Low first year marks.

[MedicineLCS]

Yes, Alberta schools drop for everyone, but OOP competition is fiercer than IP. A 75% semester may be recoverable, in province, but with such a small number of OOP seats you'd need to have strong ECs and a great MCAT to be competitive. 

[Elijah989]

On 12/11/2019 at 9:11 PM, Sciencestudent2019 said:

Hi all, 

I just finished my first term of second year. For background my gpa last year was terrible at around 62%. This year was going well and I got above 85 on all my exams until finals season came around and I messed it up. My average for the term looks to be around 75% but I’m confident I can do better next term. 
 

all I want to do is go to medical school but I’m worried that now I won’t be able to due to my bad performance in my second year. Is there anything I can do to recover? My dream was to go to UBC medicine and I know it is less competitive than U of T med. 

can I please get some advice and guidance as I am extremely worried and stressed out. 
 

Thank you

i was so surprised to see this thread from 2002 come up haha.

You can still do it! You still have time to put the work in and pick your grades up. get that upward trend in your marks!! There are lots of people that get into med school that don't have 4.0s straight through all years. Figure out what you need to do to improve, then take those steps and reach out for help if needed. 

 

[Kin2019]

.

[Meridian]

Kin2019  - You still have a good GPA for schools that use weighed wGPA looking at best/last 2 years (such as Queens, Western, Dal, Ottawa).  You are out of the running for cumulative cGPA schools (ie Mac).  Your MSc grades do not come into play at most schools (other than Dal).  You don't say what province you are in or your MCAT score.  They both have considerable implications.

 

[Kin2019]

On 12/31/2019 at 12:07 PM, Meridian said:

 

[Raptors905]

2 hours ago, Kin2019 said:

Hi everyone! Another person with bad first year grades!! I’m a first year master of science student reapplying to med school. This will be my second time applying as I was unsuccessful in obtaining an interview this year. I’m definitely retaking the MCAT (had a low score) however when I had a meeting with admissions about my application they said my grades are an issue. All my yearly GPAs on a 4.0 scale were: 

Year 1 undergrad: 2.7 

Year 2 UG: 3.3

Year 3 UG: 4.0

Year 4 UG: 4.0 

Year 1 MSc: 4.0 (this one wasn’t on my med application because it’s this past semester) 

They told me that my first year GPA shows I can’t handle medical school academic demands. I’m well aware my first year undergrad was bad but I didn’t think it would have such an impact on my application. Basically I’m wondering if any one had a similar experience!! Did you find having good grades in grad school helped override bad early undergrad grades? Thanks  

for context my undergrad was in human kinetics and I had strong extracurriculars, work experience, and references! 

A 2.7 is extremely low - is there a reason for this being so low?

 

If you look each school has different weighting policies as some have said. However if your MCAT is low I would work on that and then focus on schools where you weighted GPA is high

[Raptors905]

On 5/8/2002 at 7:07 PM, Guest LifeSci05 said:

Hi everyone,

I really appreciate and thank you in advance for any advice that you may have.

 

 

I just finished my first year of Life Science at Queen's, and I recently saw my average for the year. It is less than stellar.

 

Specificially, it's 63.2% .

 

I know what went wrong and why I received such low marks this year, and I am determined not to let this happen again. I know I'll bring my marks up, but obviously I'm very, very worried -- it keeps me up at night -- about admission into medical schools when I apply in a couple of years.

 

I know UofT doesn't look at marks from one's worst undergrad year, but I haven't noticed such information on the websites of other medical schools. I keep thinking that I'll never get in with the marks that I have.

 

To be honest (and wistful), I've dreamt about attending UofT's medical school for the past seven years. I know that the cut off GPA for UofT is fairly high (3.7 or 3.8 minimum, but more like 3.9 to get somewhat noticed), and if, for some reason, I don't end up getting that GPA, I must think of other medical schools.

 

Because I don't know how other schools feel/look at one's worst (or first) year, I don't know what to do. I'll certainly do my best from now on, but...I know I've shot myself in the foot with this past year.

 

 

Because I've always wanted to be a doctor (and a writer), and I've disappointed myself with this past year, I feel like the scum of the earth.

 

 

Thanks for reading. Just lamenting about this makes me feel a tiny bit better.

 

 

-aliengirl.

I’m really curious what happened to this person from 2002. You still around?

[LostLamb]

I think lifesci05 / aliengirl is long gone since this post was ported over from the old ezboard forums when originally posted (like super way back in the day). 
 

but on a similar “2002” note I was cleaning out old files in my closet at my parents’ house and came across my undergrad transcript (BSc ‘02) and my whopping cGPA 3.34, and my husband was like (you had C+’s on your transcript?!? )...

So, again, another reminder of not being fazed by all the 3.99+ cGPA here, the “less than perfect gpa” people exist and thrive, too, in medicine. 

[stargirl333]

Hi, I just encountered this thread. You probably don't even remember you posted this, but after nearly 2 decades, I was wondering if you ended up becoming a doctor?

[DrPuzzle]

On 12/31/2019 at 10:26 AM, Kin2019 said:

Hi everyone! Another person with bad first year grades!! I’m a first year master of science student reapplying to med school. This will be my second time applying as I was unsuccessful in obtaining an interview this year. I’m definitely retaking the MCAT (had a low score) however when I had a meeting with admissions about my application they said my grades are an issue. All my yearly GPAs on a 4.0 scale were: 

Year 1 undergrad: 2.7 

Year 2 UG: 3.3

Year 3 UG: 4.0

Year 4 UG: 4.0 

Year 1 MSc: 4.0 (this one wasn’t on my med application because it’s this past semester) 

They told me that my first year GPA shows I can’t handle medical school academic demands. I’m well aware my first year undergrad was bad but I didn’t think it would have such an impact on my application. Basically I’m wondering if any one had a similar experience!! Did you find having good grades in grad school helped override bad early undergrad grades? Thanks  

for context my undergrad was in human kinetics and I had strong extracurriculars, work experience, and references! 

Hello there, are you still around? If so I would love, love, love to hear from you as my situation almost mirrors yours!! My first year GPA was actually lower. I had a 2.68 GPA for my Y1 of undergrad. My issue was not the course load, etc. My first year of undergrad I developed depression and was experiencing these incredibly difficult episodes of brainfog (which would last for weeks at a time) and did not fully understand what I was going through until near the end of that year. I am not trying to make it a "woe is me" sort of thing here, genuinely I am not. But, I had to learn to navigate that aspect of my life because brainfog (from my experience) made studying and learning even the basics of information feel like I was climbing Mt. Everest. I did improve as the years went on, and as I said, literally my marks now are extremely similar to yours! Give or take .1/.2 here and there. My undergrad being Psychology and in my final year this year.

Did you end up getting accepted? Are you still involved in the process? How are things going in general? I would love to hear from you! I am a NS resident. I am beyond stressed out and am worried that my odds are slim to none. I always thought that it was the final 3 years that really mattered in terms of getting accepted into medical school. I understand being competitive and showing that you can handle the academic load, but I guess I naively thought that medical schools would view that first year as a "Well, there must have been a reason why so and so did so badly but improved vastly in the following years. So we should take that into account" type of thing. Like, I could obviously understand there being a line drawn if someone went say 2.8, 2.7, 3.7 - Safe to say that probably wouldn't cut it for the last three years. I just feel like when you have a jump from Y1->Y2 like I/you have done, they have to ask themselves why, no? I had also been out of high school/post secondary schools in general for around 5 years at that point prior to starting my undergrad degree. I did not just jump from high school to University. Not that this should matter, given that being out of school still falls under the "being able to handle academic load" umbrella. I am just saying that my first year involved many factors rather than just "Oh, shoot I just didn't try/couldn't cut it/not smart enough".

This really applies to anyone who sees this post, I just figured I would try to ask this individual as this is the exact same situation and thought process that I am going through. The difference being I am not quite done my undergrad yet and so I guess we wont fully know what my final years marks will be, but I believe you need to have a certain level of confidence going into it so I am going off of the assumption that this years marks/GPA will follow the previous 2 which were in that 3.8-4.0 range. AND no, this is not just with one medical school in mind! I would ideally apply to all of them, if I could, you know? So, I don't have one particular in mind and maybe not zeroing in on one specific school does make my overall odds better? You didn't really say if you applied to just one school or not so would that have played a role? If you asked for my ideal school I would say Dal here in NS. But, again, I don't put my eggs in one basket like that.

[Eudaimonia]

5 hours ago, DrPuzzle said:

Hello there, are you still around? If so I would love, love, love to hear from you as my situation almost mirrors yours!! My first year GPA was actually lower. I had a 2.68 GPA for my Y1 of undergrad. My issue was not the course load, etc. My first year of undergrad I developed depression and was experiencing these incredibly difficult episodes of brainfog (which would last for weeks at a time) and did not fully understand what I was going through until near the end of that year. I am not trying to make it a "woe is me" sort of thing here, genuinely I am not. But, I had to learn to navigate that aspect of my life because brainfog (from my experience) made studying and learning even the basics of information feel like I was climbing Mt. Everest. I did improve as the years went on, and as I said, literally my marks now are extremely similar to yours! Give or take .1/.2 here and there. My undergrad being Psychology and in my final year this year.

Did you end up getting accepted? Are you still involved in the process? How are things going in general? I would love to hear from you! I am a NS resident. I am beyond stressed out and am worried that my odds are slim to none. I always thought that it was the final 3 years that really mattered in terms of getting accepted into medical school. I understand being competitive and showing that you can handle the academic load, but I guess I naively thought that medical schools would view that first year as a "Well, there must have been a reason why so and so did so badly but improved vastly in the following years. So we should take that into account" type of thing. Like, I could obviously understand there being a line drawn if someone went say 2.8, 2.7, 3.7 - Safe to say that probably wouldn't cut it for the last three years. I just feel like when you have a jump from Y1->Y2 like I/you have done, they have to ask themselves why, no? I had also been out of high school/post secondary schools in general for around 5 years at that point prior to starting my undergrad degree. I did not just jump from high school to University. Not that this should matter, given that being out of school still falls under the "being able to handle academic load" umbrella. I am just saying that my first year involved many factors rather than just "Oh, shoot I just didn't try/couldn't cut it/not smart enough".

This really applies to anyone who sees this post, I just figured I would try to ask this individual as this is the exact same situation and thought process that I am going through. The difference being I am not quite done my undergrad yet and so I guess we wont fully know what my final years marks will be, but I believe you need to have a certain level of confidence going into it so I am going off of the assumption that this years marks/GPA will follow the previous 2 which were in that 3.8-4.0 range. AND no, this is not just with one medical school in mind! I would ideally apply to all of them, if I could, you know? So, I don't have one particular in mind and maybe not zeroing in on one specific school does make my overall odds better? You didn't really say if you applied to just one school or not so would that have played a role? If you asked for my ideal school I would say Dal here in NS. But, again, I don't put my eggs in one basket like that.

For Dal if I remember they use 2 of your years to calculate GPA if you had full course loads, so you can choose to select the more senior years