This year we are offering a special incentive to encourage applicants to submit their application and transcripts early. Applicants who have everything in by August 15 (including a completed application, transcripts, BC residency documents, name change, etc) will get a chance to book their interviews a day before the other interview-granted applicants. These applicants will also be able to find out that they have received an interview invitation a day early. Applicants who apply early but aren’t invited for an interview won’t find out their interview decision any earlier, though. As always, once the application is submitted it can’t be re-opened for changes. Things like the MCAT and any necessary WES or ICES evaluations don’t have to be in by August 15. They are still due at their regular deadline, October 1.
Since we aren’t counting summer 2012 courses in the OGPA or AGPA this year (edited for clarification: we are excluding summer 2012 courses only – courses from summer 2011, summer 2010, etc will be included) and since the cutoff for all non-academic activities (including work experience, research, and rural experiences) is June 1, there isn’t much reason to hang on to your application all summer. Moreover, the early submission deadline offers a few good benefits to applicants who get an interview. The biggest one is selectivity – you may have a better chance of getting the interview time you really want. Since you can book earlier, you can also start making concrete plans for the interview weekend earlier, and of course just knowing about the interview decision as soon as possible is a positive for most people, too.
If you can’t or don’t want to submit early for some reason, that’s totally fine. We promise it won’t have any impact on how we view you as an applicant and all files, whether they meet the early deadline or the regular deadline, will be evaluated in exactly the same way. We’re just hoping to space out our workload a little more and reduce the flood of transcripts, calls and emails we get every year right before the deadline. This will (hopefully) mean that we can be more responsive around that time in terms of updating transcript statuses and answering inquiries.
What do you think? Will being able to book an interview spot motivate you to submit your application early? Are there any other incentives that would encourage you to get everything in a month before the regular deadline? Please leave your ideas in the comments – we might consider them for use in a future cycle!
This new regulation of not including summer 2012 courses in GPA calculations should’ve been announced at least in September so that those who want to take courses could’ve taken it in winter instead. I find it very unfair and unprefessional to announce it 2 weeks before school starts and to say summer courses don’t count.
Most applicants who take summer courses only take one or two per summer, so we don’t expect this change to have a strong impact on the GPAs of most applicants. We are still including summer courses from past years as usual.
I agree with Tyler; I was anticipating raising my GPA by a few tenths of one percent with a six-credit summer course. For those of us with a borderline-competitive GPA, that is an appreciable amount. Though not a major disruption, this is still an unwelcome surprise, especially considering that it is late enough that we must forgo the non-refundable registration deposit if we wish to change our summer courses in light of this revelation.
We apologize for any inconvenience this change will cause, but not including summer 2012 courses is more consistent with our non-academic cutoff and will also make things more equal between applicants whose institutions release summer grades quickly and those whose institutions take a long time to get summer grades on transcripts.
About raising your GPA, one class isn’t going to make much of a difference, numerically. In terms of the application process we take more than GPA into account at each stage (with the exception of the 75%/80% minimums), so it’s unlikely that adding one course is going to determine whether or not you are accepted to the program.
I was planning to take 4 courses in total this summer to see a 2% bump on my GPA and due to this last minute change of things just to give an application incentive, it is greatly reducing my chance in improving my average/AQ score. I’m very disappointed with this last minute change and how UBC decides to change things whenever with short notice.
We understand this change does affect a few applicants, but hope it won’t impact your application too much.
I am planning on taking summer courses, and they will show up on my academic transcript well before the application deadline (it will end in June). But does that mean that I won’t have to report those grades since you’ve said you will not accept summer school courses?
You’ll still have to report the grades from your summer courses since they will appear on your transcript, but we will exclude them from the GPA calculations. We will also need to review those grades for applicants admitted to the program.
Are you simply not taking in summer terms anymore starting with summer 2012 or are you only not counting summer 2012 because of the option of early submission? But will count summer 2012 for future cycles?
Thanks
We just aren’t including summer courses from the current year of application (so this year, 2012) in the calculation of your overall GPA, adjusted GPA (if applicable), or prerequisite GPA. Summer 2012 courses will be considered courses in progress, so they can be counted toward the 90-credit minimum requirement and toward the prerequisite requirements (but again, as courses in progress they won’t be included in any GPA calculations). If you are admitted to the program, summer 2012 grades will be reviewed along with your grades from the 2012-2013 fall/winter terms, should you have any. For this reason, you should enter any summer 2012 courses that appear on your transcript when you are filling out the application.
We’ll include summer 2011, summer 2010, summer 2009 etc courses in the GPA calculations as usual. In future cycles summer 2012 courses will be included in GPA calculations.
I am taking a summer course to have a total of 120 credits which then allow my worst year to excluded (this will have a very significant impact on my GPA). Will I be able to do that or not?
Unfortunately, no. The summer 2012 course will not count toward your GPA credit total for this year. The GPA credit total is our starting point to determine whether or not you have enough credits to drop your lowest year.
For me, being provided with the opportunity to include my summer courses would allow me to meet the requirements for an adjusted academic average. As the Evaluation Criteria pages states that “in order to have the academic year with the lowest academic average dropped, applicants must have 90 credits with grades remaining by the application deadline”, does this mean that having completed those credits by September 17th, 2012 (which would bring my credit count over 120) would qualify me for an adjusted academic average calculation?
I echo fellow prospective applicants’ concerns that this should have been something announced in advance so that we could ensure that these courses were taken prior to the summer deadline.
On another note, it is mentioned that students with overall academic averages below 75% will not be given full file review, but it then goes on to state that the minimum application OGPA is 70%. Could you please clarify this for me.
Thank you in advance for you assistance!
Applicants must have 90 credits remaining when the lowest year is removed by June 1. We have updated that sentence on the website – sorry for the confusion.
The official published minimum to apply to the program is 70%. This is the GPA you must have to be considered ‘eligible’ to apply. However, due to the competitiveness of the program, 75% (for BC residents) is the effective minimum GPA. We do not review the entire file if the overall (or adjusted, if applicable) GPA is below 75%.
I am confused. If applicants <75% are not accepted, and this has been the standard for a couple of cycles now, why were there applicants accepted into the program with marks ranging from 70-74.99, according to the most recent year's statistics?
There were a few medical school applicants who were found to be particularly suitable for acceptance into the MD Undergraduate Program based on the social accountability mandate of the Faculty. These applicants did still meet the minimum required criteria for applying to our program.
I will be completely my masters degree by the end of June 2012. Does this mean that the mark for my 18 credit thesis will not be included in my GPA calculation? Thank you
Right, it will not be included.