ClinicalAbsorption Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Hello I am a 27 year old currently working as a research technician at a Medical Center. I finished undergrad with a science GPA of 2.6 and overall 3.0 in 2014 with a BA in Bio. I was an unmotivated student who just went through the days in college. However I worked as a Medical Assistant at a neurology clinic for 2 years after graduating and I developed a passion for healthcare. In addition to doing paperwork, insurance and handling EHRs, often I would shadow/observe my MD in the patient rooms to translate medical terminology or facilitate patient-doctor communications in Korean. I wanted to be able to help the patients in a larger capacity. I took the GRE in April 2016 (163Q/165V) and went to a Special Master's Program to improve my GPA and finished the 1 year Master of Biomedical Sciences program with 3.97 GPA. I also have about 200 hours as a volunteer at a hospital from my high school-undergrad days. I am looking to apply for PA programs but I am wondering if my post-grad experiences will be enough to outweigh my poor undergrad GPA. Thank you for any input you guys may have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ket131 Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 From what I have heard is that CASPA only calculates undergraduate credit hours into their c/sGPAs. The thing is, on my 2018 CASPA application I do see "graduate science" GPA and "graduate non-science" GPA as categories for GPA, which makes me think that perhaps they do calculate graduate level science courses into the "overall science" GPA category. Or perhaps they keep them separate, I am not sure, might be a thing to contact CASPA about too. If they are kept separate it would be a good idea to see if the PA programs you are interested in will make any judgements as far is recent credit hours. If there were no considerations there would likely need to be undergraduate courses taken to increase the science GPA. Those would be my first steps before thinking about taking more undergraduate courses though. I attached a screen shot of my 2018 CASPA application GPA categories which I am talking about. As you can see my overall GPA was 3.27 and my overall science is 3.15. If I took a graduate level science course it is possible that those credits would increase those numbers, which would be beneficial for your case because you completed a science masters thing. I hope this picture helps show you what I am talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mooredc Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 6 hours ago, Ket131 said: From what I have heard is that CASPA only calculates undergraduate credit hours into their c/sGPAs. The thing is, on my 2018 CASPA application I do see "graduate science" GPA and "graduate non-science" GPA as categories for GPA, which makes me think that perhaps they do calculate graduate level science courses into the "overall science" GPA category. Or perhaps they keep them separate, I am not sure, might be a thing to contact CASPA about too. If they are kept separate it would be a good idea to see if the PA programs you are interested in will make any judgements as far is recent credit hours. If there were no considerations there would likely need to be undergraduate courses taken to increase the science GPA. Those would be my first steps before thinking about taking more undergraduate courses though. I attached a screen shot of my 2018 CASPA application GPA categories which I am talking about. As you can see my overall GPA was 3.27 and my overall science is 3.15. If I took a graduate level science course it is possible that those credits would increase those numbers, which would be beneficial for your case because you completed a science masters thing. I hope this picture helps show you what I am talking about. I had heard the same thing but I did take graduate level sciences and those were calculated in to my "overall science" GPA on CASPA. So I am thinking that must have been an older rule that has since changed. The thing I would be careful about is that your masters class depending on where you took it, might not count towards the prerequisites of the program. Most of the 1 year masters degrees have some really beneficial courses but that are not the actual prerequisite courses required for admission to PA school. So I would double check and make sure that you have 1. completed the prerequisites in undergrad and that 2. you got a satisfactory score (usually a B or above) to meet the specific program requirements. Having a masters degree in biomedical science does not trump completing the prerequisites. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClinicalAbsorption Posted March 21, 2018 Author Share Posted March 21, 2018 Thanks for the input. I did not do well on many of the pre-req courses which led to my 2.6 science GPA. Do you think that I would need to go back to the retake the undergrad pre-req courses and get at least a B even if the Master's courses increases my "overall science GPA" above a 3.0? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mooredc Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 18 minutes ago, ClinicalAbsorption said: Thanks for the input. I did not do well on many of the pre-req courses which led to my 2.6 science GPA. Do you think that I would need to go back to the retake the undergrad pre-req courses and get at least a B even if the Master's courses increases my "overall science GPA" above a 3.0? It all depends on where you apply but my guess is yes. Most schools require a 3.0 science GPA and they also require a B in all prerequisite courses ( some schools require a C or higher, while some programs won't even accept a B-). So again while it is all program dependent, you would probably be wise to have at least a B in your general chemistries, A&P, mirco and perhaps even organic. Like insaod, your masters is awesome and will Count for your science GPA but prerequisites are prerequisites for a reason. Second want to see you do well in A&P because it's the crutch upon which medicine is built. It's awesome if you get an A in graduate level molecular biology but that's not a prerequisite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mooredc Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 57 minutes ago, mooredc said: It all depends on where you apply but my guess is yes. Most schools require a 3.0 science GPA and they also require a B in all prerequisite courses ( some schools require a C or higher, while some programs won't even accept a B-). So again while it is all program dependent, you would probably be wise to have at least a B in your general chemistries, A&P, mirco and perhaps even organic. Like insaod, your masters is awesome and will Count for your science GPA but prerequisites are prerequisites for a reason. Second want to see you do well in A&P because it's the crutch upon which medicine is built. It's awesome if you get an A in graduate level molecular biology but that's not a prerequisite. Wow please forgive all of the typos in my posts. I was typing on my phone and clearly not paying attention haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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