AMCAS BCPM GPA Explained: What Counts as a Science Class?

The Medical School Filter

When you apply to Allopathic Medical Schools, the AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service) system will generate dozens of data points.

However, admissions committees really only care about two numbers:

Your MCAT Score.

Your BCPM GPA.

What is the BCPM GPA?

BCPM stands for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics.

When you enter your coursework into the AMCAS portal, you must manually assign a "Course Classification" to every single class you ever took. AMCAS will then aggregate every class marked as B, C, P, or M and generate your isolated Science GPA.

Because medical school is a gauntlet of biochemistry and pathophysiology, admissions committees heavily scrutinize your BCPM GPA to determine if you have the raw scientific intellect to survive the first two years of the curriculum.

The "Fringe" Class Strategy (How to Boost Your BCPM)

Because the BCPM GPA is so critical, savvy Pre-Meds look for ways to legally inflate it.

AMCAS states that course classification is based entirely on the primary content of the course, not the department that issued it.

Example 1 (Psychology): Basic Psychology is classified as a Behavioral Science (BESS - Non-Science). However, if you took a senior-level class called "Neuropsychopharmacology," and the syllabus was 90% biology and neurochemistry, you can legally classify it as Biology (BCPM).

Example 2 (Engineering): Engineering is usually Non-Science. But if you took "Thermodynamics" in the engineering department, and it heavily overlapped with Physical Chemistry, you could classify it as Chemistry (BCPM).

If you have 'A's in complex, science-heavy courses hiding in non-science departments, you should attempt to classify them as BCPM to boost your Science GPA. If the AMCAS verification team disagrees during their manual review, they will simply change it back to Non-Science without penalizing your application.