GPA of around 2.5. However, my third and fourth years were damn near 4.0 in which I did take higher level courses (advance organic, physics, etc) and I want the adcom to take notice of this huge increase in GPA. So just looking for a way to do this within the application because, as jgray mentioned, it's important to put your best foot forward... Appreciate all the help! This board and it's members are invaluable! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daryn Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 What would constitute as a "biology" course? Neurobiology? Endocrinology? Pathology? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirsteen Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 What would constitute as a "biology" course? Neurobiology? Endocrinology? Pathology? Hi there, Any of these courses could seemingly fall under the bailiwick of Biology. Cheers, Kirsteen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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