Dear Future Applicants,
There has been a significant amount of discussion across the country regarding the handling of winter 2020 grades and the calculation of the GPA. In MD admissions, we always want to ensure that we try to find solutions that are equitable and at the same time ensure that applicants represent themselves accurately.
The two biggest concerns with including the grades in the winter 2020 was that many of our applicants from the U of A only had the option of CR/NCR which would but them at a disadvantage. In addition, the evaluations of the courses may have been vastly different.
However, we don’t want to penalize those who have contacted us and repeatedly told us that the winter of 2020 was their best academic semester. Looking back over the years, most strong applicants will have “strong” years or “mostly strong” years and perhaps a bad course.
Therefore we are revisiting the decision and proposing:
1) For those applicants who can only accept credit or no credit (P/F) for winter 2020 we will be proposing to look at the Fall 2019 for the GPA calculation for the year. We will have a list of the schools in which applicants had no choice (e.g. U of A).
2) For those applicants, who are making the argument that the winter 2020 was their best year we will use the fall and winter grades similar to all other years (see applicant manual) but the applicant CAN NOT choose which course to take a letter or numerical grade and which to take only as credit. In other words, we are proposing to allow the winter of 2020 but you need to “show you full hand”.
This needs to be brought back to committee levels and I will keep you updated. In essence, if you think your winter 2020 grades are strong, take the grade.
