Calculating GPA from 2nd Undergrad

[Prothrombin]

A buddy of mine is doing a 2nd undergrad in hopes of getting a better GPA for med school. He was telling me that he was going to apply after 1st year and use his last year of his first UG with his 1st year of his upcoming UG. Is this possible, or when you apply to med school do they look at your GPA from different degrees separately? In other words, for those schools which take your 2-3 best or most recent years, will they consider your best/most recent year of your old undergrad COMBINED WITH your current undergrad, or do you need to start from scratch?

[nosuperman]

Queens and Ottawa for sure will take your 1st year of second undergrad and the last year of your previous degree (or last 2 years for Ottawa, as they weigh 3 years) for calculation. I've gotten this directly from the admissions department. Those are the only two I've officially confirmed.

 

Western will take the first year of the second degree and offer a conditional acceptance based on the 2nd year GPA, so they can apply to UWO after 1st year if they plan on being done in 2 years.

 

If your friend is doing second undergrad because of lower than competitive 1st undergrad grades then UofT and Mac are likely out of the question.

 

NOSM, as I understand, will only look at your most recent degree, though I haven't confirmed how this affects when you apply during 2nd UG.

 

I don't know what the story for the out-west schools is however, I haven't contacted them yet.

[rmorelan]

 

Western will take the first year of the second degree and offer a conditional acceptance based on the 2nd year GPA, so they can apply to UWO after 1st year if they plan on being done in 2 years.

 

 

 

and that is a big IF - you have to complete that new degree before you can start at western, so your friend may need to take summer courses etc to have such a short degree turn around. It has been done before though

[Cnussey]

I've recently written to NOSM about this (I'm starting my second UG). They will not look at any of the credits from my first degree--transferred or not. I need to complete at least one full year of studies in the 2nd degree regardless of how many new courses I require (I need 1.5yrs anyways, I believe) and they will only use my new credits to calculate the GPA. Pretty good deal.

[muneeb]

Queens and Ottawa for sure will take your 1st year of second undergrad and the last year of your previous degree (or last 2 years for Ottawa, as they weigh 3 years) for calculation. I've gotten this directly from the admissions department. Those are the only two I've officially confirmed.

 

Western will take the first year of the second degree and offer a conditional acceptance based on the 2nd year GPA, so they can apply to UWO after 1st year if they plan on being done in 2 years.

 

If your friend is doing second undergrad because of lower than competitive 1st undergrad grades then UofT and Mac are likely out of the question.

 

NOSM, as I understand, will only look at your most recent degree, though I haven't confirmed how this affects when you apply during 2nd UG.

 

I don't know what the story for the out-west schools is however, I haven't contacted them yet.

 

Can you explain why Uoft and Mac are out of the question, if i do a second undergrad.

Thankyou

[astrogirl]

Can you explain why Uoft and Mac are out of the question, if i do a second undergrad.

Thankyou

 

I don't know much about UofT, but Mac counts every undergrad class you've ever taken, so your second undergrad won't erase bad grades from your first degree. It's not completely out of the question if you have a good VR score and you end up doing well on casper, but the 2nd degree isn't going to help you to much. It depends a bit on the situation - if someone got a 2.0 GPA in their first degree, then averaging that with a 2nd degree won't help much. If we're talking more like a 3.6 in their first degree, then the situation with Mac isn't quite as hopeless when you average it with a 2nd undergrad.

[nosuperman]

Can you explain why Uoft and Mac are out of the question, if i do a second undergrad.

Thankyou

 

They aren't definitely out of the question, just likely in the case of someone who does a 2nd UG to boost GPA.

 

Now the OP's friend has a low cGPA. Lets say 3.5 - they got mostly A-'s but a number of B's and maybe some B-'s. He/she does a 2yr second undergrad and gets straight A+'s. That would raise his/her average to 3.66 - still well below what'd be considered competitive for Mac and UofT.

 

That's with a 3.5. Lets assume they have a 3.65 (just shy of getting some interviews, very few marks outside of the A- range) - 2 more years of 4.0 gets you a cGPA of 3.76, which still isn't that good for Mac and UofT and remember, this person had a very good cGPA before AND they got straight A+'s which no easy feat.

 

So as you can see, even with the highest non-competitive GPA, it takes quite a bit to make yourself competitive for the cGPA schools, particularly if you only plan on doing 2 years.

 

Since the OP's friend is doing a second undergrad to boost marks, and he's aiming at the 2-year schools, it probably means his/her last few years weren't 3.8+, and therefor its likely (without more information) that UofT and Mac are out of the question.

 

Of course Mac now is heavily reliant on Casper but we haven't seen how this will affect the average acceptance GPA.