<p>Kristin and I had this talk on another thread.</p>
<p>The bottom line: Many schools will opt not to interview you if they feel you are “overqualified” for their program.</p>
<p>The ambiguity: They might (a) just be making educated guesses, OR (b) actually have access to concrete information about it. Either way, though, this doesn’t change too much about what we already knew: when applying to for a medical school spot (as when applying for a “boyfriend” spot), you don’t just have to convince Admissions that you’re great. You also have to convince them that you’re specifically interested in them.</p>
<p>Table 25: MCAT and GPA Grid for White Applicants and Acceptees to U.S. Medical Schools, 2008 to 2010 (aggregated)</p>
<p>By MCAT:</p>
<p>33-35: 76% (jumps to 89% with GPA >3.8)
30-32: 64% (jumps to 84% with GPA >3.8)
27-29: 43% (jumps to 68% with GPA >3.8)
24-26: 22% (jumps to 41% with GPA >3.8)</p>
<p>By GPA:</p>
<p>3.8-4.0: 74% (84% with MCAT >30)
3.6-3.79: 57% (74% with MCAT >30)
3.4-3.59: 41% (58% with MCAT >30)</p>
<p>(about half of the applicants (regardless of GPA) had MCAT <26)</p>
I can only theorize the possibility. One possibility is due to the timing of interview invites. Most of his interview invites happened within a short time period (1-1.5 months.) When these schools looked up the information from AMCAS, they did not see DS had had any interview at any school yet. Actually, these schools might find that he had a lot of incomplete applications, and might think this kid had only completed the application to this school, so he must love this school so much and does not care much about many other schools.</p>
<p>For some of his later interviews, he would not even let us know the exact interview date. The reason is that he thinks we will spend too much money if we arrange the trip for him. He thinks he can do it in a cheaper way so he would rather arrange the trip all by himself.</p>
<p>When these schools looked up the information from AMCAS, they did not see DS had had any interview at any school yet. Actually, these schools might find that he had a lot of incomplete applications, and might think this kid had only completed the application to this school</p>
<p>So, are you saying that your son had a bunch of incomplete apps, and then he completed them all/most at one time?</p>
<p>"When I see those weird stats, I can’t help but wonder what unusual situation they must have in order to have been accepted? military? vast medical experience in some other field? what??? "</p>
<p>It hardly matters because these people more than likely make up the largest percentage of medical students that fail out the first and second years, with those few who survive the initial cleansing being caught in the second, more intense testing inferno of Step 1 exams. </p>
<p>In addition, in a personal bid of mine to placate the building tides of white anger that lurk behind the clean veneer of posters here, it should be noted to them and others that although African-Americans are more likely accepted to be accepted to medical school with weaker numbers than whites, the consequence of this advantage is counterbalanced by the fact people with weak numbers are the ones that fail out of medical school.</p>
<p>I fail to see how this would placate anyone. Even the most ardent of those opposing affirmative action are hardly wishing that URMs fail out. That benefits no one. The URM is now saddled with debt that he/she can’t repay. The med school now has an empty seat that they can’t fill. The bitter white/asian applicant still can’t get into med school.</p>
<p>If you look at the numbers, 95% or so of URMs are still graduating from med school within 6 years. This is higher than the graduation rates of most colleges. The 3.6/30 URM who gets into Harvard for med school is still going to graduate. So, the argument isn’t that med schools are taking applicants who can’t graduate. The bitterness at seeing a subpar applicant getting into med school comes from a distorted sense of the admissions process. Some people think med school admissions is supposed to be a meritocracy, rewarding those who work the hardest and have the best achievements. That’s only half the equation. The other half of the equation is that med schools are trying to assemble the most balanced class. URMs are rare and that makes them valuable. A URM who comes from an upper class family and attended private school all through his life is still going to be more valuable than the poorest Asian who’s had to struggle to get to where he is. Med schools get gold stars for having a high % of URMs. No one gets a gold star for taking hardworking Asians.</p>
<p>If you look at the numbers, 95% or so of URMs are still graduating from med school within 6 years</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>I wasn’t aware that some med students take longer than 4 years to get thru (frankly, I didn’t know it was even allowed). Wouldn’t this significantly add to these students’ cost/debt? Yikes!</p>
<p>I really do not care if some students are getting in with a little-lower stats than others. In the long run, it probably makes no difference in their performance as physicians.</p>
<p>however, the thought that someone with say a 20 MCAT (or lower) and some low GPA can get into med school (regardless of status/hook) is a bit scary. That’s like sending someone with a 1.0 GPA into the education world to become a teacher.</p>
<p>I used 6-year graduation rates because if you look at the AAMC graph, the attrition rate levels out after 6 years. This is not to imply very many people take 6 years to complete medical school. But, it does happen. Every year, you’ll see some attrition due to various reasons, just as some students take longer to get through college or drop out altogether. If you need to take time off, med schools would be more than happy to grant you that because it’s much better for them to keep their investment than for you to drop out of school altogether. You can see, overall, the attrition rate due to academic reasons is very low. It’s probably even lower now as the quality of med school acceptees is higher than it was 20 years ago.</p>
<p>Just a note: Princeton is VERY grade INFLATED, not deflated. Their inflation is so far from a normal distribution that they had to set policies preventing MORE THAN 40% of a class receiving an A. In other words, they wanted to keep the median at around a B+. That is absolutely ridiculous and inexcusable. A bell curve is good thing to keep in mind when considering grades. Princeton is by no estimation “grade deflated.” Grade deflated would indicate students’ mean GPAs are in the <2.0 range. That doesn’t happen at ANY U.S. institution of higher learning, much less Princeton, where the median GPA is in the mid 3s.</p>
<p>So, the point is to go to college based on assumption of grade inflation/deflation…?.
Doing so might lead to spending 4 years of your life at place that does not fit you at all. Your chances at being successful depend much more on your personal happiness, good personality/college match than assumption about your future college GPA, which is largely imaginary based on opinions of stranges.</p>
<p>BDM, by definition, yes. However, Princeton is one of the worst with mid-3x median GPAs. Most schools (even highly competitive state schools) are in the 3.0-3.2 range. There is an obvious discrepancy. You can’t have it both ways – either you claim an A at your school is highly competitive and you use a standard distribution OR you inflate students’ grades to the extreme and essentially lower the value of an A there to that of any other podunk community college (hyperbole). I would, in fact, prefer that we use a standard bell curve. As it stands, an A really doesn’t say much about one’s achievement when more than 10% of students earn one. It’d be much better if the average GPA were ~2.0 as this would allow for more achievement by strong students.</p>
<p>In my view, it’s more accurate to refer to Princeton as a deflated school, because after compensating for the ability of the students their GPA is too low compared to state schools. But there’s a few different definitions we could use.</p>
<p>You are implying that courses at elite schools are more rigorous than other schools and I am not sure that is the case. My eldest son did not apply himself in high school and ended up at Sacramento State University where is majoring in Geology and is finally starting to apply himself. He is currently taking the third and last semester of the General Calculus sequence for Math, Physical Science and Engineering majors. The text they use is “Calculus, Early Transcendentals” by James Stewart which is the exact same text that UC Berkeley uses for its Calculus sequence for Math, Science and Engineering majors. I have looked on the web page of the Math Department at UC Berkeley where the questions and answers for midterms and finals in these courses are frequently posted and have found that they are of nearly the exact same level of difficulty as the questions on my son’s midterms and finals at Sacramento State. If the courses at CSU Sacramento and UC Berkeley are of the same rigor how can you tell that the Berkeley students generally have more ability than Sacramento State students? You look at the graduation rates for the two schools. About 85% of students who matriculate at UC Berkeley will eventually earn their Bachelors degree compared to only 42% at CSU Sacramento.</p>
<p>The idea would be that grades are typically curved (at at least one of the institutions) in a way that makes some kind of adjustment for the underlying talent of the student body. In practice, those adjustments are usually not large enough.</p>
<p>In the case of Sacramento State and UC Berkeley math and science courses the expectations for satisfactory student performance seems to be the same at both schools and the only adjustment that is made for the difference in ability between the two student populations is that Sacramento State gives failing grades to a much larger percentage of their students resulting in their academic dismissal for poor scholarship or voluntary withdrawal from Sacramento State before they are involuntarily dismissed. The adjustment seems to be quite large with UC Berkeley graduating 85% of its students while Sacramento State grants diplomas to only 42% of their students. I suspect a similar adjustment is made in the case of Princeton and state schools. A large number of students at state schools never graduate due to academic failure while the attrition rate at Princeton is very low.</p>
<p>^That really doesn’t prove Sacramento State is easier or harder than UC Berkeley. There’s too many variables involved. The only way to show that a school is harder than another is to use a standardized test. If 3.6 GPA students at Scramento State are scoring better on the MCAT than 3.6 GPA students at Berkeley, then you can reasonably make the assertion that Sacramento State is harder than Berkeley. Unfortunately, very few schools release their GPA/MCAT data. Cornell does it. Michigan does it. Berkeley does it (although their data is severely limited). If you compare the data released, it implies that top private schools are harder than state schools.</p>