Originally Posted by science4ever

Hi Mitch,

If you take courses during the summer of 2nd year, I understand that they will go towards your GPA of 2nd year when med schools calculate the average. However, if you already took 10 courses in 2nd year, and you did 2 courses (I took both orgos at York) during the 2nd year summer, do med schools consider your best 10 of the courses in order to calculate your GPA, or do they find the average of all 12 courses for your 2nd year GPA?

Thanks a bunch

Not quite.

Mac and NOSM will take the average of all 12. Western, U of T don't consider your marks for summer courses. Queens might if your best two years don't make the cut - causing them to use your cGPA, but as long as your best two years (from the Sept - May time) is above the cut-off, they won't consider your summer marks.

Yup! Thanks Lois!

And if you look at my previous post you'll see that Mac just gets one final cumulative GPA mark for all your years of undergrad. So technically there is no 2nd year GPA. It's all combined together with your summer course grades into one big GPA.

Hi Mitch,

I know that taking ORGO in undergrad is recommended, but chemistry is not my forte, nor do i really find it interesting. However i am taking intro to ORGO (CHEM 2E03). Do you think that the an intro to orgo would go into enough detail for the MCAT, or would it be better to take the full year of ORGO courses?

Hey Johnny!

That's something really difficult for me to judge. Your best bet would be to ask someone who's taken that orgo course before and could compare it to the other one. In my opinion, as long as you know the basics you'll be alright. Prep courses for the MCAT also teach you most everything you'll need to know, so they could help fill in any gaps of knowledge.

If you take orgo at mac, you will be more than prepared for the orgo section of the mcat. I also took a prep course for the mcat (after I did orgo at school) and found that the material in the prep course was wayyyyy simpler than what I had learned in courses at school. So if you take orgo at school, you'll probably be better off for the orgo section, but then again, if chem is not your thing, then maybe the 1-2 weeks they spend on it in a prep course will be enough.

Originally Posted by biochemer

If you take orgo at mac, you will be more than prepared for the orgo section of the mcat. I also took a prep course for the mcat (after I did orgo at school) and found that the material in the prep course was wayyyyy simpler than what I had learned in courses at school. So if you take orgo at school, you'll probably be better off for the orgo section, but then again, if chem is not your thing, then maybe the 1-2 weeks they spend on it in a prep course will be enough.

I will be taking intro to orgo....i was kind of just hoping that it would be enough. But as long as i have some knowledge in the subject i hope to be ok. Thanks for the help!

Hey Mitch,

I was wondering, do med schools care about the courses you take at certain years? For example, would they mind you taking a lot of 2nd, 3rd year courses in year 4 or 2nd year courses in year 3?

Thanks

How do med schools look at courses that you've failed or repeated?

Johnny - Orgo isn't necessary. A bunch of my friends wrote the MCAT without it and did perfectly fine on the Biological Sciences section. Kaplan or Princeton should be fine. You may need them for prereqs, but most schools are phasing them out.





Thai - 60% of your courseload should match with the year that you're in. So in 3rd year, as long aslong as 60% of your courses are 3rd year courses it should be fine. In 4th year, 3rd year and 4th year courses are considered equivalent.

maryam - yes. Each school has their own separate weighting system. If you take a full course-load, then it will drop 1 full year course (6 units) or 2 half year courses (2 x 3 units) from your GPA calculation. Mac and NOSM uses your failed courses in your cGPA calculation. Queens and Western will only take them into consideration if your failed courses are in your two best years.

Hmm. I didn't know McMaster students were interested in med school. The more you know!

Hey Mitch, How many schools did you apply to? How many is a "safe" amount or average amount for people to apply to? And how many Medical schools did you get accepted to?

Totally not Mitch, but there's no right number of schools to apply to. I know people who applied to most of the schools across canada and others who only applied to one.

As long as you have the time for applications, the money for them (they're costly!), and meet all of the prerequisites you should apply.

For me, there was no point in applying to NOSM as they tend to pick students from rural areas (especially from the north). I applied to the rest of the Ontario schools and 2 out of province schools with a good reputation for accepting out of province students. Though, one of my friends said that there was probably no point since there are some places like Dalhousie who only take 9 students for 500 applicants (88 interviewed) so if you get into dal you're likely to get into Ontario schools.

I don't want to put the information out here on the forum, but if you'd like you can PM me and I can let you know where I applied and where I was accepted.

Lois is right on. I applied to 3 schools, then 6 schools, then 20 schools (US included). They are definitely costly though!

So once again a new school year has begun and my tremendous one week vacation is all but a faint memory. I enjoyed answering all your questions and I wish the best of luck to everyone reading this thread, no matter what your goals are for the future. I'm going to leave this thread up to Lois and the rest of the MI team who seem more than competent at answering your questions. So you don't have to address any more questions specifically to me. I will still peep in every once in a while and answer something if no one else has done so. I will also continue to answer my PMs throughout the year, because it's just such a fun distraction.

Hope to see you around campus sometime!

Mitch

Thanks lois,

Last semester I took a course that I was really interested in but didn't do as well as I hoped. I really want to get into the second part of this course (which is a 4th year kin course) but you needed at least an A- average to get into the 4th year one. Anyway, I want to repeat this 3rd year course in 1st term of this year (i will be entering my 4th year of kin) so I can take the 4th year one the second term. I am taking 9 other courses and with this repeat course it will be 10 courses in total for my 4th year. Is this still considered a full course load since one course is technically a REPEAT? Will med schools not like that I retook this course?

Thanks.

Are you sure that it's a A- average in that course or overall? See if you can get the requirement waved. Retaking a course to boost a mark is a bit silly sinc eyou won't get a credit for it. I'm not 100% sure how schools consider courses that have been retaken, I would e-mail them to be sure.

Retaking a course to upgrade your mark normally isn't a good idea. but since you want it to get into a 4th year course then it's okay. But contact the schools and ask them.