Need some help on what to do...

[HorizonXP]

Hey guys,

 

I posted something similar in the UT forum, but thought I'd ask more generally here.

 

I did electrical engineering at UW, graduated this past April. My OMSAS GPA is a 3.41. What can I do in the next year to help this? I'm already taking 2 organic chem and 2 biochem courses. I had a couple of rough years that really messed up some of my marks...

 

My MCAT was a 33S (12 PS, 11 VR, 10 BS). I have great volunteer, EC, work experience, and some research. I'm planning on doing a course-based Master's, starting in 2009 if I hopefully get accepted.

 

I'm already applying to provinces other than Ontario, but I'm trying to figure out what to do to improve myself should those not pan out. I've already submitted apps to Memorial, Manitoba, and the US. I'm planning on applying to Saskatchewan, Dalhousie, McGill, and Alberta.

[Jochi1543]

You probably won't have too much luck in other provinces with that GPA, OOP admissions are usually more competitive than IP, unless you had one very bad year or a small # of very bad courses messing up your GPA, in which case you could benefit from, say, U of A's approach of dropping the lowest year, or from Manitoba's dropping the worst 10 courses. Still, the GPAs for OOPs are usually very high. My Manitoba GPA is like a 3.9 and I decided not to even bother applying, for example. My 3.61/3.66 in-province GPA for Alberta was low enough to be rejected flat out post-interview last year. So the right thing for you to do would be to take more undergrad courses to raise your grades.

 

 

That said, I think your best option would depend on your actual GPA/courseload per year. Can you post what GPA you achieved in every undergrad year and how many credits you took that year?

[HorizonXP]

Thanks for responding. My actual degree is "Bachelor of Applied Sciences, Honours Electrical Engineering, Co-op w/ Options in Computer Engineering and Management Sciences." I'm the only one in my class that has 2 options, and I had to take 6 or 7 courses a term a number of times. I took a number of courses while on co-op as well.

 

I'm attaching my GPA Calculator in PDF format. After page 15, it's just the spreadsheets I used to calculate my GPA for different schools. Bear in mind that because of co-op, I never had 1 full consecutive year. Every 4 months, I switched between school and work.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

EDIT: Had to zip it, because it was too big to attach.

GPA_Calculator.pdf.zip

[Jochi1543]

OK, I'm not familiar with how co-op programs are treated, since I wasn't in one myself, so I think your first step would be to contact schools you're interested in and see how they treat co-ops. You definitely have the GPA needed for UWO or Queen's cutoff in some of your years, but they also have certain credit load requirements, and I'm not sure how they treat co-op courseloads. Same with Dal or Toronto (Toronto will only drop your lowest courses if you've maintained a 30-credit courseload in every year), but since you're in a co-op program, your situation is a bit different.

[HorizonXP]

Well, the only thing different about my program is when I took a full course load. For example, in 1st year, most people were in school from September to April, taking 5 courses a semester. In my case, I still took 5 courses a semester, but my 1st semester was September - December 2003, while my 2nd semester was May - August, with a work-term in between from January - April. I will double-check with schools about how they treat that.

 

According to UofT's admissions site:

In those academic programs where the summer session is a regular academic session (e.g, in co-operative programs, or trimested programs), and a regular, full-time academic courseload is taken during the summer, these courses will of course be counted in the GPA calculation. For example, this would occur if a co-op student is on a scheduled work term in the winter session, and then completes their regular academic year over the summer and fall sessions.

 

From previously talking to other admissions officers, this policy is the same, but I can double check.

 

Following UofT's weighted GPA calculation, I have a 3.59 GPA; their minimum is a 3.6, and we know that you need higher to be competitive. Here's what I'm looking to find out:

 

1) I know that I can succeed academically in med school. I did engineering, and I took a heavier course load. How can I get admissions to look at these factors? I mean, as it sits right now, they're just going to skim over my GPA and pass me over.

2) In order to prove to them that I can do the work, I need to show a better GPA. Do I need to get a 2nd undergrad degree to do this? I'd really prefer to do a Master's degree, would that suffice? How about a course-based Master's vs. a thesis-based one? They offer both at UofT in biomedical engineering.

 

If anyone can help answer these questions, I'd really appreciate it.

[Jochi1543]

You don't need to do a second undergrad degree, you can just do a year or so of undergrad coursework - I did that last year and got a 3.97, which improved my overall GPA quite a bit. You probably won't benefit from a master's all that much. If you REALLY wanna do it, certainly go for it, but if you're solely thinking of it as a way to make yourself more marketable to med schools, don't bother. As far as course-based vs. thesis-based master's goes...a thesis-based master's is obviously more impressive, but with a course-based, you'll have more grades to count for your new GPA. Of course, first you need to see whether your schools of choice will actually count your graduate GPA along with your undergrad GPA (I don't think all of them do). That said, you have to be open to the possibility of not doing that great, since there are slightly higher standards for grading in a master's program. I've taken some master's courses as an undergrad, and I had to bust my ass for a B+ (600 pages of reading a week, 18 papers throughout the course, etc). And, of course, if you are not good at engineering, it probably won't be a very good idea to do an MSc in Eng, since you'll just have more crappy grades to drag you down.