MedChatter's Guide to Grades

1) Know the System

Always be aware of your no-penalty withdrawal date (can withdraw without it showing up on transcript), penalty withdrawal date (withdraw with a note on transcript), not allowed to withdraw date (withdraw with an Incomplete or Fail), etc. and understand situations where those dates do not apply. If you have a legitimate reason for missing a deadline to withdraw (you get overwhelmed because of death of a close family member, psychological issues, financial issues, etc.) be sure you collect the proper documentation to support your reasons. It is NEVER too early to seek help, and this also helps to create a paper trail in case more drastic action needs to be taken (e.g. starting counselling sessions the day before your final exam and trying to get out of it now is not very convincing, having taken them since the start of your term and realizing mid-way that you can't handle your current courseload is relatively more so).

Know both the university policy and professor policy on late assignments and missed exams. If you do have to miss an exam, be sure to keep documentation on why. If you know you will be late on an assignment, talk to the professor or TA ASAP. The earlier you contact them, the more lenient they typically are and this is esp. true in smaller classes where you may develop a rapport with the instructors. Besides, the worst that can happen is they don't do anything.

2) Choose Wisely

Look up your future professors on www.ratemyprofessors.com. It is hardly perfect, but is is often much better than nothing. What is better is if your school (typically your student association) publishes public reviews of its professors. Typically if it is a required course for your major, there will be multiple course options and even if the exams are the same, having a better professor can greatly influence your performance. Caveat: ratemyprofessors is not infallible and often a great professor for one student is a horrible professor for another. Similarly, a professor that is not listed on ratemyprofessors can either be a blessing in disguise or a professor from hell. If possible, also look up course statistics for past years and ideally, compare the same term to the same term, as summer course averages tend to be higher.

In the 1st few days at a class, carefully review the syllabus and ask yourself:  is the courseload reasonable, are there participation/bonus/"free" marks (be sure to get these as they provide a nice buffer), are grades curved, and so on. If grades are curved, understand how it is done: are all grades curved to match a course average (bad if the course is easy and everyone will score high), are they only curved to boost the average (can put you at ease if you do bad on an exam as long as others do bad as well), are curves done the simple way (give everyone +2 or -2%) or the hard way (curve the grades to a specific average AND standard deviation)... for the latter, this can make the curving process appear mysterious as you might go from a 72 to 73% while your friend went from an 82 to 85%.

Taking 'bird' courses may boost your GPA (find them at www.birdcourses.com), but some schools will look down on this practice... especially if you have many of them). You have been warned! Instead, we suggest taking courses in subjects you are relatively strong in, as you will still perform well while the rest of the class suffers (relative to you).

3) Have a Study Schedule/System

If you are smart enough, chances are you can cram for 90% of your courses and still do reasonably well. However, this is highly not recommended as this will definitely hurt you once you are in medical school... it's easier to develop good habits in undergraduate studies. Determine if you are generally a class learner or independent learner and study accordingly. Caveat: some courses cannot be skipped no matter how independently you learn, as exams will be based on inclass material - be sure you know this beforehand. Do not bank on a good final exam schedule. Study enough beforehand so that even if you have 5 exams in 5 days, you can still do okay. The most important thing to realize is that in university, no one cares how hard you study, whether you go to class, whether you go to exams, etc. ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY FALLS TO YOU. Keep this in mind and you should be fine.

Bonus) Laboratory Courses

Such course are quite different in format from traditional lecture or even seminar-style courses. The key thing is team-work: unless you have extensive research background in the topic, you will likely not know everything each lab report wants, but by pooling resources with your labmates, you'll have a pretty good overall picture. During lab time, go at a steady pace: while it is not good to lag behind, it's even worse to rush and then have to start over. Put yourself in the scientific frame of mind before every lab session and ask yourself "what is the PURPOSE of these experiments" and KEEP THIS IN MIND. if you know WHY you're doing what you're doing then this will prevent 99% of any mistakes.

There is not much to say about GPA except for the fact that it is the single most important and fundamental aspect of your entire application. I say this mainly for two reasons. Firstly, aside from the obvious fact that GPA quantitatively counts to a significant portion of your application, a good GPA gives you OPTIONS. It is the FIRST thing that schools look at, and often schools have high GPA requirements for out-of-province students. Therefore, stellar grades can drastically increase your chances of admission by allowing you to apply broadly. Coming from undergrad at UBC, this was especially true since I was not a successful applicant at my home school. However, my GPA opened the door to interview opportunities all across Canada and the U.S, including a top 3 American school. Ultimately, I was accepted at 5 or so different schools, and I truly believed that my GPA provided me with a chance for a shot at each of these institutions. Had I not worked so hard in undergrad to earn say an extra 0.1 on my GPA, I doubt that I would have been even remotely as successful. I've known too many applicants who could only apply to their own schools due to their grades. In most of their cases, the application process was stressful and nerve-racking because their future depended on a single admission (or rejection) letter. Applicants in Ontario may be more fortunate as there are six schools in the provnice (although a couple schools have no in-province preference), but some of my buddies here at BC weren't so lucky. With all this said, I'm not saying GPA alone will get you interviews or admissions, but working hard to get a good GPA will keep doors open at numerous schools.

The second reason why GPA is crucial is that it's PERMANENT. Of all application criteria, this is the one area that you can't change. Volunteering, you can always do more. MCAT, you can always retake. Interview, well you can always improve your interview skills. If you have the mindset of "if I don't get in, I will try again", all is good as far as EC, MCAT, interview go because you can always improve yourself, but a bad GPA will be a permanent stain on your application. So what type of GPA should you aim for? Go to "school profile" to check out the GPA requirements and the average GPA of accepted. Keep in mind that accepted OOP have higher grades. You could also use *Josh's med tool* to assess your chances at different schools with a given GPA and MCAT. I refrain from giving studying advice as I question its usefullness since different people have drastically different studying styles. All I can say is - crack open those books and start studying! Save the partying for med school, because that's where its at :)

Just one look at the medical school application process and it becomes clear that one of the foundations of any person’s application is their marks. No matter which school you apply to in any country, marks will always be needed? And why is that. Well simply as a means of quantitative comparison.  Beside the MCAT, using marks is the only other way of systematically screening applicants.  A computer cannot tell the difference between an Olympic athlete and a person with a Nature publication, but it sure can tell the difference between a 4.0 and a 3.7 GPA.  But one person may ask, why have marks if the school already requires the MCAT.  Well simply put, the MCAT only describes a person’s ability in one point in time.  If I took the MCAT last summer, that describes my ability, compared to others who took the same test, in that one summer.  Maybe two years ago I was a big slacker and had I done the MCAT two years ago maybe I would not have scored as high.  But medical schools don’t want someone who can only do well once, or sometimes, but someone who can consistently do well.  That is where marks come into play because marks allow the schools to see how well you have been doing over a period of years, instead of a period of one summer.

Thus it is important to maintain good grades each year and not just the year before you apply.  Many schools consider all your undergraduate grades, while others just consider your most recent years, or your best two years.  If you are in first year of your undergraduate studies, I highly recommend that you start maintaining good marks and to not slack off in this department. The reason being that once you get a year or two of bad marks, that severely hinders the number of schools that you can apply to.  The fact of the matter is, most schools consider your cumulative GPA and so, having low marks can hinder that GPA.  From my experience, the one thing that consistently stops someone from applying to medicine are marks.  To put it bluntly, while it is true that good marks do not guarantee entry into medical school, bad marks guarantee that you won’t.

So now that we have established the importance of marks, let’s start discussing ways to optimize them.

The first piece of advice I have is “Know thy enemy”, in this case, know the grading system of your University, and understand how medical schools interpret the grades from your university.  For example, York University uses the letter grade system, with a converted GPA on a 9.0 scale.  What this means is, on my transcript I got letter grades such as A+ or A for each course, but to calculate my GPA for my degree requirements, each letter was converted to a number on a 9 scale.  Now that I understand my own university’s GPA system, I must now look at how medical schools convert that GPA into their own GPA (usually on a 4.0 scale).

Let’s use Ontario medical schools as an example. Fortunately, all Ontario schools adhere to the OMSAS Grade Conversion Table (http://www.ouac.on.ca/omsas/pdf/c_omsas_b.pdf).  When looking at this table I find that they convert York University grades to the 4.0 scale in the following fashion: A+ = 4.0 and A=3.8, but B+ = 3.3 and B = 3.0!!!! Wait, what happened?  If you look carefully, you will notice that the drop from A+ to A is a drop of 0.2 GPA, but a drop from A to a B+ is a drop of 0.5!! This means that medical school grade conversion of your GPA is not linear! So do not automatically assume that oh, if I get a B+ instead of an A I lose the same amount on my GPA as if I scored an A instead of an A+ because that is not true at all!

What this now means is that we can easily set a lower limit for all my grades.  As a York University student, I should aim to never score lower than an A, because scoring a B+ or lower severely lowers your GPA. In fact it takes 2.5 A+ scores, of the same weight, to raise a B+ to an A, and heck, that is a lot of A+’s that you are wasting on raising up a B+.

So what things can you do to optimize your marks? Well this may seem intuitive, but choose your courses wisely.  First off, choose courses that you are interested in, because as we all know, it is easier to work hard on something that you are passionate about instead of something that is a bore. Secondly, choose courses with marking schemes that work to your advantage.  This point is key, because if you blindly choose courses that you are just “interested in” then that may not be enough.  There is a huge difference between courses that only have multiple choice tests and exams, and a course with projects, assignments, essays, etc. Some things take more time than others, and you have to play to your strengths.  Think about which courses will allow you to do the best while spending the least amount of time on them.  Even for mandatory courses, more than one professor may be teaching it, and thus, they may structure the course differently.  One professor may have lots of short and long answer questions, while the other may have many multiple choice questions. One professor may have lots of little tests and quizzes, while another professor may have just a couple of big exams.  If the course mark breakdown is not available before you choose your courses, then just ask.  E-mail your professor, tell him/her that you are interested in taking their course, but you want to know the topics covered, mark breakdown, etc. to make an informed decision.  Most professors who care about students would willingly send this information out.  Professors who don’t because they are too anal may not be the best professors anyways.

Personally, I have that choosing courses which do not have assignments or projects, but simply tests usually saves me time and anguish.  With assignments I tend to spend too much time on them which later messes me up for tests, and with projects, especially group projects, there is just too much work for the mark you get out of it.  For tests, you study as much as you can and then take the test and finish in a matter of hours. For types of tests, I tend to lean towards multiple choice tests since it is guaranteed that the right answer is on the page in front of you.

Lastly, the biggest help for any course is probably past tests and exams, however these are often hard to come by.  Sometimes student groups such as the Biology Society or the Chemistry Society at your university may sell past tests/exams.  However if they don’t, your best bet would be to track down an older student who has previously taken the course and get it from them.  Past tests/exams are useful because it gives you an insight into the style, difficulty, and number of questions on the test.  What’s more, professors often get lazy and repeat similar or the same questions so it would be in your best interest to practice doing questions on these past tests and make sure you understand how to do each one.