Hi aska,
I have a question regarding graduate school. I’ve read many of your posts on your blog and noticed that you said many students take an extra year to boost up their grades for graduate school. Meaning that they would look at your fourth and fifth year right? But wouldn’t the admission office see that you just took an extra year full of electives to boost up your GPA? Do they not care? With that being said the programs I am looking in to are in the sciences, Molecular Genetics at UofT and Pathology Assistant at Western. If I were to do decent in all the classes that they recommend , have relevant research experiences/ independent studisees would staying an extra year; taking a couple of electives to boost up my GPA look bad to the admission office?
Thanks!
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hey there,
firstly: not everyone is taking a year “full of electives” during their extra year. in many cases, they’ll be taking courses that are relevant to their program, or even completing requirements for graduate school.
however, a few random elective courses may be just what some people need – but it all depends on the grad program.
for you, “a B+ average or higher in the last two years of a B.Sc. degree to be considered for our M.Sc. program,” so depending on your average right now, it may be in your best interest to take some courses that you anticipate will boost your GPA. however, i wouldn’t recommend just taking as many 100-level courses as you can: that can look a bit bizarre on a transcript. also, there are only too many 100-level courses you can take in a degree: 6.0, to be exact, and you probably used up most of those in your first year anyway.
you want your “boost” year to look pretty similar to your fourth year: 300+ courses mostly, with maybe a couple of electives if need be.
as for how that would be considered by the grad program: obviously, i can’t speak for any admissions committee, but good marks are good marks, and whether they happened in your fourth year or your fifth year shouldn’t make too much difference. however, this is and only can ever be conjecture from me – only the actual grad school/department knows what they want in a potential student, so feel free to contact them as a follow-up.
secondly: the molecular genetics program doesn’t recommend any courses (from what i can tell), so you don’t have to concern yourself with that, as long as you have a background in any of the programs listed.
experience in a wet and dry lab is also important, so the fact that you have research experience can only help.
if you have all of that, taking a few courses to boost your GPA is not the end of the world. you may want to stay in the general area of upper-year biology courses, but other than that, i doubt it will be looked upon negatively.
as always, i recommend you mull this over with someone at your college registrar’s office. as well, it never hurts to talk to the actual department itself about what would be most advantageous for you.
cheers,
aska
P.S. i won’t be able to answer questions about Western’s program since this is a uoft blog – hence our .utoronto URL – but i can recommend this tumblr blog which is all about Western.