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OOP cutoff is 3.9!


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Guest Juicy.Fruit

ouch, i thought i was bad missing the cut by ~0.02 ... and it is because of a summer course... i wish i can get rid of it off my transcript if i could...

 

better luck for both of us at other schools :D chin up

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fyi, two very recent tweets:

 

Decision updates are being entered over the next 36 hours for applicants of the International and Out-of-Province categories.

 

... Considering the number of applications, it will take some time to update these records, so we thank you for your understanding.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I might be on the wrong thread so plz direct me if you know where i can get this answered:

 

How does the GPA calculation work for McGill? Do they consider all the courses you took over the 4 years? or do they have a different way to calculate GPA? For instance, UofT drops 2 semester courses per year if you take a full load course.

 

Was just curious if McGill did something like that, or if they just did ur overall GPA.

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I might be on the wrong thread so plz direct me if you know where i can get this answered:

 

How does the GPA calculation work for McGill? Do they consider all the courses you took over the 4 years? or do they have a different way to calculate GPA? For instance, UofT drops 2 semester courses per year if you take a full load course.

 

Was just curious if McGill did something like that, or if they just did ur overall GPA.

 

its overall cgpa

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  • 4 weeks later...
First off, I think we should all admit that that many of the active members on this website (myself included) make up what most people would call keeners. Most probably have great GPAs, and many surely have GPAs above 3.9. But for those who don't -- don’t be discouraged. This sample of people is unlikely to be representative of the entire cohort of applicants to all the medical schools you’re looking to apply to.

 

Before belittling the concerns of those frustrated by the 3.9 OOP cutoff and calling them bitter, maybe we can take a moment to consider the motivation of the admissions committee in setting the cutoff as high as they did -- I think that therein lies the frustration.

 

For full disclosure, I just want to say that I'm IP, but this news came as a pretty big shock to me too.

 

A quick look at median GPAs of students accepted to American medical schools, as published by the AAMC, is pretty interesting (see http://www.washington.edu/uaa/gateway/advising/downloads/gpamcat.pdf). Here's a sample:

 

Yale: 3.81

Boston University: 3.74

Harvard: 3.87

Johns Hopkins: 3.87

Tufts: 3.69

Stanford: 3.8

Mount Sinai: 3.75

Columbia: 3.77

University of Pennsylvania: 3.82

Brown: 3.76

Georgetown University: 3.69

 

Only one school on that list had a median accepted student GPA of more than 3.9 (Washington University at 3.91).

 

What strikes me here is that these are median values for some of the best universities in the world. That means that half of students admitted had GPAs lower than the above numbers. Now I understand that these values are from the United States, where the med school landscape is different, and that those admitted probably had stellar letters and experience, especially for the Ivy Leagues. But so too do many of the OOP students who applied to McGill and were just told that they wouldn’t be invited for an interview because they didn’t have a 3.9. Apparently Columbia thought that people with grades well below that had something to offer.

 

I can think of no reason for McGill to decide to only invite applicants with a >3.9 GPA for interviews other than trying to save the time it would take to give all the OOP applications proper consideration. I acknowledge the considerable challenge involved in trying to sift through so many autobiographical sketches (or abstracts, since apparently it would take too long to read a proper letter) and all the rest, but in choosing to use the single criteria of GPA as the deciding factor that could prevent good candidates from getting an interview, the admissions committee has demonstrated that they are simply unwilling to take the necessary steps to really choose the best candidates. Surely an isolated GPA, in the absence of consideration to program, school, or the person’s story, cannot be the best predictor of future performance as a doctor. Their decision to use only that is not in the best interest of the applicants or the school.

 

Although there might be more than enough good candidates from the >3.9 group, there are certainly at least a few people with grades slightly below that who deserve an interview. McGill’s claim that they look at the candidate as a whole has not proven to be true here. Of course it’s to be expected that the competition would be fierce for so few OOP spots, and that many, if not most, of the best overall candidates would fall in that >3.9 group. But if McGill really wants to train the best doctors, a more holistic approach in the selection process is absolutely required. The corner-cutting that seems to be going on is just not acceptable.

 

In addition, please note that these are MEDIAN gpa scores, unlike the hard cutoffs that McGill's red tape roller issued this year.

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Mother Teresa could have applied and have been rejected from an interview with a gpa lower than 3.9. Can anyone else see something dearly wrong with this picture?

 

I heard Mother Teresa did apply, was waitlisted for an interview and then, they threw out her application because her birth certificate wasn't scanned at 300 dpi and above :P

 

(obviously kidding, of course)

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