Question About AMCS and My GPA

[premedar]

Hi Everyone,

 

I think here is the best place to ask the question I have been struggling with for the past few days.

 

I attended University of Toronto studying in their Engineering Science program, and my cGPA for my years at UofT is around 3.04. At the end of the second year I decided to completely switch my major and started studying Biology. Now, I am a third year Biology student with a cGPA of 4.0 (AMCAS Scale) for my three years of Bio (90 credit hours).

 

I was wondering what my chances are applying to US Medical Schools and how severely I will be penalized for my years at UofT?

 

Thank you,

[lindablee]

What is your overall GPA? Eng and Bio included? Is it >3.5? If so, no big deal. You have a strong upward trend which schools like to see.

[Der Kaiser]

Take this with a grain of salt since I am not an Adcom member: from what I've read on SDN (stated by Adcom members) is that an upward trend like yours is obvious and they will often ignore the first grades and just focus on the more recent. Of course, there are a gazillion schools in the US so I am sure this is not universal. Example: Tulane's GPA avg. is something like 3.4 to 3.6 which is reputedly because they take so many non-traditional students with low cGPAs but high post-bac gpas (upward trends essentially). If you think about it logically, medical schools look at GPA to see how you will perform in medical school. If you are consistently a 4.0 student but have one bad year on your record from way in the past, they are not going to question your ability to perform in med school all that much. It's not like Canada where your GPA is often not looked at in context (and calculated according to an equation).

[Slashsev]

there are computer filters for cGPA, if u pass that then u move on

[advair250]

Should be okay