Does having a W (Withdraw Grade) affect graduate school admissions?
When I look at a transcript, I only care about some courses. If you withdraw from "Maoist Theory 101" or "Winemaking Practicum", I really don't care.For courses I do care about (e.g., "Algorithms"), if you eventually take the course and do well that's fine too. Perhaps you had a busy schedule or the professor sucked. But if you withdraw from a lot of classes that I care about and then never complete them, that's a really bad sign (either incompetence or grade grubbing).
Can you get into medical school with bad high school grades?
Several other Quorans have noted that poor high school grades are irrelevant to a medical school application.However, poor HS grades put you at a severe disadvantage. Over half of all US med school applicants are unsuccessful. This result is actually much worse than it appears. In colleges with a strong pre-med program, over a third of the class starts as pre-med but 60–80% withdraw from pre-med before even actually applying to med school. Even with this high attrition, more than half of those remaining are still unsuccessful.A student can take all the required courses at just about any college. At schools with rigorous programs, weak students are strongly discouraged from continuing in pre-med by a very demanding grading policy. The forcefulness of the discouragement varies. At, say, Dartmouth those that survive the weeding out are successful ~90% of the time. Stanford’s surviving pre-meds succeed only 70–75% of the time. At Berkeley, it’s 55%.Poor high school grades mean that you will be attending a less-selective college and encountering less well-prepared classmates. However, these students are not your competition. You will be competing with the students at Dartmouth, Stanford and Berkeley who all had excellent HS grades, lots of APs and prevailed over their own classmates in multiple weedout courses.To obtain admission to med school, a weak HS student will need to find in college a far greater resolve and a far greater work ethic. It’s not impossible, but the odds are long.
How bad does withdrawal look for medical school?
I'm a freshman in college right now and I haven't been doing very well in my chem class and I know I'm verging on an F right now. I can take the class again if I withdraw but the W grade does not go away. How bad does this look to medical schools? Should I withdraw?
How did you explain a W (withdrawal) to medical schools?
Why would you explain it? It just a part of your transcript — a very small part. Your transcript is just a part of your application. One W is barely noticable, and could have occured for any number of reasons. If:The rest if your grades are mostly As and some BsYou took a suitable (>15ch) loadHave all the pretendHave a suitable professional preparation with multiple shadowing, volunteering and other contact with the profession activitiesHave several good letters, including a support letter from a at arms length physician who has seen you in a professional setting (as an academic letter or two)Other leadership, community service or research activitiesThen a single W is irrelevant.Of course if you have many Ws over many semesters, then you are in all likelihood not suitable for medicine, so should think about alternative careers where persistence is not so crucial.
Will one semester of bad grades affect admission to med. school?
The person who said that "all A's are a given" has no idea what he's talking about. The average GPA for admitted students to even the most competative med schools are usually around 3.7 (the highest I've found was 3.76 for Harvard Medical School, followed by 3.75 at UCSF), and generally anything above a 3.0 is considered potentially accetable (and even students with below a 3.0 are occassionally admitted). Although most schools list an average GPA rather than the full range of GPAs of admitted students, medical schools do take some students with a GPA at least as low as 2.8. Given that very few schools have average undergraduate GPAs above 3.7, some students presumably have GPAs above average, and an A- is 3.7, it stands to reason that many, probably most, students admitted to medical schools did get some number of grades below an A. That said, yes, low grades do hurt your chances of getting into med school, even if it's just one semester. However, admissions committees will usually take into account special circumstances such as extended illness or family obligations that temporarily hurt your academic preformance. One C is not going to kill your chances, especially if you explain the situation, but you do need to have an otherwise very strong application to demonstrate that it is not typical.
Do medical withdrawals look bad on a transcript for medical or pharmacy school?
I am trying to get into pharmacy school, but i dropped 4 classes last fall for medical reasons, and now im dropping again in summer A for a concussion.. Both are medical withdrawals but do they still look at this badly because of time taken off and that ive only finished 2 courses this whole year, i mean 5 MW's cant be appealing for medical school candidates.. and also are they aloud to ask you about medical withdrawals? I got off to a bad start in college and ive been trying to get my grades up this year, but i keep running into problems, its very discouraging.. i mean its hard enough getting the grades in these complicated classes but when im having to drop them for medical reasons its annoying.. but anyway, what do professional schools think about medical withdrawals?
Does auditing a class look bad to med schools?
So I recently decided to switch to pre-professional Biology this semester. Unfortunately along with my other two classes I am taking a non-pre-med biology class with a professor who is reputably known to never ever give out A's. I was one of the few people who got an A on his first exam but did poorly (got an 80) on the second exam. Tomorrow is the last day to switch to audit or withdraw, the latter option being a terrible idea because med schools will think I was failing when in reality I have a B average so far, which is good considering who the professor is. I really don't want to get a B in an intro bio class that I don't even need for pre-med. I am thinking of switching to audit on this class tomorrow and taking the real introductory biology pre-req in the summer. I finally decided what I want to do with my life and don't want to screw up if I don't need to. Should I audit? I will probably end up with a high B or even A- in this class, but why should I risk it? Will med schools frown upon an audit? I know that withdraws look very bad, but how do they perceive audited courses? To be clear, an audited course grade never shows a letter grade or affects GPA. My GPA right now is 4.0.
What impact does a withdrawal or "W" have when it comes to med schools?
Hi I live in New York City and I am a student at a community college and will soon transfer to a four year college. My transcript is not the worst i.e. i have a 3.83 GPA and I am pretty serious when it comes to education. But last semester i overloaded because i had to work full-time and get good grades in Physics 2, Microbiology, and Chem 2. If i don't work i cant pay for school. So i when i saw that i wasn't doing well in Physics 2 i withdrew from it and got a "W". I was told by my councilor that a "W" wont do any harm. But recently I heard (from quite a few people) that Med schools don't accept you if you get a "W". I was aiming for Columbia school of surgery but there are lots of other good med schools too in the city. I plan on retaking physics and getting an A and almost certain that within the next year or so i will bring my GPA to 3.9 (I am not letting this happen again). Please let me know what my chances are because i have even heard that med schools dismiss applicants if they have a "W". And also let me know how you know the things you know i.e. your sources ..................Thank you for your help.
How bad is a B+ on a transcript going to medical school?
Don't sweat this at all... Really, no med school admission committee is going to care about one single history grade when you were a freshman, especially if you have a 4.0 science gpa. I made it into medical school, and I had my fair share of B's in non-science classes and even a couple of B's in science classes. Of course, the better the medical school you want to go to, the better your grades and application have to be. I go to a medical school that I would rate as average. This isn't a big deal at all.. If you are going to medical school, you have to learn to not sweat the small stuff. Just keep your GPA as high as you can. As long as you're above 3.5, you should be fine. Do well on the MCAT, and try to do some clinical/volunteer work and do research if you can (that is the biggest thing that helped me. After my freshman year, I started working in a lab, worked there for 3 years doing cancer research, and got a paper published). Good luck!