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Quick Question about professional school GPA


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Just wondering, how much does the professional GPA of a school matter in comparison to your undergraduate GPA?

 

My situation - I have an undergraduate GPA (with prerequisites done) of around 3.84 total, 3.87 for prereqs, and I'm enrolled in pharmacy school. I want to apply to PA school right after pharmacy but I'm not sure how my GPA here will turn out. I'm hoping for at least a 3.0 average but it might come out to a little lower (med chem is hard :P). Will I be okay or will the professional school GPA hurt me?

 

Thanks all! :)

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Think about it this way... a PA adcom looks at an applicant's scores in undergrad classes to try to make an educated guess about how that student will handle rigorous graduate-level work. They want their students to succeed and to become colleagues one day. For a lot of those applicants, the adcom has no real way of knowing if they'll struggle with harder classes that take up more time.

 

In your case they can see that for whatever reason you had a hard time dealing with those increased demands.

 

At my school whether you got an acceptance or not would probably depend on how you handled those questions in the interview. We get applicants sometimes from the other professional colleges within my school, and they're always asked to talk about how they've been doing in that other program.

 

I do think you'll get in somewhere though. :)

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Thanks greenmood for your feedback! I work part time as a medical assistant as well and we are taking 9 courses this semester, so I always like to project the worst case scenario (I'm in my first semester so I don't have any grades as of yet), but it's good to know that they may look at the whole picture. Well at least I certainly hope so :)

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Thanks Andrew for the feedback! So would it be alright if I apply during my last year? Technically I'll get the degree after the application cycle is over, but not during it. I hope that still counts. I'm so glad to hear it helps though in general because I don't really plan to use the Pharm.D. at all except for the knowledge base and more exposure to healthcare in general. I applied to pharm school and got in without any real knowledge about the career but I've learned that jobs are really getting tight for pharmacists unfortunately and it'll probably get a lot worse by the time I graduate. I don't want to quit though so I'm going to try to make the best of it and learn all that I can. I just hope that if my GPA tanks in the process, PA programs won't focus as much on it :P

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