What Medical School Applicants Should Avoid on College Transcripts

When medical school admissions committees review your college transcript, you want them to be wowed by your academic performance. Naturally, the committee members love to see all A's in a variety of challenging courses, and they prefer to see all required courses, and many of the recommended ones, completed before your application is submitted.

But let's face it: Not everyone achieves perfection on their transcript.

Your undergraduate transcript will be verified by the staff of the American Medical College Application Service, or AMCAS, and then screened by the medical school admissions committee. Here are five red flags to avoid on your college transcript so that you will have the best shot possible at getting accepted to medical school:

-- Mediocre performance.

-- Withdrawal from a course.

-- Repetition of courses.

-- Gaps in your transcript.

-- Numerous universities or colleges.

Mediocre performance. The admissions committee expects to see stellar performance in biology, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry, biochemistry and other required or recommended courses. If you didn't receive A's in those courses, consider taking other science courses to bring up your GPA on what's known as BCPM, which stands for biology, chemistry, physics and math. For example, can you work in a genetics, physiology or embryology course?

[Read: How High of a College GPA Is Necessary to Get Into Medical School?]

Another scenario may involve earning a lower grade in a tough course, such as analytic chemistry, but earning A's in all the other science courses. If that's the case, don't panic. Schools recognize that certain courses are more challenging than others.

Withdrawal from a course. If you withdraw from a course or, worse yet, a few courses, you're sending a message that you overestimate what you can accomplish in one grading period or that you have poor time management skills. If the course you withdraw from is an important science course, such as organic chemistry, the red flag flies even higher.

To avoid this, take that course in the summer rather than squeezing it into a heavy semester and ending up with a C or having to withdraw.

[Read: How to Plan College Courses to Prepare for Medical School.]

Repetition of courses. Although repeating courses is not ideal, in some cases it is the only way to accomplish the required classes. You may know that some colleges will not show that a course has been repeated; only the second grade is visible. While that may not seem fair, most admissions committees are aware of this reporting inconsistency.

On the bright side, a course repeated early in your undergraduate years will not look as bad as one repeated in your junior or senior year. The bottom line is to try to avoid the necessity of repeating courses.

Gaps in your transcript. Any time gaps in your transcript, such as taking a semester off, must be explained. If you do not address the gaps in your essays, the committee will assume that the pressure and stress forced you to leave for some time.

[Read: Why Medical School May Not Be the Path for You.]

Whatever the cause, you can explain what happened and that you would not expect it to happen again. Don't trick yourself into thinking that the application screeners will miss or overlook any gaps -- they won't. Because medical school is harder than undergraduate years, the admissions committee needs to know you can take the heat.

Numerous universities or colleges. Anyone can understand a student leaving a community college after one or two years and transferring credits to a large university. It is also easy to understand a student taking a semester abroad or attending graduate school.

What screeners worry about, however, is a student who attended four to seven colleges or universities to complete their undergraduate requirements because it signals that you have trouble adapting or trouble with resilience. You may have valid reasons for switching institutions, but if it occurred more frequently than expected, you need to explain why.

In many ways, your undergraduate transcript serves as your best foot forward. Follow the advice above to make your transcript stand out as exemplary and not cause you to be screened out before you've had a chance to make a great impression to the medical school in person.