GPA and Medical School Admission: Medical School GPA
Requirements
The first factor that an admission committee looks at to decide
your acceptance to a medical school is your GPA, especially science
GPA. Therefore, you must maintain your GPA as high as possible.
The following is the summary of very basic techniques for grade
point success. Although these techniques are really simple, you
often fail to practice them, and the students without good study
habits are often those who complain about the difficulty of the
course.
- Obtain old exams: You can get old exams from upper
classmates, teaching assistants, or even the professors.
Remember that the professors sometimes are not creative enough
to change the formats or even the contents of their exams every
term. Therefore, studying these exams beforehand provides you
some ideas on what will be on the new exams.
- Take a reasonable course load: Reasonable schedule
means more time to concentrate on your classes. You will have
chance to enjoy your classes and study them in depth.
- Study alone: In most circumstances, studying alone is
the best way to get higher grades because it helps you avoid
unnecessary discussions on some irrelevant topics with your
study partners.
- Choose a proper study environment: Library-like
environment is where you could study efficiently because it is
quiet, and most people seem to study real hard there.
- Highlight your books: This is the good way to filter
out minor details, and it's also an excellent way to preview for
exams.
- Make flash cards: This technique is most useful, but
less used, technique. It triggers your long term memory deeply.
Anyone who's been through biology class could see the power of
this technique in learning biological terms.
- Keep a social life: Social relaxation provides an
excellent release for tension and prevents burnout.
- Understand concepts that seem unlikely to appear on the
exam: Uh huh! These concepts are what your professor writes
extra credit questions on. So, if you want to be a stand-out of
the class, make sure you touch on these questions.
- Don't memorize when you can understand: Generally,
it's less efficient to memorize many details than to understand
a general principle from which you can derive the specifics.
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