Calculation of academic mark...

[scrubs]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone knew how the academic mark is calculated. I just can't figure out how I lost the marks I lost...?

[haiku_guy]

There were a bunch of threads about this a little while ago (just before the interview ones started).

 

The concensus was that the academic calc was a combination of GPA, the fulfillment of the "recommended" courses, trends in your marks, conferral of degree(s), and some subjective factors.

[jose]

i find it frustrating that uofc suggests that they do not have prerequisites but then distributes points according to whether or not you have "recommended" courses. It's a bit misleading.

I also don't understand how they distribute points if you have any graduate courses.

i lost most of my points for gpa and mcat (sigh, will be rewriting that baby)

and scored very well in all the other categories...missed the cutoff by 4 points.

[Smurfette]

I'm curious to know where I lost marks in the transcripts part too. Do you get extra marks for things like getting having completed (as opposed to still completing) your bachelor's, doing a masters, etc?

 

About pre-requisites: I don't think it's particularly misleading. Having pre-req's would imply that if you did not obtain the pre-req's, then you could not apply (ie. they would throw out your application immediately). That is not the case.

[jose]

I understand that you can apply without pre req's

BUT are you really given a totally fair shot without them?

I'm not sure, I'm just asking? perhaps if they included some information on the application that not having these courses could hinder your chances of getting maximum points. The way it is currently spelled out on the application makes it seem like these courses would be helpful because they may be beneficial for the actual medical curriculum, not that not having them can actually affect how many points you get.

But then again, i may have misread.

As a graduate student who is almost finished my phd the thought of going back and taking undergraduate courses, well i can't say it is terribly appealing... but maybe it is what i have to do. Seeing as how the only thing I can really improve at this point is my mcat... unless after 5 years of post-secondary education i re-do a bachelors.

[haiku_guy]

I understand that you can apply without pre req's

BUT are you really given a totally fair shot without them?

I'm not sure, I'm just asking? perhaps if they included some information on the application that not having these courses could hinder your chances of getting maximum points. The way it is currently spelled out on the application makes it seem like these courses would be helpful because they may be beneficial for the actual medical curriculum, not that not having them can actually affect how many points you get.

But then again, i may have misread.

As a graduate student who is almost finished my phd the thought of going back and taking undergraduate courses, well i can't say it is terribly appealing... but maybe it is what i have to do. Seeing as how the only thing I can really improve at this point is my mcat... unless after 5 years of post-secondary education i re-do a bachelors.

 

I don't think anyone is SURE about anything on this question. I don't think that there is any way to make sure that you get maximum points, or if it is even possible to do so. I makes sense to me that you need some leeway to weigh other factors when considering someone's academic record. For example, how do you compare someone who took a broad course load versus a narrow and focused biochem degree? How do you compare a Ph.D. in Microbiology to a B.Sc. in Art History? All are valid and challenging things to do in university, and require ability to learn and think abstractly, but are very very different.

 

I think that the MCAT is a good thing to take again. I have said before that it is my feeling that a good score on the MCAT makes you look competent, even if you don't have the prereq courses. U of C's evaluation of my transcript was better this year than last, and I don't think that the applicant pool had significantly lower GPA's than last, so maybe the MCAT gets into the eval of academics as well (even if subconsciously).

 

Anyway, food for thought.

 

P.S. I abjectly refuse to go back to do those pesky pre-req's again (I have a Master's) so I know how you feel. Physics, bah! Chemistry, useless! Math, horrible! Screw you guys, I'm going home!

[fishy0118]

I understand that you can apply without pre req's

BUT are you really given a totally fair shot without them?

 

I have a BSc and MEng in electrical engineering ... that means i don't have a lot of those pre-req courses (esp. the bio related ones). So, i can say pretty sure that you don't need the whole bunch of pre-reqs to get an interview. My pre-int academic score is (relatively) low, but I know it's because my GPA is not spectacular, and not because of the missing pre-reqs.

[jose]

I think that the MCAT is a good thing to take again. I have said before that it is my feeling that a good score on the MCAT makes you look competent, even if you don't have the prereq courses. U of C's evaluation of my transcript was better this year than last, and I don't think that the applicant pool had significantly lower GPA's than last, so maybe the MCAT gets into the eval of academics as well (even if subconsciously).

 

Thanks!

that is actually pretty comforting to someone who is new to this whole process.

SO let me get this straight...your academic didn't change in the past year, but you re-wrote the mcat and did better?

Sorry if i am prying I am just trying to get a grasp at whether or not this is a battle i can win.

[haiku_guy]

Thanks!

that is actually pretty comforting to someone who is new to this whole process.

SO let me get this straight...your academic didn't change in the past year, but you re-wrote the mcat and did better?

Sorry if i am prying I am just trying to get a grasp at whether or not this is a battle i can win.

 

Nothing changed on my transcript. I re-wrote the MCAT and went from a 29Q to 36Q.

 

Yes their eval of my academic stuff was better this year than last. Not a ton, but every bit helps.

 

Interestingly, the evaluations of all other areas of my application went down from last year. I used the same references, and had more EC's. I was expecthing to score lower on the essay than last year...

 

You can win the battle, just don't expect to know exactly how you won it. The only hard-wired section for UC apps is the MCAT. They calculate it with a specific formula.

 

Good luck!

[LightsEternity]

I'm really interested in how they determined my academic score; I thought academics was my forte, but I ended up losing the majority of my pts in this area.

[Gadzillar]

The prerequisite versus recommended distinction is something I try to stress whenever people ask me about applying to Calgary, because there is are some people with a huge misconception that nobody cares whether you take those courses. If admissions didn't care, they wouldn't take the step of recommending them. The fact that they're not full-out prerequisites is a technicality that allows people from all educational backgrounds to have a fair shot, but you should still take those courses if you can...they're recommended for a reason.

[LightsEternity]

so is 35.67/50 expected if I'm a 3rd year undergrad with ~3.94 GPA and all the pre-req courses filled (except sociology/anthropology/psychology)? I got an interview anyway, but I'm just curious to see whether this score was low because of the lack of that particular course or because I'm a 3rd year applicant. Should I bother to contact admissions w/ regards to that? (and figure out how I can improve that particular score if things don't go well this year)

[Nephets]

Hey LightsEternity,

In previous years, they have not provided a detailed breakdown of each component in your application, just the final score on each section. So in your case, they would send you a scoring sheet from everyone who reviewed your file indicating what you scored on your academic section, but it would not provide reasons for the score. Hope that helps.

N.

[oneslickcat]

I had extremely poor grades (flunked out of school) as an un-classified student directly after high school. To get back on track academically, I took classes at other schools and eventually returned full-time to U of C and finished my degree with 90% of the pre-req's and a reasonable 3 yr GPA (3.7). I scored 38/50 on the academic portion of the pre-interview scoring.

 

My guess is that they are looking for consistency, growth and performance. I would imagine there is a benefit to successfully completing the pre-req courses, but there are a multitude of factors that go into the total score. For instance, it may reflect poorly and lower your score if you scored great grades in 2nd year biology and only average in 3rd year biology courses. I'm fairly certain there is a subjective component to the GPA scoring that we'll never fully understand.

[Gadzillar]

so is 35.67/50 expected if I'm a 3rd year undergrad with ~3.94 GPA and all the pre-req courses filled (except sociology/anthropology/psychology)? I got an interview anyway, but I'm just curious to see whether this score was low because of the lack of that particular course or because I'm a 3rd year applicant. Should I bother to contact admissions w/ regards to that? (and figure out how I can improve that particular score if things don't go well this year)

 

Yeah, as said above, it would be really hard to comment on exactly why you got the score you did, although I would think your situation would be pretty acceptable and understandable. I don't think missing that social science course could cause that large a deduction. My comment was aimed more at the people who have heard rumours and think they can completely ignore all the pre-reqs and it won't hurt them at all.

[scrubs]

so is 35.67/50 expected if I'm a 3rd year undergrad with ~3.94 GPA and all the pre-req courses filled (except sociology/anthropology/psychology)? I got an interview anyway, but I'm just curious to see whether this score was low because of the lack of that particular course or because I'm a 3rd year applicant. Should I bother to contact admissions w/ regards to that? (and figure out how I can improve that particular score if things don't go well this year)

 

Hey, I'm in exactly the same position. I'm a 3yr applicant so I have some science prerequisites that I'm doing this year (like biochem), but my average is ~3.97 and I got a 39/50. That's why I started this thread, I just don't know how I lost so many marks. I'm still debating about whether to call and ask or not. If you call, let me know what they say.

[heathcliff]

I initially thought the same thing when I saw my own score, but I think what it comes down to is that if a 3rd year applicant with 3.9 gpa is given, say, 45/50, that leaves a very narrow range for them to allow for 4th year applicants (if they even stratify based on this), masters students, PhDs, diversity of program, consistency, growth, etc. Because these things probably play very important roles in differentiating between hundreds of applicants who are already very academically competitive, I wouldn't find it surprising if they allowed a lot of room to assess these individualities.

 

Also, I'm guessing that the scores are probably scaled according to some kind of formula (based on the wacky decimals that my scores had) to equalize between everything... so even though transcripts account for 50%...it may not be possible to get a score of 50... so reading into our scores as xx/50 might not be totally accurate? Who knows...!

[Smurfette]

I initially thought the same thing when I saw my own score, but I think what it comes down to is that if a 3rd year applicant with 3.9 gpa is given, say, 45/50, that leaves a very narrow range for them to allow for 4th year applicants (if they even stratify based on this), masters students, PhDs, diversity of program, consistency, growth, etc. Because these things probably play very important roles in differentiating between hundreds of applicants who are already very academically competitive, I wouldn't find it surprising if they allowed a lot of room to assess these individualities.

 

I agree. I bet 40 is already a good score. They probably break down that 50 marks into a bunch of things including: level of schooling (eg. schooling), breadth, honours vs. non-honours programs, difficulty of courseload (eg. number of courses, difficult courses), recommended courses, improvement over the years, and probably a purely subjective mark somewhere. It is unlikely that anyone will score very highly in all those areas. For example, even an excellent student with a 4.0 average in 4th year (typically considered an academic "allstar") might "lose" marks for not having completed grad school or maybe didn't have very diverse courses, etc.

[fishy0118]

I agree. I bet 40 is already a good score. They probably break down that 50 marks into a bunch of things including: level of schooling (eg. schooling), breadth, honours vs. non-honours programs, difficulty of courseload (eg. number of courses, difficult courses), recommended courses, improvement over the years, and probably a purely subjective mark somewhere.

 

This is exactly the stuff that one of the ladies at the admissions office told me last year when I inquired about the magic in the 50%.

 

Another note ... I originally thought that each grader would assign an integer score to each of the sections and thus the score difference between applicants would be at least 0.25 (out of 100). But since there are ppl who missed the cut off by 0.05, 0.09 ... and even the cutoff itself is not a multiple of 0.25, it seems to imply a finer granularity in the scoring scheme.

[nevergiveup]

Hopefully this will add some insight:

 

After an unsuccessful application to the U of C last year, I requested a copy of my file showing the marks I was given. Four members of the admissions committee assessed each component of the file and the averages were taken. I was quite shocked to find out that across the four evaluators, I was given a range of scores from about 65%-90% on the academic component. My interpretation of this range was that 65% was quite poor while 90% was quite strong. To me this category seems the least subjective, but obviously this is not the case. It seems that your score is also in some way dependent on who actually assesses your file. One person may feel you're just the average joe while the next could be impressed by what you've accomplished academically. Like anything else, I think people have varying ideas of what a challenging program entails.

 

The whole process is so frustrating- More and more it seems to me the stars have to line up just right for you.

[Smurfette]

Four members of the admissions committee assessed each component of the file and the averages were taken. I was quite shocked to find out that across the four evaluators, I was given a range of scores from about 65%-90% on the academic component. My interpretation of this range was that 65% was quite poor while 90% was quite strong.

 

Wow, that's very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

 

Do you mind if I ask whether you had a very interesting/unique academic history? eg. Did you have really crappy marks in first/second year but then really great marks in third/fourth? I could imagine one evaluator thinking that the crappy marks deserve a 65% while another evaluator thinking the improvement was worth a 90%?

 

That kind of situation would be much more open to interpretation than the student that had an 85% average every single year with a range of marks from 80-90% every single year.

[drcave]

I had a 44.5 with an undergrad biology 85% average every year and a range of marks from 67 (chem 121 from summerterm first year; I only attended 3 classes )- to 98 (organic chem). I also have a MSc with slightly better marks and a few pubs. I'm not sure if they consider MSc. Also I had more than a full courseload every undergrad year and no bird courses (i spent all my electives on more Bio courses or Med prereqs). I'm guessing that 3rd years must be at some disadvantage since my 3.74 GPA garnered better marks than your 3.94 but I'm definetely not complaining. Maybe your double major in underwater basket weaving and beer tasting doesn't carry as much academic weight. Also, I had some scholarships, maybe they count for bonuses? Or perhaps I just got lucky and had my application reviewed by Dr. E.Z. Marker, Dr. Hugh G. Lee Impressed, and Dr. W.T.F. Random.

[HandSolo]

My stance might not be the popular one...but I'll state it anyway. I'm glad that grades can be marked subjectively. Though i wasn't really told this by my guidance counselor, a startling number of people that set their sights on professional programs choose their undergrad accordingly...in that they do it with the knowledge that their undergrad GPA is all that matters come application time. A couple of the more ambitious and less academically oriented of my high school classmates went specifically into programs that they were not interested in but they knew they could pillage academically. Pretty sweet though, selecting courses with difficult sounding names but reputations among former students that painted an "easy A" bullseye on the course calender.

 

I'm not holding it against them at all though, what with the terrible amount of grade inflation in action today which we all have to accept and adapt to if we want to compete for scholarships, funding and admission to competitive programs.

 

However, many truly brilliant and innovative people I know focused more on self-exploration in early university, and took a more relaxed approach to learning what interested them, and not grade grubbing what they found unstimulating. Yet once they'd found their niche, they'd delve into their realm of interest (sometimes after a degree switch or two) and the grades came naturally out of their own passion (for the non performance aspects of their education).

 

And it still holds true that one has more tools at their disposal to recover from a criminal conviction than from a shoddy few years of undergrad grades. Thankfully, standardized tests help rescue some people who realize a year or two late that their undergrad grades actually are more important to their application than they previously thought.

Even so, I think you can glean alot from a person's course selection and performance over the years (if you also look at what else they were doing in their life at the time).

 

One example: Seeing that someone performs exceedingly well in psychology and science courses, yet struggles somewhat in philosophy, but takes as many philosophy courses as possible in lieu of psychology/science at every opportunity throughout their psychology degree. This to me (SUBJECTIVELY) would suggest that the person may be committed to engaging in the experience a philosophical education has to offer in an attempt to round themselves out as a person, even though they understand that their GPA will be the worse for wear as a result.

 

A more perceptive judge than I, with the foresight to obtain information on the applicant's actual degree requirements, could glean a lot.

 

Sure it's subjective, and that sucks for people whose experience on paper is misinterpreted by (or correctly interpreted but fails to impress) a reviewer....but considering HOW MANY SCHOOLS look at grades objectively, I think it's absolutely essential that a few committees still try to use all the applicant's information and numbers in the hope of painting a picture of a complete person.

 

So yeah, selection like this is in the minority, but with 95% (or more) of professional programs concerned only with the unadjusted GPA, i don't see any reason for complaint. This at least serves as a hope for people who have taken a less traditional path into their application year, but are equally (perhaps even more) qualified.

[nevergiveup]

 

Do you mind if I ask whether you had a very interesting/unique academic history? eg. Did you have really crappy marks in first/second year but then really great marks in third/fourth? I could imagine one evaluator thinking that the crappy marks deserve a 65% while another evaluator thinking the improvement was worth a 90%?

 

That kind of situation would be much more open to interpretation than the student that had an 85% average every single year with a range of marks from 80-90% every single year.

 

I'm a consistent A- student involved in tons of other activities, so the range of marks shouldn't have been the issue. In addition, my degree was in molecular biology, so likely not considered the easy road...Having done science, I finished all the recommended classes but one. As far as the sources for the lower scores, maybe 1) I hadn't finished my degree at that point, or 2) the result of a two-year detour to the Haskayne School of Business (although hardly an easy program either).

 

At any rate, I've taken to the idea that as long as you can get to the interview stage, you know you're not completely out to lunch- After that it's a question of everything working out for you in a given year, the committee scoring, interviewing, etc. I think that's all we can hope for when faced with competing for so few spots with so many other deserving applicants.

 

So here's to hoping this is our year...

[drcave]

54 days ...........