people who went to top 20 universities, what was your mcat score compared to gpa

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ronaldo23

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to people who wnet to a top 20 national or liberal arts college, what is your gpa vs mcat? I am trying to see if there is a correlation of lower gpa and high mcat or if this theory is just not true.
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Johns Hopkins University
3.75 BCPM/ 3.77 Overall (top 12% of UG)
34R (10VR, 12PS, 12BS)
 
I'm at a top 20. Look at my mdapps for the numbers.
 
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rplyler1 said:
Statistically, we are almost identical:)
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Nice! You're closer in stats to me than anyone else I've seen before. And double major, too? Very nice. Good luck.
 
JDOC13 said:
Nice! You're closer in stats to me than anyone else I've seen before. And double major, too? Very nice. Good luck.
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I know, and in a non-science subject. I took a couple years of Italian during UG as part of my Art History major.

Good luck to you too.:luck:
 
Harvard, 3.56 Overall, 3.63 BCPM, 37Q (12 VR, 13 PS, 12 BS Q)
SO, I guess I would fit your theor
 
I'm close enough to a top 20.

GPA: 3.65
MCAT: 30

Both should have been higher, but I think my GPA matches my MCAT well (about average for accepted students).
 
ronaldo23 said:
to people who wnet to a top 20 national or liberal arts college, what is your gpa vs mcat? I am trying to see if there is a correlation of lower gpa and high mcat or if this theory is just not true.
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I think it depends on a lot of things. I'm guessing that generally a high GPA would be correlated with a high MCAT if you restrict yourself to self-selecting top universities. However, if you compare... HYP to the rest of the top-20, you might see some people with lower GPAs doing very well on the MCAT. This might just be a person who is particularly good at standardized tests (demonstrated by solid performances in the PSAT, SAT, SAT 2s, AP exams... all of which contributed to a good college app) but is straight up outgunned in his undergrad classes.

For example, a kid who goes to UChicago and has a 3.98 will probably do very well on the MCAT. I'm guessing that it's a bit more of a mixed bag in less-selective schools but still with a high proportion of high-scoring high-GPA'ers.

A quick search of MDApps (I understand it isn't the best source of information... but only one obvious BS profile) revealed that Harvard grads with a 3.8+ tend to score above 38 (15 data points). There were only 2 people under 38, and they scored 35 and 36.

For Yale, 3.8+ applicants (20 data points) tended to score above 37 with 4 people under that number, two at 35, one at 33, one outlier at 29.

Naturally, MDapps posters are self selecting, but so are SDN posters. You're not going to get good data...
 
I graduated from a top five with a 3.76, MCAT 40Q. I guess it sort of fits?
 
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damn thats a lot of high shooting stats being tossed around. I suddenly wish i went to a better university.
 
stats are in my mdapps profile....not sure if i really fit your theory though
 
dienekes88 said:
For example, a kid who goes to UChicago and has a 3.98 will probably do very well on the MCAT. I'm guessing that it's a bit more of a mixed bag in less-selective schools but still with a high proportion of high-scoring high-GPA'ers.
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What?? You know someone from UChicago with a 3.98 GPA??? :p
But yeah I agree. Probably the top kids from each school will be scoring in the higher MCAT range.
I can tell you right now that low GPA/high MCAT is not limited to Harvard Yale and Princeton (tell me if I am mistaken about the acronym). Many top 20 schools tend to be very competitive in terms of GPA.
 
Wash U
3.65 Overall
3.57 BCPM
37M MCAT
 
dienekes88 said:
I think it depends on a lot of things. I'm guessing that generally a high GPA would be correlated with a high MCAT if you restrict yourself to self-selecting top universities. However, if you compare... HYP to the rest of the top-20, you might see some people with lower GPAs doing very well on the MCAT. This might just be a person who is particularly good at standardized tests (demonstrated by solid performances in the PSAT, SAT, SAT 2s, AP exams... all of which contributed to a good college app) but is straight up outgunned in his undergrad classes.

For example, a kid who goes to UChicago and has a 3.98 will probably do very well on the MCAT. I'm guessing that it's a bit more of a mixed bag in less-selective schools but still with a high proportion of high-scoring high-GPA'ers.

A quick search of MDApps (I understand it isn't the best source of information... but only one obvious BS profile) revealed that Harvard grads with a 3.8+ tend to score above 38 (15 data points). There were only 2 people under 38, and they scored 35 and 36.

For Yale, 3.8+ applicants (20 data points) tended to score above 37 with 4 people under that number, two at 35, one at 33, one outlier at 29.

Naturally, MDapps posters are self selecting, but so are SDN posters. You're not going to get good data...
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I go to a top 20, and I think I've heard something like your MCAT should be ten times your GPA???
 
scarletgirl777 said:
I go to a top 20, and I think I've heard something like your MCAT should be ten times your GPA???
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GPA = 3.97, MCAT = 40Q. Makes sense to me.

But I don't go to a top 10. I even don't go to a top 100. I don't live in the basement at my parents house though :laugh:
 
scarletgirl777 said:
I go to a top 20, and I think I've heard something like your MCAT should be ten times your GPA???
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I think you're getting that mixed up with the "LizzyM score" (as it's called around here--but I'm sure it's done elsewhere too), which is supposed to give you a benchmark for how competitive you are at a given med school. LizzyM score = (10*GPA) + MCAT + 1. Then you compare your score to the school's score, which is computed using the average stats they report in the MSAR.

Otherwise, your idea seems a little strange. A 3.0 GPA should have a 30 MCAT, while a 4.0 should have a 40? You'd expect it to be the opposite (low GPA needs a high MCAT to have a decent chance of admission). And how many people do you think score a 40, anyway? I looked it up, so I know: about 200 per year, out of 68,000 people who take the MCAT. There are a hell of a lot more 4.0 GPA's out there than 40 MCATs.
 
student1799 said:
I think you're getting that mixed up with the "LizzyM score" (as it's called around here--but I'm sure it's done elsewhere too), which is supposed to give you a benchmark for how competitive you are at a given med school. LizzyM score = (10*GPA) + MCAT + 1. Then you compare your score to the school's score, which is computed using the average stats they report in the MSAR.

Otherwise, your idea seems a little strange. A 3.0 GPA should have a 30 MCAT, while a 4.0 should have a 40? You'd expect it to be the opposite (low GPA needs a high MCAT to have a decent chance of admission). And how many people do you think score a 40, anyway? I looked it up, so I know: about 200 per year, out of 68,000 people who take the MCAT. There are a hell of a lot more 4.0 GPA's out there than 40 MCATs.
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I think that they were implying that if you go to a top 20 UG, that your MCAT will be 10 times your GPA. This is not the scores that you need to get into med. school but the scores that you will probably get based on your grades/ aptitude at your institute. I think this is what was implied; I might be wrong though.
 
I think your survey suffers from serious response bias :scared:.

And honestly I question multiple people that have posted.
 
ugrad Ivy GPA = 3.35
post-bacc Ivy GPA = 3.90
MCAT = 36Q
 
Chicagochew said:
What?? You know someone from UChicago with a 3.98 GPA??? :p
But yeah I agree. Probably the top kids from each school will be scoring in the higher MCAT range.
I can tell you right now that low GPA/high MCAT is not limited to Harvard Yale and Princeton (tell me if I am mistaken about the acronym). Many top 20 schools tend to be very competitive in terms of GPA.
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Agreed.

I think you misunderstood me. Low GPA/High MCAT will be more common at HYP than at other schools.

There are low GPA/high MCAT people at every school.
 
3.7, 3.66 sGPA 36R. Top five liberal arts college.

Kind of interesting survey.

You should add a poll though.
 
I went to a school that was top-20 on some lists, and more like top-40 on others (and top-10 public university), and my GPA was 2.7, and my MCAT was 33.
 
student1799 said:
I think you're getting that mixed up with the "LizzyM score" (as it's called around here--but I'm sure it's done elsewhere too), which is supposed to give you a benchmark for how competitive you are at a given med school. LizzyM score = (10*GPA) + MCAT + 1. Then you compare your score to the school's score, which is computed using the average stats they report in the MSAR.

Otherwise, your idea seems a little strange. A 3.0 GPA should have a 30 MCAT, while a 4.0 should have a 40? You'd expect it to be the opposite (low GPA needs a high MCAT to have a decent chance of admission). And how many people do you think score a 40, anyway? I looked it up, so I know: about 200 per year, out of 68,000 people who take the MCAT. There are a hell of a lot more 4.0 GPA's out there than 40 MCATs.
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This isnt about LizzyM score. This is about advisors at my school saying what they tend to see from those of us who choose to apply to medical school, as a rough estimate :) I would say that a lot of applicants are in the 3.2-3.8 range, and it's no mathematical equation by any means.
 
rplyler1 said:
I think that they were implying that if you go to a top 20 UG, that your MCAT will be 10 times your GPA. This is not the scores that you need to get into med. school but the scores that you will probably get based on your grades/ aptitude at your institute. I think this is what was implied; I might be wrong though.
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Beat me to it :)
 
scarletgirl777 said:
This isnt about LizzyM score. This is about advisors at my school saying what they tend to see from those of us who choose to apply to medical school, as a rough estimate :) I would say that a lot of applicants are in the 3.2-3.8 range, and it's no mathematical equation by any means.
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Sorry if I misinterpreted your post. But I still think the whole idea is kind of questionable. There's no inherent reason for there to be a relationship between GPA's and MCATs, because the MCAT is a percentile-based score and the GPA is not. In other words, there's really no inherent limit on the number of people nationwide who have a certain GPA, but if you get an MCAT score of, say, 30, it's ALWAYS going to be the 75th percentile for the test you took. (That's how the scores are designed.) So only 25% of the applicants can have that score or higher, by definition.

Take the numbers you cited in your post: 3.2-3.8. By this "rule," a 3.2 student should have a 32 MCAT. But a 3.2 would be seen as a really low GPA for a med school applicant (certainly in the bottom 10%), while a 32 MCAT is around the 85th percentile (top 15%). I'm sure it's not unheard of, but it's probably not that common for a student to have well-below-average grades and a well-above-average MCAT. Same goes for 3.8/38. A 3.8 is certainly an above-average score for a med school applicant (average is around 3.5), but it's not seen as anything rare or extraordinary. But a 38 MCAT score IS pretty rare, because it's the 99th percentile (top 1%). In 2007, less than 500 people in the whole country got a 38 on the MCAT. Again, it's a lot harder to get the MCAT score than the GPA it supposedly goes with.

It sounds to me like someone just made this up, because it sounded good to them. I don't see a lot of factual basis for it.
 
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I think what they mean is that even though people at really good schools may have average or even below average gpas, this gpa is given as a comparison to the students they competing with in their class. While they might be average at their school, the MCAT is given to a wide range of students from many different schools and scored against a general test-taking population. So even though a student might be average at an ivy with a 3.4 or 3.5, they are standout in general population. People here are commenting on two different populations, the general population of people applying to med school, in which a 3.7 may be common, and the population of people from highly competitive schools, where a 3.7 isn't so much. At the undergrad I went to, the average accepted student into medical school had a 3.5, but the average mcat was a 33.
 
student1799 said:
Sorry if I misinterpreted your post. But I still think the whole idea is kind of questionable. There's no inherent reason for there to be a relationship between GPA's and MCATs, because the MCAT is a percentile-based score and the GPA is not. In other words, there's really no inherent limit on the number of people nationwide who have a certain GPA, but if you get an MCAT score of, say, 30, it's ALWAYS going to be the 75th percentile for the test you took. (That's how the scores are designed.) So only 25% of the applicants can have that score or higher, by definition.

Take the numbers you cited in your post: 3.2-3.8. By this "rule," a 3.2 student should have a 32 MCAT. But a 3.2 would be seen as a really low GPA for a med school applicant (certainly in the bottom 10%), while a 32 MCAT is around the 85th percentile (top 15%). I'm sure it's not unheard of, but it's probably not that common for a student to have well-below-average grades and a well-above-average MCAT. Same goes for 3.8/38. A 3.8 is certainly an above-average score for a med school applicant (average is around 3.5), but it's not seen as anything rare or extraordinary. But a 38 MCAT score IS pretty rare, because it's the 99th percentile (top 1%). In 2007, less than 500 people in the whole country got a 38 on the MCAT. Again, it's a lot harder to get the MCAT score than the GPA it supposedly goes with.

It sounds to me like someone just made this up, because it sounded good to them. I don't see a lot of factual basis for it.
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Percentiles are for the entire nation, not individual schools. It could be that some schools disproportionately produce high MCATs, but since GPAs must still be curved within the school, you would see people with somewhat lower GPAs and higher MCATs. And it's a very rough figure, I'm sure not every person with a 3.8 at my school has a 38. It was also unclear to me whether they meant GPA or science GPA.

Intellect and hard work make it easier to have a high GPA and and make it easier to do well on the MCAT. Obviously, GPA and MCAT are two different measures of ability, but I don't see why there being some correlation between the two would be a surprise.
 
scarletgirl777 said:
Percentiles are for the entire nation, not individual schools. It could be that some schools disproportionately produce high MCATs, but since GPAs must still be curved within the school, you would see people with somewhat lower GPAs and higher MCATs. And it's a very rough figure, I'm sure not every person with a 3.8 at my school has a 38. It was also unclear to me whether they meant GPA or science GPA.

Intellect and hard work make it easier to have a high GPA and and make it easier to do well on the MCAT. Obviously, GPA and MCAT are two different measures of ability, but I don't see why there being some correlation between the two would be a surprise.
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Also, if your school has already "culled the herd" as it were (selective college), then someone in the bottom half of the class scoring in the 85th percentile might not be unreasonable...

Yeah. The hypothesis that there's an inverse relationship is kinda bogus/ridiculous.
 
scarletgirl777 said:
top 20
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are beyond notorious for grade inflation, but they are difficult to get into, so it should be assumed a higher mcat score is due to intelligence as opposed to undergrad rigor.
 
What makes you think that the top 20 university MCAT to GPA correlation is any different than the correlation at the mid tier or even "bottom" 20? All this stuff is more individual specific than school specific. And oh yeah, what about majors? Probably more important than the school...
 
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dienekes88 said:
Also, if your school has already "culled the herd" as it were (selective college), then someone in the bottom half of the class scoring in the 85th percentile might not be unreasonable...

Yeah. The hypothesis that there's an inverse relationship is kinda bogus/ridiculous.
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That's not my hypothesis. What I'm saying is that the hypothesis that was stated ("your MCAT score should be around 10x your GPA") makes very little sense. I am certainly not arguing that higher-aptitude students tend to also get higher MCAT scores, but there's no basis for saying that MCATs and GPAs should have a 10-to-1 relationship.

You may think I said there was an inverse relationship between grades and MCAT because in my first post, I said that we were always told that low grades should be BALANCED by a high MCAT in order to get into med school. But I didn't say that students with low GPAs generally got high MCAT scores.

And yeah, I know all about Ivy League schools because I went to two of them. Ivy undergrad (same as yours) and Ivy postbacc.
 
bump
 
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student1799 said:
That's not my hypothesis. What I'm saying is that the hypothesis that was stated ("your MCAT score should be around 10x your GPA") makes very little sense. I am certainly not arguing that higher-aptitude students tend to also get higher MCAT scores, but there's no basis for saying that MCATs and GPAs should have a 10-to-1 relationship.

You may think I said there was an inverse relationship between grades and MCAT because in my first post, I said that we were always told that low grades should be BALANCED by a high MCAT in order to get into med school. But I didn't say that students with low GPAs generally got high MCAT scores.

And yeah, I know all about Ivy League schools because I went to two of them. Ivy undergrad (same as yours) and Ivy postbacc.
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I was talking about the OP's hypothesis.
 
I'm assuming your hypothesis is that at top 20 schools, there's more ppl with lower gpa's with high mcats compared to the general population. It looks like it fits so far, but i think adcoms already understand this. They probably make a mental note of which school the applicant came from, and if they're from a top 20, will be more lenient with their weighting of your gpa, or might even have some algorithm. What would be interesting is to hear statistics of students from top 20 schools' avg mcat and gpa vs. non top 20 schools' avg mcat and gpa correlations. What i'ld expect is a nontop 20's, data points might look like: 3.5-28, 3.8-32, 3.95-37, while at a top 20 school, look like: 3.3-31, 3.5-35, 3.7-38, 3.8-40. And actually, if you did this with every institution, you'ld probably understand which ones are 'easier' and which are 'harder'. I guess that's why the MCAT's called the great equilizer.
 
kedrin said:
damn thats a lot of high shooting stats being tossed around. I suddenly wish i went to a better university.
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i wouldn't base anything off of 20 people that respond on SDN. also, high scorers like to self-report more than low scorers.

plus, this is the internet people lie about stupid crap all the time.
 
Middle-Tier School
3.75
33m
figured i would add a data point for dark raven
 
Studied mechanical engineering at MIT.
MIT scores your GPA on a 5-point scale.

If I remember correctly, my GPA was around 3.6 - 3.7

30 on the MCAT (10, 10, 10) - took it once.
 
Don't you know? *Everyone* on SDN says that they went to a top (20/50/83.2) school that has massive grade deflation. In the end, its meaningless.
 
Raryn said:
Don't you know? *Everyone* on SDN says that they went to a top (20/50/83.2) school that has massive grade deflation. In the end, its meaningless.
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National universities, third tier!:thumbup::laugh:
 
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