I don’t think this is true. Searching on the Reddit premed sub, there has only been 1 thread in past year with WARS in title and none with LizzM. I don’t doubt that some students use such formulas, but it is far from 100% of students.
2 Likes
@WayOutWestMom Any thoughts on these “rating systems” mentioned above? (LizzM and WARS)
Since you are so into reddit, at reddit premed wiki, of the short list of 19 premed glossaries, WARS, LizzM and SDN (Student Doctor Network) are listed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/wiki/index/
And it’s not included in the linked wiki/FAQ, including in the section for estimating competitiveness – an acronym defined in glossary that was not included in the FAQ/wiki you linked.
1 Like
It is absurd to think that Wikipedia and Reddit are now considered authoritative sources, given what we know about how the information (I hate to even call it data) is contributed and vetted.
4 Likes
The point was not that Reddit is authoritative source of information. It was that Reddit can give a glimpse of what a large number of premed students are doing/discussing – accurate or not. If there has been only 1 thread in past year on the subject, and it was not discussed in relevant section of wiki/FAQ, then it’s unlikely to be used by 100% of premed students, as was claimed.
3 Likes
It is at the right column of the page. Actually, it is not only at wiki, but also at premed sub home page in reddit.
1 Like
Did you read the post you replied to? I am aware that the acronym is defined in the glossary. That doesn’t prove any of your claims. For example, the glossary on this site defines TASP as Telluride Association Summer Program. That doesn’t mean 100% of prospective college students use the Telluride Summer Program.
1 Like
Please take the back and forth to PM. TIA
These rating system are only used on SDN. LizzyM is adcomm at an elite med school. Her system was very simplistic–MCAT +(gpa x10) = your level of competitiveness for highly competitive schools. (NOTE: MCAT scores used under her rating system were the old style MCATs that went from 15-40. Current MCAT scoring goes from 472-528. So you can’t even calculate a LizzyM score today.)
She herself admitted her rating system was over simplified and simply didn’t take into account most of the factors that go into making a decision about who to interview and admit.
Mostly it was a quick and dirty way to determine if one had the stats to apply to Harvard and Yale or if one should focus on a less reachy list.
Her rating system was also developed back in the dark ages when med school admissions were less holistic than they are today.
WedgeDawg was a med student who attempted to codify other factors in med school admissions–like undergrad attended, level of ECs. His ranking system has always been controversial because he arbitrarily assigned values to things that are tough to quantify–like the value of certain volunteer activities.
Even on SDN, no one really uses either rating system anymore because neither had much reliable predictive value.
10 Likes
I think that this is the correct question.
We know that a higher percentage of students at a top ranked university are likely to be accepted to medical school compared to a lower ranked university. However, the point is not whether the average student at Harvard is more likely to get accepted compared to the average student at U.Mass Lowell. Nor is the question whether there are some very strong students at U.Mass Lowell – we know that there are.
The question is more for any one particular very strong student, if they are so strong that they can get accepted to Harvard, would they be more likely to get into medical school as an average student at Harvard, or as a “top 20%” or “top 25%” student at one of the U.Mass campuses (whether Lowell or Amherst of one of the others) or at some comparable university?
One daughter went to a university ranked in the 100-120 range. As a pre-vet student she was in classes full of premed students. Some of them (I met at least two) were so strong that they would have been at least realistic applicants for Harvard. Attending a medium ranked university they did really well in tough premed classes, went to very good medical schools, and at least for the two that I can recall meeting I am pretty sure that one is an MD (in their residency) and one will be in May (about the same time that my daughter gets her DVM). Would this have been any different if they had gone to Harvard? I don’t know, but I do not think so.
For graduate school admissions but not medical school, I have heard that some students from MIT or Caltech might get into very good graduate programs with GPAs that would have made admissions unlikely if they had gotten the same undergraduate GPA somewhere else. I suspect I was one such student. However, if I had gone somewhere else, I might have had a higher undergraduate GPA. A’s are not easy to get at MIT.
So I absolutely believe that a higher percentage of Harvard graduates get accepted to very good MD programs compared to the percentage of U.Mass Amherst or U.Mass Lowell graduates who get accepted to the same MD programs. However to me this does not imply that for any one student who gets accepted to all three of these schools, that their individual chances of getting accepted to a good MD program depends upon which of these three schools they attend. From everything that I have seen it seems more likely that the consistent quality of the students who get accepted to any particular university has a much larger impact on how many of those students then go on to medical school.
3 Likes
Very few schools publicly break down their medical school acceptance rates by GPA and MCAT score. I could only find 2 with recent examples. Schools with less impressive medical school acceptance rates are unlikely to publicly reveal any results.
US medical school acceptance rate (2023) = 41.9%
The mean GPA at Harvard is approximately 3.8. For a Harvard undergrad, the risk of NOT getting into medical school is about the same as the risk of dropping out of the school.
"Yale undergrads do really well when it comes to applying to med schools, with almost
90% getting into a US medical school.”
Yale does not provide committee letters for medical school applications
2023 medical school acceptance rates matched for MCAT score and GPA range
Yale (MCAT 510-513, GPA 3.8+) 100%
National (MCAT 510-513 GPA 3.8+) 66.7%
Yale (MCAT 514-517, GPA 3.8+) 96%
National (MCAT, 514-517, GPA 3.8+) 75.3%
Yale (MCAT > 517, GPA 3.8+) 90%
National (MCAT >517, GPA 3.8+) 82.9%
Yale (MCAT 506-509, GPA 3.6-3.79) 75%
National( MCAT 506-509, GPA 3.6-3.79) 40.4%
Yale (MCAT 514-517, GPA 3.6-3.79) 80%
National (MCAT 514-517, GPA 3.6-3.79) 65.4%
Yale) (MCAT 518+, GPA 3.6-3.79) 100%
National (MCAT 518+, GPA 3.6-3.79) 72.4%
Yale (MCAT 510-513, GPA 3.40-3.59) 50%
National (MCAT 510-513, GPA 3.4-3.59) 45.3%
Yale (MCAT 514-517, GPA 3.4-3.59) 75%
National (MCAT 514-517, GPA 3.4-3.59) 56.3%
The mean GPA at Yale in 2022-2023 was 3.70
The mean GPA for US colleges in 2020 was 3.15 (according to the NCES)
Vanderbilt University statistics
Vanderbilt’s 2023 acceptance rate was 78%. Although not directly comparable to the AAMC Table A-23, Vanderbilt’s stats also seem to be significantly better than the national average when matched for MCAT and GPA range. Vanderbilt does provide a committee letter to medical schools. Since 18-24 applicants (out of 192) applied with a GPA <= 3.1, 6 applicants applied with an MCAT score < 50th percentile, and at least 1 applicant had both a GPA <= 3.1 and an MCAT score < 50th percentile, the committee probably didn’t dissuade any Vanderbilt pre-meds from applying to medical school.
There also appears to be a significant qualitative difference in terms of medical school matriculation, but that is hard to compare.
6 Likes
I know these schools are trying, and I respect that. The issue I have with these data is we don’t know which medical programs or students are they including:
- MD applicants only? or DO too?
- This year’s undergrads? or students who graduated at any point?
- If more than just this year’s undergrads, how many of these students did a Post BACC or SMP? (they have higher application success rates)
I could go on but you get my point. It’s hard to understand the numbers if the school doesn’t tell us which programs or students are included/excluded, which in turn makes it impossible to compare college A vs college B. I have never seen a school present their data clearly delineating what they are including…which always makes me think they have something to hide and/or just don’t want to be transparent for whatever reasons.
WashU used to provide their data in a chart exactly mirroring Table A-23 above. They stopped that maybe 5-6 years ago. I wish all schools provided data in that form.
2 Likes
-
Both MD and DO because DO schools (although very few) are listed below.
-
Both graduating seniors and alumni.
-
That information is not provided. My impression is that for certain schools students who apply without taking a gap year often have stronger academic credentials than those who didn’t. The Yale stats show a higher acceptance rate for the graduating seniors group.
I don’t think any students were excluded from the Yale list. The school does not provide committee letters for their students.
Medical school acceptance rate: Class of 2023 91%, Yale College Alumni 88%, Reapplicants 80%
Unfortunately, Yale seems to be the only school that provides this type of publicly available information. The sample size is only 1.
2 Likes
Here’s Rutger’s data and list of medical schools for a rough comparison. There is no GPA/MCAT breakdown. The difference in the medical school matriculation list is stark.
1 Like
Is this due to self selection though? The kids getting admitted to and attending Yale are all extremely qualified. At a state school for example, while many are just as qualified, there are a lot less high-achieving students. Yale also has a wealthier population than the average state school attendee. Medical school is expensive. Just food for thought.
4 Likes
I definitely think those Yale stats are interesting to reflect on, but theoretically I think a full set of controls would also need to take into account the experience stuff, which I suspect would independently correlate with Yale-v-National attendance. Obviously in practice that may be impossible, but I would guess if it had been doable, it might close the gaps some more.
The other thing is the sample sizes are really small for some of the Yale data. Like that 506-509 MCAT category difference is pretty big, but that 75% is a 3 of 4 total result for Yale. Hard to know if that is really a big difference from 40.4%. Given the overall pattern, you probably would prefer to be in that box as a Yale applicant, but I suspect with a lot more data the gap would be closer to the others.
But for sure the consistency of the direction of difference is notable even if the exact scale of difference in each box is not so reliable. But again that is where I wonder what would happen if we could somehow control for experience stuff.
By the way, as a final thought–my guess is in a lot of other areas, we would see much larger gaps. I know people interpret every percentage point as being critical, but to me the result in the box with the biggest sample–3.8+/518±- of 90% Yale, 82.9% National, really validates the idea that you can go to a wide variety of colleges and be very competitive for med school admissions–IF you do well enough in your classes AND you do well enough on the MCAT.
Whether it may make more of a difference in marginal cases, maybe, but I do think that big picture observation about med school admissions actually held up pretty well in this mini-study.
I agree there is a selection difference between Yale and many other schools. You correctly point out the many potential variables that could affect the results. However, when matched by both GPA and MCAT scores, the 2 most important criteria that medical school admissions use to evaluate applicants, Yale significantly outperforms the rest of the country.
A counterargument could be that if medical schools primarily rely on the GPA/MCAT results to determine admissions results, it wouldn’t matter that I selected Yale. If medical school admissions officers do not consider the applicant’s school of origin, all colleges should have very similar admissions results when stratified by GPA and MCAT score.
1 Like
No disagreement. If you do very well in school and you ace the MCAT exam, you are very likely to get into medical school no matter your educational background.
I am not arguing that prestige (or preference) is a big factor in admissions decision. But I think there is evidence that it is a consideration.
2 Likes