Every piece of your application is important and the secondary is no exception. With that being said, it is difficult to determine whether the secondary or primary is more important. An admissions officer may not be impressed by your personal statement but decide to give you interview because he or she really liked your secondary essay responses. On the flip side, your secondary responses could be bland but you might get an interview based off your accomplishments and personal statement. The secondary is often also known as a supplementary application. It is supposed to complement or add onto your primary.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that every school sees the same primary application while you submit separate secondary applications to each individual school. That means, technically, it is not as bad if you mess up on a secondary application.

No you can apply to medical school before you finish all your required classes. You simply need to finish all your prerequisite classes before you actually start medical school.

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The short answer to this question is yes. Doing poorly during your freshman year does not automatically disqualify you from going to medical school. Obviously it is best to have the highest GPA possible but if you did poorly during your freshman year, you still have time to raise your GPA before applying. Medical schools pay attention to grade trends. They look favorably at upward grade trends. Nevertheless, for extremely competitive medical schools, you will need to have excellent grades all throughout all of college.

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Grades from any institution after high school will be counted. Thus, your grades from studying abroad will be counted as well. However, do not take medical school prerequisite classes abroad. Medical schools do not accept premedical classes taken abroad unless they directly translate through your university.

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There is no right answer to this question because each situation is different. If you are a senior and you have a 2.5 GPA, it would be wise to consider other career options. However, if you are a freshman or sophomore and you have a 3.0-3.5 GPA, there is still hope (the higher the GPA, the greater the hope). If you are a first year student, do not be discouraged by one bad semester or quarter.

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There is none. A huge misconception is that a student must major in a science discipline to get into medical school; this is as far from the truth as you can get. Medical schools do not give any preference into what you major in.

Medical schools have required science classes that you must take to apply to medical schools. These courses generally include biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Apart from these courses, you are not required to take any other specific classes. So whether you major in biology, economics or history, you can apply to medical school as long as you meet the requirements.

Our advice is that you major in something that you like and excel at. The reason is because medical schools care more about how you did in the courses you took, then about what courses you took. If you like something and are good at it, you probably will do well in it.

One word of caution though is that medical schools see two different GPAs: science GPA and overall GPA. Overall GPA takes into account all of your courses while science GPA considers only the science classes you have taken. Science GPA matters more than overall GPA though overall GPA is still important. So if you are going to major in a non-science discipline, make sure to do well in all your required science classes because those are the only classes that will make up the science GPA.

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Some medical schools require a certain minimum GPA to apply and other schools do not. In reality however, this minimum cutoff GPA is absolutely irrelevant. The GPA needed to be a competitive applicant at a particular school and the GPA required to apply to that school are never even remotely similar.

For example, the University of Utah School of Medicine has a minimum GPA of 3.0. This means that they will not consider any applicants with a GPA under 3.0. However, if you apply to this school with a 3.0 GPA, you have about a zero percent chance at gaining admissions at this school.

For most medical schools, you will need at least a 3.5 GPA to be just somewhat competitive. In 2012, the mean science and overall GPA of matriculants were 3.63 and 3.75 respectively. The mean and overall GPA of applicants was 3.44 and 3.66 respectively.

No, they do not count. Usually schools request a final transcript before you matriculate but your senior year grades will usually not affect admissions. If you are on the waitlist for schools, you may want to update schools on your academic performance during your senior year.

The AAMC lists GPA’s on your application in this order:

1. High school (if you received any college credit)
2. College (each year is listed separately)
3. Postbaccalaureate Undergraduate
4. Cumulative Undergraduate
5. Graduate

Your grades from any of these levels of education will be counted towards your medical school GPA.

“]BCPM stands for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Math. This is how the Association of American Medical Colleges refers to “science GPA.” It is synonymous to the “science GPA.” The Association of American Medical Colleges is the organization that provides the American Medical College Application Service. This service is used by almost all MD medical schools.

Here are the type of classes that count towards your BCPM GPA:

Biology (BIOL)
-Anatomy
-Biology
-Biophysics
-Biotechnology
-Botany
-Cell Biology
-Ecology
-Entomology
-Genetics
-Histology
-Immunology
-Microbiology
-Molecular Biology
-Neuroscience
-Physiology
-Zoology

Chemistry (CHEM)
-Biochemistry
-Chemistry
-Physical Chemistry
-Thermodynamics

Mathematics (MATH)
-Applied Mathematics
-Biostatistics
-Mathematics
-Statistics

Physics (PHYS)
-Astronomy
-Physics

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