Medical School, AMCAS, Prerequisites, Pass or fail, online college, etc...

[CanICode]

UPDATE: I have got email confirmation that AACOMAS (the DO application) will take Study.com and Sophia.com transcripts and that they will count towards your GPA. So now as far as DO schools go, you can walk in with a boatload of credits but you have to be careful because they want the version of the transcript that has the percentage grade on it. Sophia's automatically does that if you send it via credly. Study.com you need to choose the option to send it with a letter grade and a percentage grade. Now, there is some trickery that could be had here. AACOMAS converts percentage grades to letter grades. If you look at this chart you can see that they will convert a 90% to an A. BUT if you send Study.com transcripts with letter grades, anything below a 93 gets converted to an A-. AACOMAS will take an A- and turn it into a 3.7 GPA based on that chart. This means you could potentially choose the version of the transcript that sends just the percentage and not the letter grade and then they would convert it for you to an A as long as it is above a 90%. But I think you are playing with fire here. What if they get too many of these transcripts and start poking around and then request the other one with the letter grade after you have already provided them the transcript, or what happens if they go and look up the grading system for the college and see that you aren't being forthright in the application. It's best to get everything above a 93%.

Here is my communication with them about the grade breakdown:

"97-100 = A+ 
93-96 = A 
90-92 = A-
87-89 = B+
83-86 = B
80-82 = B-
77-79 = C+
73-76 = C 
70-72 = C-
69 or below = F "


Tips to get everything above a 93% of SDC:

1. SDC rounds final grades it seems. So a 92.5% rounds up to a 93%. I have a 272/300 which equalsalds 90.6%(I have homework to resubmit.) but they have rounded my final grade to 91%. They also round the finals as well. There are a few 70 question finals that this can happen on. The 100 question ones are solid percentages.

2. SDC has errors in their automated system. If you complete your proctored final and then go back trying to fix your quiz grades by redoing your 4/5 quizzes, you quiz grade will not update often. You will have to message support to get the grade manually corrected and not a soul will understand what you are talking about. You will need to speak with several people and escalate.

3. For 100 level courses with no assignments you need to get 100 on your quizzes. If you don't you need an even higher final score to get a 93.

4. You need a 278/300 to get a 92.6% which rounds to a 93%

5. This means you if you get 100 on the quizzes, you can get an 89 on the final. Your cumulative total just needs to be 279/300 for the 93%. Every point counts.

6. You can take finals 3 times.

7. You can submit assignments 3 times.

Edit: 8. Also, quizzes have sometimes not rounded for me. I had an instance where I missed 2 questions out of 440. The total worked out to 99.54%. It was rounded down. I haven't argued yet about that but I will report back if I do get them to change it.

So as far as becoming a DO, this makes the path a lot more likely for many people.

WOW. This would be an absolute game changer. Any way I could get a copy of this email? 

I did pretty badly in my undergraduate chem degree (2.4ish?) 

I just did a formal postbacc (3.80) and a master's in Biomedical Sciences (3.81). So my last roughly 80 credits are close to a 4.0. But I'm still not above 3.0 with AACOMAS/AAMCAS GPA calculation.

 I'm currently working on my MCAT and second TESU BA Bio + Comp Sci for some extra credits. 

I know that I'll have a handful of DO schools that will still give me a shot with my upward trend (8 years CNA experience, 2 years undergrad research, 3 years EMT, 200 hours physician shadowing, strong letters of rec lined up) 

BUT so many MD and DO schools with auto reject me for just for having a below 3.0 GPA

If AACOMAS would accept Sophia/SDC as credits for GPA calculation, I could get to 3.0 much easier and faster

I don't want to doxx myself. Just email them for confirmation.