GPA – Transcript 

[00:03] Torah: Welcome to the Prep Me Podcast. I’m Torah and as usual, I’m with Chansey.

[00:08] Chansey: Hello.

[00:09] Torah: We are your host of the best and I might point out the only pre-med podcast made, especially for Canadian medical students. This podcast is made possible by generous sponsorship from Prep101, the most comprehensive MCAT test prep company in Canada. So today we are talking about the one thing that most of you are freaking out about, right this very second. Your GPA. What’s good, what’s counted, what if it’s not good, how to get better? That’s today on the Prep Me Podcast. So let’s start. Chansey, you’re ready?

[00:46] Chansey: I am all set.

[00:47] Torah: What was your undergraduate GPA? Let’s get right into it.

[00:51] Chansey: You came in hot. My undergraduate GPA, it was probably, oh my gosh. Without any adjustments that we’re going to talk about later in this talk. I’d say it was probably a 3.75, 3.8 maybe.

[01:07] Torah: With first year.

[01:09] Chansey: With first year, because I was very successful in years 2, 3, 4. But it was not a good first year. It definitely was not a good first year.

[01:19] Torah: Do you want to know my first semester, first year GPA?

[01:21] Chansey: I do.

[01:22] Torah: 2.0.

[01:23] Chansey: 2.0. I’m not far from that, when I think of my mine.

[01:27] Torah: You know what? I used to be kind of embarrassed about this. Like, oh, I was extremely embarrassed because I had never gotten any mark below like 80 in high school and all that. And then my first semester, first year. I was playing basketball and my basketball coach comes to me and they get the grades, kind of before you do. And he comes to me and he’s like, Torah, like you are close to potentially losing your place on the basketball team, like going on academic probation. I was like, what do you mean? What do you know? How do you know my grades and I don’t?

[01:59] Of course because I wasn’t paying attention to my grades and I didn’t know that they were in. And it was so mortifying. And then my second semester, first year I got a 4.0 because I was just like, I can’t function as a 2.0 student, but I used to be really embarrassed. But then I like to tell students that now, because, a lot of first year doesn’t go very well. I get that. And I went on to do a PhD and I went on to be very successful and happy in my career. And it’s like, yeah, I had a 2.0 my first year. Like I’m still smart and I’m still worth it.

[02:32] Chansey: But my gosh, it just shatters you though, right? When you’re this person who’s like, I tried in high school, but I did what I needed to do, and I’m used to eighties and nineties and honor roll or whatever it is. And you do that first semester same as you. And I’m just like, oh my gosh, I really underestimated what I needed to do for that midterm or that final or this collection of finals. And you’re like, am I in the right place? Is university for me?

[02:56] Torah: I’d never studied before. I didn’t have a backpack in high school. I didn’t need one. I went to class and I left and then I went to the gym. So anyways, so we’re talking about, well, Chansey obviously is smarter than I am. His GPA is better.

[03:12] Chansey: Not confirmed. For the sake of this podcast I am living proof that you can have a really rough, I think it was 2.8, 2.9, maybe like right around the 3.0 area by the end of first year. But you can have a pretty poor first semester or first year and still get into medicine. I am living proof of that folks. Because many of you that may be listening may not have the luxury of being a high school student who’s prepping and getting ready for those tough grueling undergraduate years. You might be in your first year, done your undergrad, done your second undergrad in grad school, whatever. But we want to really, I guess shed light to how you do not need perfection necessarily on every single given semester every year. And how schools will actually benefit you in their process to look at certain years, certain courses, graduate school, you name it. So we’re going to try to dive into all of those topics.

[04:03] Torah: And so here’s a question for you then Chansey, how did you get into medicine with a 2.8 in your first year? Because I think that’s, you know what, 2.8 is a respectable GPA. After your first year it’s just maybe not your goal for medicine, so you still got in, right?

[04:18] Chansey: I know. Go figure, right? You know what? So for me, so I’m what they would call a mature applicant just based on chronologic age and time in school. But in doing so, I still had to provide my undergraduate course years and my GPA year to year for many of the schools that I applied to for medicine. But what helped me was that certain schools didn’t look at your GPA as accumulative four years. They had these specific algorithms and tool sets and ways to sort of sub-calculate a GPA based on your most representative years. So as any student, most of us perform more proficiently as we get through our degree, when we get out of the core courses and we really hone in on what we’re there to do in the first place. Our bio specific courses, our chem specific courses, our English, our languages or our music, whatever it should be. Later years just tend to go better.

[05:10] So schools know that, and they know that that’s the best version of you because it’s the closest to the student they’re going to get when you walk through the door in the first day of your first year of medicine. So by looking at your third and fourth years and giving more weight to those years, my GPA like it almost completely negated that first year. It’s like it didn’t exist in the calculation for many of the schools that I applied to. Tacked it on with a graduate school little bonus. It really helped me out from a GPA perspective.

[05:35] Torah: Well, in Ottawa I think has the most complicated GPA correction because they do your GPA in year one is sort of weighted one. And then your GPA for year two is times two. And your GPA for year three is times three. And then they divide everything by six. So that Ottawa awards progression mostly. But for the most, I think we can say to our audience, the average school will take your best three years. Some schools will say like, as long as it’s not your most recent year. Now the couples schools, again we’ve talked about this on the podcast already, that you’re finding the right school is sometimes not necessarily finding your homeschool or what you think is going to be your primary school, but the one where you’re most competitive and one where you suit.

[06:22] And so this is a way to like count that. So I have a list here Chansey for you because I know we talked about this a little bit. UFS, no GPA correction. McMaster, no GPA correction. Northern Ontario and McGill and Memorial. So there are five schools actually in Canada, there’s more than I thought, that say your GPA on your transcript is your GPA for medical school. That suits some students.

[06:54] Chansey: It does. If you’re strong all around, you’re one to four and you’ve got whatever, it should be the cutoff 3.5 on a 4.0 scale or a 3.7 on a 4.3 scale or a letter grade of B plus and above, you’re fine to apply those schools. And I commend you for that hard work and you did a lot better than I did in that first year. And that’s okay.

[07:14] Torah: But I think like, look UBC, Calgary, Alberta Manitoba, they drop your worst year and I think sometimes and then Dalhousie goes is your most recent two years. So look, the thing is that if you bomb a semester, you’re taking those courses that you can’t stand, whether that’s English or organic chemistry, I think the message is that one bad semester or one bad year is not crushing your entry into medicine and even two bad years. Because there’s a couple of schools that could be right for you in that way and then with the way they’ve corrected it. I think the part that students find really, really intimidating and that is when we start to talk about the average GPA of incoming students, like the average incoming GPA of students at the University of Ottawa is 3.93.

[08:07] Chansey: Wow. And that’s at a 4.3?

[08:11] Torah: It’s Ottawa, it’s a 4.3.

[08:13] Chansey: It depends on where you go. So that’s what I’m saying. So certain schools are 4.0, certain schools are 4.3, but 3.9, oh my gosh, isn’t that wild? But if it’s an average, there’s probably a reflective truth in that.

[08:23] Torah: And I can speak to UFA because UFA is where I teach and it’s a 3.83, average GPA of incoming class. You see that stat and it’s crazy like that’s so high, except that’s corrected.

[08:40] Chansey: A hundred percent. That’s after everything we just talked about, those special calculations trying to benefit the applicant by maximizing your GPA potential. So you’re stronger on paper than you would be if you just looked at all four years, which some schools use. It’s also the benefit, like you mentioned earlier and I’ll draw attention back to it because it was certainly a big piece for me applying to medicine, is know your schools, know what your preferred schools are and where are your benefits. You will benefit certain algorithms because of the years that they give more weight to. And you will likely benefit the schools in most cases that are home or native to your geographic location because they might have lower cutoffs. They may not need that 3.9 out of 4, which is the average that applicants are applying with, but maybe their true cutoff is 3.6 or 3.5.

[09:23] And that’s a lot less intimidating as an academic sort of applicant looking at schools and whether or not can I apply here? Should I apply here? Because if you’re below a cutoff, it’s money wasted. They won’t look at your application. So you need that due diligence to know where can I apply and where are my best chances of getting in or getting past the GPA requirement for sure.

[09:43] Torah: I’ve always wondered, this like if you apply and okay, so just like Chansey was saying that if you’re in your home province, you often have a lower standard, so for University of Alberta, for University of Calgary, if you are in Alberta then you can apply with a 3.2 at UFC or a 3.3 at UFA. But it’s not necessarily competitive. But then Chansey, they will let you apply, they’ll take your 100 bucks or whatever.

[10:10] Chansey: Well, a hundred percent right? It’s money of course they’ll let you apply.

[10:14] Torah: But you don’t even meet the minimum. Like they’re not even going to open your file.

[10:18] Chansey: Nope. You pay the cost to have somebody look at it and to tell you this does not meet the requirement. That’s where the money is going. It’s so sad.

[10:26] Torah: Well I mean in a way do you blame them? Like if you don’t know the minimum requirements?

[10:30] Chansey: Well part of me is like, yeah, I mean hope our listeners are here because they’re trying to be better applicants and be more prepared. But for sure, I mean if you’ve got the money to throw away and you didn’t have the time to review the application, it’s sort of like, what more can I say about it

[10:46] Torah: At Queens though, have you seen this stat at Queens? It’s about a 3.68 minimum to apply. But they say it fluctuates. Queens is weird because Queens has a super high academic standard for GPA, for their admissions. But yeah, 3.68 just to apply.

[11:05] Chansey: Yeah. And I’m not surprised. And it’s usually around that. Sometimes it’s like a core 3.7 or 3.75 and that’s a cutoff. It’s just a cutoff. But they may want to revisit that if they go and do their mean approach. And some schools will do this, they’ll say here’s the cutoff. And students think, oh great, I met the cutoff, I’m good to go. And then when they don’t get into the school and they do a reflection and review their failed application, they see that of 10 or 15 possible points for the GPA component. They only got 2 out of 15. How did it only get 2 out of 15? Because you’re in the low bracket of the cutoffs. Yes. You’ve got 3.71 and we asked for a 3.7, but 80% of applicants had a 3.9. So you just got crushed in that component.

[11:46] Torah: But again, remember that’s corrected. That’s a corrected GPA. And a lot of the GPAs that the med schools look at don’t take in spring classes or summer.

[11:56] Chansey: It’s true. Yeah. Most will really want to favor that schematic of having a glimpse at your full potential at a full course load. So they won’t necessarily say, Oh you can throw in that random summer organic or the random summer elective course to see if you can bump up your GPA. If they require a certain course. Like if it’s a pre-req and that’s phasing out, I find in general across the country is prerequisites, but schools that still have pre-reqs, they don’t care when you’ve taken them. They just want to show that you took it and you passed it. But for the GPA calculation, they’re going to want to see September to April or September to May, full course load five and five or full course credit and then be able to really interpret that this is a true GPA of someone that has full academic workload amongst everything else they’re doing in life. Because that’s medicine, right? You’re going to have a full course load; you’re going to want to be balancing all these other things versus somebody who’s doing one or two courses a semester for a seven-year degree. It’s really not reflective of the atmosphere in medicine right now. Not saying it’s going to change, but right now.

[12:53] Torah: What is considered a full course load?

[12:56] Chansey: Well that’s just it. So I think it works out to be whatever the five courses would be. You’re doing five a semester, so 10 a year. The full-time course credits, I think it works out to be 3, like 3.0. So if you do five courses, it’s 15 course credits per semester or 30 in a given year. Some people will do more than that. Like there are many people that do more than a full course.

[13:14]Torah: Yeah their crazy though.

[13:15] Chansey: Yeah, there’s not a lot of them but there are some.

[13:17] Torah: It’s going to hurt your GPA though. I did six classes in one semester.

[13:23] Chansey: Was that your first year?

[13:24] Torah: No, my second year, six classes and four labs and I did okay because I finally like brought a backpack. And so that was a good thing. But yeah, six classes and four labs. It was nuts. But I did okay. I think I was over 3.5 I think at that point. I must have been.

[13:46] Chansey: And I have a question for you. I gotta ask you Torah because you have the special end of like being the professor and being an MCAT instructor. Students that come to you that are asking like, yeah, they’re focused on the MCAT or they’re focused on the course that you’re teaching. Do students ever come up to you with the medical lens of, Torah, I’m really worried because like this is where my marks are. I know you teach the MCAT do you have any advice? Like to people ask you in real time when they’re in undergrad, what can I do to be better? Do you have any advice there?

[14:12] Torah: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I get lots because I’m also like a face of MCAT prep and that kind of stuff and you hear me doing these podcasts and some students are, I’m kind of famous, right? So no, my students will come and they’ll talk to me. And they’ll definitely ask, like, okay, so here’s my GPA. Can we break it down? We’ll have a meeting and what can I do to help? And this is a question I get very frequently, can a high MCAT score make up for a low GPA on my application? And the answer to that I always say is within reason. I mean if your GPA’s 3.3, there’s very little that can make you competitive if you don’t have other worldly extracurriculars or experience in any other way.

[15:05] So yes, a good MCAT score and a lot of schools will do that kind of multiplier. They take your MCAT and then they’ll take your GPA and kind of smash them together and see what comes out. But that’s the biggest question I get is like, okay, this is where I sit. Can’t I just rock the MCAT and then be okay? And is that fair advice because that’s the advice I give? I’m like yeah, within reason. I mean it can make you a 3.7 student look pretty great if they just crush the MCAT. But a 3.3 student makes it really difficult.

[15:37] Chansey: Yeah, and I think I was certainly like that student and I think even with whatever it was, 3.78 or 3.8, there are still people that are applying with perfect GPAs. I’m like shoot, like I really want to do average minimum to above average to excellent on the MCAT so that I can make up for the points lost. Because even after conversion, the way the application rubrics work is to keep everyone fair is they say okay GPA, it’s going to be worth 10% of a hundred percent of your application. Who determines who gets the 10 out of 10? Who gets the 5 out of 10? Who gets the 1 out of 10? I think it’s pretty obvious it’s going to be who’s getting the higher GPAs. So sure if you’re able to go and do the MCAT and that’s worth 15% of your application and do quite well on the MCAT, it’s not truly like offsetting your GPA, but it’s giving you more points than you need for your cumulative score to be a more standup standout applicant.

[16:28] Meaning that your GPA doesn’t really sink you in and of itself, but you want, the reality is you want both to be well. Like that’s the ideal. I wish I could say to every applicant, voila, here’s my magic wand, there’s your 3.80 and here is your 5, 18 for the MCAT. Perfect. Don’t even consider academics anymore. But I just can’t. So everyone’s an individual. So I think that advice is sound and, and so important because it gives a little bit of confidence that okay, I really need to hunker down in the MCAT. People take it more seriously depending on what that reflection is in the undergraduate window of how low was it? How bad was it? Is it really competitive for sure?

[17:03] Torah: Well, I think this is probably a good time to give a little shout out to our listeners and to our sponsor Prep101, which actually Prep101 can help you on your GPA and your MCAT scores because they offer the best undergraduate review sessions right before your university exams and offer the best MCAT course out there. So just want to make that clear that one of the ways to improve your GPA is certainly working with our sponsor Prep101 at your home university where I think prep 101 is at a lot of different universities across the country now. So, keep an eye out for those right before your midterms and finals. But speaking of improving your GPA, how did you get your GPA up after the first year, rough year and then keep going.

[17:45] Chansey: As an individual. I think like many of us who have bad first years, it was enough to shake me as I’m not this kind of student. I can do better. I can’t blame it all in the courses. I can’t blame it solely on new atmosphere and environment being university. But I try to hunker down, I tried to improve study habits. I tried to be a bit more strategic in the courses I took and the semesters in which I took them, knowing if they were known to be heavy or hard with really tough exams or weighted one particular way that didn’t suit my skill set. I really tried to divide those up amongst the three years because I saw truly I’m going to do a bio major with chem so I know what that looks like. I know all the courses I need to take. I know my electives. Let’s not save all the electives to year four. Let’s really get them scattered in early so that I can have a bit of buffer, have a bit of a, not necessarily lighter workload, sometimes it was lighter, but just using a different aspect of

[18:34] Torah: More interesting too.

[18:35] Chansey: Yeah, it just, and that’s not all bio, it’s animal bio, microbiome plant bio. Give me a break from all the bios. I love it, but to an extent.

[18:43] Torah: What? You needed a break from bio.

[18:47] Chansey: I needed a break. It makes me a better bio instructor by having that buffer to keep neutrality in my pH of academic potential. Okay,

[18:58] Torah: No, you never need a break from bio. Well here’s one of the things that I think a lot of students don’t realize, especially a lot of our audience will be first or second year students, is that there are a lot of classes that are courses that you might need to take as part of your degree but aren’t prerequisites for any of the upper level courses. So you might have to take physics or calculus or stats or I don’t know, some course that’s part of your degree that you have to take. But then if you look at your course program you go, well I have to take stats but it’s not a prerequisite for any of my later classes. So that’s something you can actually leave until your fourth year because like third and fourth year are the best years you’re doing hopefully a major that you really enjoy.

[19:42] You’re much more focused in the fields that you enjoy and therefore you’re going to do well. So I mean for my UFA students, like a good example of that is like, if you’re in molecular biology and genetics, you don’t actually have to take BIO 2 0 8 until your last semester. You don’t have to take stats until like right before Genetics 375. There are so many courses that you can just procrastinate and push back that you’re dreading. Calculus. I took calculus twice because the first time I went to three classes in the semester and neither of those three were actually the two days that had midterms. So I missed both midterms. I still got a D but I just basically invented calculus on the final. Which is pretty awesome. But I still got a D but anyways, I took it again and so I didn’t need it in my first year and for anything I could have taken in second semester, fourth year. And you do better. You do better as you get used to your study habits, as you figure out how university works, as all of this stuff. So there are all kinds of ways to navigate your degree program and all those courses within it that will give you a better GPA because you’re not overwhelmed and front loaded in the first couple of years.

[21:01] Chansey: And that’s true because we’re certainly biased by being like these bio lovers and I’m still a bio lover even though I needed to. But like so many applicants and whether it be my classmates or be students that Torah and I have instructed that majors are from a wide variety, but the methods are the same.

[21:17] Torah: Bio is the best.

[21:19] Chansey: Bio is clearly the best. Yeah, there’s the biasm. English, Music Engineering doing anthropology, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to have your tough courses, you’re going to have your more lighter courses, you’re going to see your trajectory of your undergrad. Plan it out and see what makes sense to make you, number one, enjoy it the most and to perform the best if you’re considering something like medicine that does have that standard of a high GPA to come into it. But not everyone’s an undergrad. We also have people that may decide to do research like Torah, and I did, or grad school or work for a number of years. So a lot of times we get questions as to, okay, I’ve done my, undergraduate GPA and it was okay or it was good or it was average, but then I got all this grad school years. What do schools do with grad school years?

[22:05] Torah: What do they?

[22:07] Chansey: What do they? Isn’t this the perfect forum to discuss that?

[22:10] Torah: Yeah because I don’t know.

[22:12] Chansey: It depends. It’s kind of like what you discussed earlier with certain schools having differing algorithms and rubrics to break apart a GPA and make it weighted. Certain schools will favor applicants that have graduate school years and take courses you complete in your grad school or just years or a thesis in the end and give you sometimes bonus points in your application. So like academic bonuses or if you’ve done a full year of course based masters or PhD, you’ll actually be able to use that year towards your GPA calculation, which is huge. Grad school, it’s your most applied self. You’re totally invested in your research, you know it inside and out and the courses you’re taking usually suit your mind and ultimately what you’re interested in.

[22:53] So you do great in your first year of, say a Master’s. All of a sudden a school that needs three years of undergrad, they’ll just take two from undergrad and take your Master’s year and those will be the three years that determine your GPA. And all of a sudden a GPA that was 3.7 could be a GPA that’s 3.85 or 3.9 based on a stellar grad school year. So that’s really huge. I’ll take a bonus point; I’ll take a better year by doing grad school. There’s not like this huge deficit of, oh gosh I didn’t get in or I really want to pursue research it’s not going to hurt medicine. No, if anything it probably can only help you on an application from an academic standing. And

[23:28] Torah: Let’s face it, graduate courses are a lot easier than undergrad courses.

[23:33] Chansey: Because they’re reasonable. Because they’re a hundred percent reasonable in terms of how they test you.

[23:39] Torah: It’s so much easier. Well, the thing is, look, I only had three courses in the course of my PhD. And they were all fluff. No, my oncology course was hard, but the other two were like, easy As. So my GPA of my first year of grad school was a 4.0, but I only had two classes. Is that a 4.0?

[24:00] Chansey: Some schools will see it that way, which is the wild thing a hundred percent because it’s hard to gauge a full course load in grad school because when you’re not in a class, they expect that you’re in your lab or you’re in your office, you’re doing the research. So it’s still considered like in a way, academically a full workload. So they will truly take a year that’s only maybe two courses or three or four and consider it as a full-time year when you add it to your GPA. It’s pretty remarkable. And it’s not every school. I don’t want to preach that, do grad school because you get an extra like free year. It’s not with every school. Most will actually just see it as a bonus, meaning two extra points on your academic portion of your application, which let’s be honest, we’ll take all the points we can.

[24:41] Torah: Well, and actually I’m just looking, I have some notes on this. Ottawa, Queens, what else is there? Western and Manitoba do not consider graduate courses, but most will, most other schools will consider your graduate courses as part of your GPA. So that might be a possibility for a lot of people who finish undergrad and maybe you’re finished undergrad and rethinking grad school or med school or whatever. Going back to grad school is, I loved grad school. I had a fabulous time. And I think that it does contribute to your overall GPA for most schools. And again, those become your target schools.

[25:26] Chansey: Yep, a hundred percent.

[25:28] Torah: Okay. Well I think Chansey we’ll wrap this conversation up. What was your GPA in your fourth year?

[25:33] Chansey: My GPA in my fourth year, I think it was 3.9. 3.95, something like that.

[25:41] Torah: And me too. Actually, I had a 4.0 and then my human genetic course was my last course, my last exam of fourth year, second semester. And it was a week after my last exam. So I was done, done. I was like, I’m so done undergrad. So I didn’t study at all for it, so I ended up with an A minus. I know I screwed up my perfect 4.0 in fourth year. Just because I was lazy, stupid. Anyways, I regret that a little bit, but that’s okay. That’s okay. So as you can see listeners, GPAs go up as the years go up because we get to do things that we love and that’s the most important part or hopefully at least not hate. Sometimes you don’t always find a major that you love, but hopefully you find a major that you don’t hate.

[26:30] Chansey: And you find a major that you can be strategic within and optimize your potential, which it will happen. You need to talk to your counselors, talk to your friends, your professors. There are lots of people that can help guide you like Torah in your academic role towards what’s the best way for you to approach year two, year three, year four, based on your major. So honestly, just don’t work and study in a silo. Reach out and get help so that by the time you’re in your fourth year, you don’t reflect back and say, Gosh, I could have been so much better if I just asked for help. Or if I did a bit of like academic soul searching and really tried to find strategy in the courses I took. Now’s the time to make the change, especially if you’re in early undergrad or not even started. And if you’ve done it, there are lots of other options too. There’s grad school options. There’s benefit with the way certain applications will use rubrics to benefit and maximize your potential on a GPA. So there are ways to take what seems like an average par GPA and utilize it for some of the schools in Canada.

[27:22] Torah: So that’s it for today’s episode of the Prep Me Podcast. Please share and talk about us to your friends, and you can find us, of course, everywhere where you get your podcasts. Thanks again. And a shout out to our sponsor of Prep101. Catch you next time.