Pre-med at Ivy / top school - some concerns with B grades
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Anonymous
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My child is a Sophomore at TJ. In elementary and middle school all he had was A grades.
In Freshman year at TJ got one B grade in a STEM course. In Sophomore year he may end up with 1 or 2 Bs again in STEM courses. He volunteers at a couple of healthcare related non-profit orgs and has a leadership role at another non-profit. All are established non-profit orgs and he is actually doing some work not just some title He is also part of varsity TJ sports team PSAT 10 earlier in 10th grade - 99th percentile He will be doing Summer medical research at a University here Has not taken SAT yet. The Spring sports take a lot of time which impacted his grades during 3rd quarter both years with Bs. He is doing his best with the time he has at hand. Should I be concerned with his B grades since he wants to go to pre-med in a top school? |
Anonymous
| Unless he is being recruited for the sport or really loves it, I would cut down on sports and focus on grades. 11th grade becomes tougher and those grades will matter the most. For med school, it is better to go to an easy school and get straight As. |
Anonymous
| Please talk to the TJ counselor before listening to the idiocy posted here. Yes, the Bs could be a problem for a T10= but most likely not with the high PSAT which should roll into a very high SAT. Ask the TJ counselor to show you their Naviance which will give you a very clear idea where your kid stands vis a vis the other students in his or her own class by using past stats of test scores and GPA. That's what is critical. And have they taken the most rigorous (easy to do at TJ) courses offered by TJ? That's crucial for some schools like UVA. Sounds like you are heading in the right direction but start with your public's high school counselor |
Anonymous
LOL no it is not. More important to go to a college that matriculates to med school. OP your kid with B grades is not going to med school. It's not sport problem. Your kid needs to learn time management. |
Anonymous
OP’s kid with Bs is currently in 10th grade. Pretty sure med school is not off the table at this point. |
Anonymous
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Getting into an Ivy is off the list with those grades from Thomas Jefferson. Only because there will be plenty of classmates who do not have the Bs and your child is first and foremost compared to classmates when it comes to admissions at a selective university. A pattern of Bs puts him in a different category than many classmates.
The PSAT and SAT don't matter--everyone at TJ scores well. That said, all is not lost. You don't need to go to an Ivy or top college to go to medical school. In fact, it's often better to go to a lower ranked college. |
Anonymous
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No.
You don't have to go to freaking Harvard to go to med school. I need to quit hanging out around here because I'm starting to feel like a broken record on this stuff. -- someone who works at a med school PS, interest in medicine in 10th grade does not equal interest in medicine junior year of college (or even senior year of high school). Any number of things could look more interesting between then and now, and that's fine. |
Anonymous
TJ GPA that is generally needed for UVA is 4.4-4.5, taking rigor into account. My understanding unless TJ significantly changed in the past 3 years is that the average grades in 9-10 STEM are B+/A-, so your kid is a little below avg there, for STEM. For Ivy/T15, the GPA bar is higher than 4.5, but it gets muddy because of holistic admissions and hooks. Does your kid still have a path to a GPA above 4.5 by the end of junior year, taking the typical hard Stem courses? The more important debate is whether ivy-types are a good fit for him. The PSAT is great, but Bs in STEM could be a harbinger of relative STEM weakness compared to the others at an ivy or a Hopkins or the like. The average premed at those schools aced high school STEM classes and could be hard to beat on pre-med "curves", where the average is set to a B. Some of them come from high schools not nearly as hard as TJ, and will struggle. Others come from very difficult private high schools and top nyc publics like Stuy and will crank out As and make it seem easy. For med school admissions the science gpa is considered as well as the overall, so all Bs in science plus all As in the rest will make it not likely. |
Anonymous
But I have read and listened to college counselors webinars where they say Grades + GPA count towards 40%; 30% for EC activities; 30% Essays and recommendations - Is that not right?. So his medical related ECs has no value? |
Anonymous
| FWIW my TJ kid (graduated) played 3 varsity sports and thought they was premed. Not what their major ended up being. They took a pretty rigorous, but not the most rigorous, courses. All A's except for a B in the dreaded TJ Spanish. Got in to a T10. Couple of take aways: you can have ECs and still get good grades, getting into a T10/Ivy is a crapshoot for anyone, and what your kid is going to major in can/will change. Agree with the direct admit to med school as a good option to explore. |
Anonymous
Does the Naviance parents have access to show the same info or the counselor can see more than us? |
Anonymous
High school grades dont matter for med school. They are only looking at your undergrad classes and grades. |
Anonymous
| You should be concerned about B grades. 1 B is a blip, a few Bs is a pattern elite schools do not want to see. Barring a hook, Ivies will be off the table. As others have said, he'll be compared to classmates with 4.0 UW. |
Anonymous
Plenty of smart kids with good undergraduate grades from Unoversity of Toledo or basic state university get in to med school. It’s what your do IN college that matters the most- not what you did in high school |
Anonymous
It’s actually easier to get into med school from a less selective university. No one needs Ivy undergrad to become a physician |