Some of the worst advice you received as a pre-med

[efle]

Oh you havent taken or looked at it.


The MCAT is a test that will make you feel stupid unless you are a top 5 percent in USA student.

It gives the student an illusion as to being a content based test. You DO have to study and memorize 3 years of pre-med science coursework for this one test.

But that is not enough. The test requires you to have a massive knowledgebase, but the majority of the test is a critical thinking assessment.

This is why the MCAT destroys medical careers. Its a "necessary evil." You are also on SDN so you will hear talk of many people doing very well because there is a giant reporting bias on this website

and the people on this website are not even close to representing the average MD applicant or even matriculant for that matter.

I wonder if the DO sub is also biased towards strong app posters or if they're more representative

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[Goro]

Efle, can you clarify?

I wonder if the DO sub is also biased towards strong app posters or if they're more representative

 

[Gandyy]

Efle, can you clarify?

I'm also wondering what you mean by that Efle?

 

[OllieDog]

Efle, can you clarify?

I'm also wondering what you mean by that Efle?

I think he's referring to the pre-DO subforum being more respresentative of the spread of applicants vs the pre-MD subforum.

 

[Goro]

If so, I'd say the pre-DO forum might be more representative of the typical DO student, because most of them have already gone through 1-2 rounds of MD apps, and seem to have the SDN hyper-neuroticism weeded out by now. For example, I don't see people routinely posting a response to a WAMC query with "you need a 33 MCAT to get into a DO school"

At the minimum, they're calmer, being veterans at this.

I think he's referring to the pre-DO subforum being more respresentative of the spread of applicants vs the pre-MD subforum.

 

[Cotterpin]

wot? That's a thing?

I hope not. My 60+ year-old dad got some bad advice (not related to medical school, obviously) from someone who told him not to use complete sentences or punctuation in his resume or emails because it made him look old.

 

[Goro]

I hoped your dad smacked that person!

I hope not. My 60+ year-old dad got some bad advice (not related to medical school, obviously) from someone who told him not to use complete sentences or punctuation in his resume or emails because it made him look old.

 

[emraldragon]

I hope not. My 60+ year-old dad got some bad advice (not related to medical school, obviously) from someone who told him not to use complete sentences or punctuation in his resume or emails because it made him look old.

The "death" of the English language is somewhat disturbing to me, but I know that makes me sound like an old fuddy-duddy. Mistakes like the ones over in the necrobump thread in the Lounge drive me crazy.

 

[Cotterpin]

I hoped your smacked that person!

It was one of those employment agency people whose entire job is to give advice on these things.

The "death" of the English language is somewhat disturbing to me, but I know that makes me sound like an old fuddy-duddy. Mistakes like the ones over in the necrobump thread in the Lounge drive me crazy.

I feel you.

 

[finestein]

deleted because I replied to something that happened long ago in the thread without noticing like a total dweeb

 

[Carmiche]

deleted because I replied to something that happened long ago in the thread without noticing like a total dweeb

I was literally just about to do that. Then I realized that I was on the second page...

 

[efle]

Efle, can you clarify?

I'm also wondering what you mean by that Efle?

It seems like every poster in pre-allo is an MIT 4.0 / 40+ with published research and seven thousand volunteer hours. Was wondering if the DO forums are so disproportionately full of far-above-average posters too.

If so, I'd say the pre-DO forum might be more representative of the typical DO student, because most of them have already gone through 1-2 rounds of MD apps, and seem to have the SDN hyper-neuroticism weeded out by now. For example, I don't see people routinely posting a response to a WAMC query with "you need a 33 MCAT to get into a DO school"

At the minimum, they're calmer, being veterans at this.

What percentage of DO applicants do you think are applying for the second or third time? Is the major problem lack of awareness about DO during the first cycle, or some view of DO as an unacceptable alternative until humbled by a failed first cycle?

 

[deleted393595]

It seems like every poster in pre-allo is an MIT 4.0 / 40+ with published research and seven thousand volunteer hours. Was wondering if the DO forums are so disproportionately full of far-above-average posters too.

I'm a 78+ LizzyM, but I'm definitely not MIT

 

[efle]

I'm a 78+ LizzyM, but I'm definitely not MIT

ElCapone, taking the humble out of humblebrag
Gotcha beat

 

[deleted393595]

ElCapone, taking the humble out of humblebrag
Gotcha beat

You can't beat me in procrastination or laziness.

 

[efle]

You can't beat me in procrastination or laziness.

I procrastinated my way into a gap year

 

[deleted393595]

I procrastinated my way into a gap year

I'm so lazy that I.... (will complete this post tomorrow. Maybe)

 

[PNWisBest]

My advisor told me, "My advice to is take the MCAT as many times as the test allows you in a year. It only increases your chances of doing better."

 

[You're My Boy Blue]

Holy s*** that is bad...and expensive

My advisor told me, "My advice to is take the MCAT as many times as the test allows you in a year. It only increases your chances of doing better."

 

[nwts]

My advisor told me, "My advice to is take the MCAT as many times as the test allows you in a year. It only increases your chances of doing better."

Even overlooking the fact that this would look awful in your application, did he/she think about how much money that would cost? This process is expensive enough, spending over $1,000 on taking the MCAT would not be helping anyone's wallet.

 

[Goro]

No, they're not. After all, if they could have gotten into an MD school, they wouldn't be posting in the pre-Osteo forum, right?
Was wondering if the DO forums are so disproportionately full of far-above-average posters too.


Wow, that's hard to tell! great question! I really can't quantify it, but I'd take a rough guess and say that the majority are in app cycle 2 or 3. But a decent number are more in the non-trad route (my schools seems to attract more non-trads than other DO schools, which themselves are historically non-trad friendly, ans as such have done some grade repair in one for or another.

What percentage of DO applicants do you think are applying for the second or third time? Is the major problem lack of awareness about DO during the first cycle, or some view of DO as an unacceptable alternative until humbled by a failed first cycle?

I think that the majority at first view MD as preferential due to both ignorance of the DO field as a whole, or ignorance as to what DO actually can do (like get into specialties/no be limited to Primary Care). Once they do their homework, this is less of an issue for them.

Maybe 5-10% of my students have allo-caliber stats but deliberately chose to go DO. This number seems to have been increasing over the past few years.

Year after year graduation surveys tell us that the vast majority of our grads, who have no reason to lie or embellish, tell us that they wouldn't change their choice of schools if they had to do it all over again. Not bad!

I don't think that the typical Pre-Allo SDNer is a 4.0 hypergunner. Far from it. it's a mix. They all seem to be good kids who I would like to have as my students. The anxiety levels are what's sky high! The WAMC forum does seem to have more rock stars asking about their chances this cycle. i don't remember that from previous cycles.

It seems like every poster in pre-allo is an MIT 4.0 / 40+ with published research and seven thousand volunteer hours.

 

[efle]

Thanks Goro.

I've noticed a couple 526 WAMC posters. That's equivalent to a 43 right? And lots others in the 520s. People are killing the new MCAT

 

[CaliforniaDreamer]

Thanks Goro.

I've noticed a couple 526 WAMC posters. That's equivalent to a 43 right? And lots others in the 520s. People are killing the new MCAT

Makes you wonder if the scaling is a bit off if we are seeing so many 99.9 and above percentile scores.

 

[ZedsDed]

Makes you wonder if the scaling is a bit off if we are seeing so many 99.9 and above percentile scores.

By definition it doesn't seem possible. I sometimes wonder if people post fake stats to gauge their options under different hypothetical outcomes.

 

[altblue]

That if I graduate from my school, the doors to any med school will open
That admissions is purely a function of GPA, MCAT, and letters of rec in equal weight
That biology is 100% conceptual and I wouldn't have to ever memorize...

 

[efle]

Makes you wonder if the scaling is a bit off if we are seeing so many 99.9 and above percentile scores.

Actually I think the test just has high scores closer to the max. On the old test the highest you saw with any significant number achieving was a 42 and 43-45 was pretty much empty. Now you see scores all the way out to 527 and only 528 looks empty

 

[deleted393595]

Makes you wonder if the scaling is a bit off if we are seeing so many 99.9 and above percentile scores.

"These kids have it so easy nowadays. Back in my day, we had to struggle for our MCAT scores!"

 

[Oh_Gee]

You can show that schools without fame can have rigor - UCSD for example. That is not the same as showing schools with fame that lack rigor.

I think there is a set of rigorous schools, that many of them are unrecognized for it, but that the set of highly prestigious schools are a subset entirely contained. At every Ivy you will have a rigorous set of science classes

ucsd goes hard in the paint
source:UCSD alumni here

 

[Gandyy]

"These kids have it so easy nowadays. Back in my day, we had to struggle for our MCAT scores!"

To add to that, a family friend of mine made a 28 on his MCAT about 10 years ago and got into a MD school. He said that was competitive for MD back then. Now its hardly barely borderline.

 

[efle]

ucsd goes hard in the paint
source:UCSD alumni here

Yep. They publish their grade distributions per class here...brutal. Average GPAs for Ochem are all less than 2.4 and that's with 10-20% in each class taking W's!

 

[Carmiche]

That if I graduate from my school, the doors to any med school will open

My school likes to feed premeds that bs too.

"When med school adcoms see that you went to this school, they will automatically know that you're going to make a great medical student due to the breadth of your education and the rigor of this school! That is why we have such a great matriculation rate for pre-health students"

My school is a no name LAC who inflates it's "pre-health acceptance rate of 80%" by including every student who gets into MD, DO, PA, and nursing. -_-

 

[efle]

My school likes to feed premeds that bs too.

"When med school adcoms see that you went to this school, they will automatically know that you're going to make a great medical student due to the breadth of your education and the rigor of this school! That is why we have such a great matriculation rate for pre-health students"

My school is a no name LAC who inflates it's "pre-health acceptance rate of 80%" by including every student who gets into MD, DO, PA, and nursing. -_-

Same deceitful nonsense vibes here. "If you're premed you should come to this college! Look how insanely high our rate of getting people into med school is!" (...because only a third of you will make it to applications)

 

[Gandyy]

Yep. They publish their grade distributions per class here...brutal. Average GPAs for Ochem are all less than 2.4 and that's with 10-20% in each class taking W's!

I decided to go back and look at my State U grade distributions for the semester I took Organic 2. Its a 2.494.................... lol. I think a lot of Large Public State Schools with >30k students Have pretty horrible

gpa distributions for the hard sciences.

In fact I'm going through and checking my Gen Chem, Orgo, Physics, Biology courses, and the gpa distributions at this school for the professors who teach those are all 2.7 or less.

lol

 

[ChrisMack390]

Same deceitful nonsense vibes here. "If you're premed you should come to this college! Look how insanely high our rate of getting people into med school is!" (...because only a third of you will make it to applications)

I hate this. "99% of the students we choose to write committee letters for because we are 99% sure they will get in, get in!"

 

[Carmiche]

Same deceitful nonsense vibes here. "If you're premed you should come to this college! Look how insanely high our rate of getting people into med school is!" (...because only a third of you will make it to applications)

Precisely. Parents, including mine, love believing it too.

"graduates experience an 80 percent acceptance rate into medical schools and other health science programs (two-year average)."

 

[Spinach Dip]

Yep. They publish their grade distributions per class here...brutal. Average GPAs for Ochem are all less than 2.4 and that's with 10-20% in each class taking W's!

At my school, for every 100 students who started Ochem I, only ~30 would get a C or better all three quarters. That means this series alone had an attrition of 70%.

(No-name state school, BTW. This wasn't an Ivy (or even a school which pretends its an Ivy). N=1.)

 

[efle]

At my school, for every 100 students who started Ochem I, only ~30 would get a C or better all three quarters. That means this series alone had an attrition of 70%.

(No-name state school, BTW. This wasn't an Ivy (or even a school which pretends its an Ivy). N=1.)

Holy **** man. How can a professor keep their teaching position when they fail 70% of the class?

I decided to go back and look at my State U grade distributions for the semester I took Organic 2. Its a 2.494.................... lol. I think a lot of Large Public State Schools with >30k students Have pretty horrible

gpa distributions for the hard sciences.

In fact I'm going through and checking my Gen Chem, Orgo, Physics, Biology courses, and the gpa distributions at this school for the professors who teach those are all 2.7 or less.

lol

I've only ever seen that kind of deflation at public schools. I wonder what keeps them so much more old school than the private uni's. Like there's a clear incentive to inflate; what's stopping them?

 

[efle]

Precisely. Parents, including mine, love believing it too.

"graduates experience an 80 percent acceptance rate into medical schools and other health science programs (two-year average)."

hahah *70% into podiatry

 

[Gandyy]

Holy **** man. How can a professor keep their teaching position when they fail 70% of the class?


I've only ever seen that kind of deflation at public schools. I wonder what keeps them so much more old school than the private uni's. Like there's a clear incentive to inflate; what's stopping them?

I'm trying to figure this out as well because it is so ridiculously easy to get into Large Public State Schools. So maybe its because there are so many non-driven students? I dont know..... I cant think of anything else atm.

 

[deleted393595]

At my school, for every 100 students who started Ochem I, only ~30 would get a C or better all three quarters. That means this series alone had an attrition of 70%.

(No-name state school, BTW. This wasn't an Ivy (or even a school which pretends its an Ivy). N=1.)

Sounds exactly like my school. @efle: 70% is justifiable because those kids have no business being in college. Just my $0.02 attending an institution similar to Spinach Dip's.

 

[efle]

Sounds exactly like my school. @efle: 70% is justifiable because those kids have no business being in college. Just my $0.02 attending an institution similar to Spinach Dip's.

Yikes along with GTLO that makes a few brilliant premeds with very low opinions of their big public school :/

I'm trying to figure this out as well because it is so ridiculously easy to get into Large Public State Schools. So maybe its because there are so many non-driven students? I dont know..... I cant think of anything else atm.

I mean, they're four year unis not community schools right? People are forking over major bucks and taking fulltime course loads, they can't all be slackers ?

 

[Holmwood]

Holy **** man. How can a professor keep their teaching position when they fail 70% of the class?


I've only ever seen that kind of deflation at public schools. I wonder what keeps them so much more old school than the private uni's. Like there's a clear incentive to inflate; what's stopping them?

I'm not sure how this works.
It wouldn't be counted as 70% when people who drop out of the class are not factored in, right? So the "overall" class fail rate would be pretty low by the time finals roll in. So that what should have been a 70% fail rate would be counted as a 20% fail rate at the end of the semester or something.

 

[deleted393595]

Yikes along with GTLO that makes a few brilliant premeds with very low opinions of their big public school :/


I mean, they're four year unis not community schools right? People are forking over major bucks and taking fulltime course loads, they can't all be slackers ?

Me? Brilliant? Lol! But thanks for the optimism

You'd be surprised when it comes to those kids. Most of them are still thinking it's as easy as high school.

 

[samac]

My school likes to feed premeds that bs too.

"When med school adcoms see that you went to this school, they will automatically know that you're going to make a great medical student due to the breadth of your education and the rigor of this school! That is why we have such a great matriculation rate for pre-health students"

My school is a no name LAC who inflates it's "pre-health acceptance rate of 80%" by including every student who gets into MD, DO, PA, and nursing. -_-

I will say I'm proud of my little no name school here. Out of 20 applying (we're quite a tiny school) only 2 didn't get in. Our pre med advisor was very good at telling people whether they stood a chance around their sophomore year or not
He would say things to people like "Now now look here. You got a C in gen biology, orgo, and A&P. This looks bad. You either have to do a 180 now or get out. You're not going to get in if you continue those trends, if you do continue those trends you're going to have to go get a masters"

People would usually major change here.

 

[Gandyy]

Yikes along with GTLO that makes a few brilliant premeds with very low opinions of their big public school :/


I mean, they're four year unis not community schools right? People are forking over major bucks and taking fulltime course loads, they can't all be slackers ?

I'm not sure. I did just recently find out that the Uni I went to is actually a relatively strong public 4 year.... so... idk. I dont want to say any of my science classes were ultra stupid tough (besides orgo 2... omg that guy was ridiculous... his tests were ridiculous) but they definitely required some serious work ethic.

Nah I dont think they are all slackers. I think it might just be because most of those giant pre-med freshman/sophmore year classes are just weed out courses. Most people cant keep up.

My intro Bio class (for biology majors) had around 500 kids in it. There were 2 classes so about 1k kids. Most of them I'm going to go ahead and assume were pre-med (why else would you major in something so useless as Biology ) and by the time Junior year came around... there were like 100 kids left in our advanced upper level courses.

My theory is that the kids who get weeded out are pretty much softening the curve up, and are responsible for the HORRENDOUS gpa distributions at these large 4 year public universities.

So then, what I'm trying to figure out is how adcoms figure out exactly how much a school inflates, deflates or no flates based on other stuff.

Because from my experience and I guess yours as well, the giant universities public or private have horrible gpa distributions for the hardcore pre-med science courses. So how do they know how hard a school is when so many large schools have a <2.7 gpa for SGPA distribution?

 

[efle]

So then, what I'm trying to figure out is how adcoms figure out exactly how much a school inflates, deflates or no flates based on other stuff.

Public schools are required to release grade distribution data to the government, so that's an easy answer. Private schools aren't. There is absolutely zero way to know what private schools inflate/deflate without building their own dataset to look at GPA vs MCAT or GPA vs Step or GPA vs some other metric. If you're at a pretty unknown, really ****ing gnarly school with few premeds (eg. Harvey Mudd) good chance you'll be majorly screwed by the adcom having no idea that your 3.65 is towards the top of the class among an MIT-caliber student body.

/rant

 

[Gandyy]

Public schools are required to release grade distribution data to the government, so that's an easy answer. Private schools aren't. There is absolutely zero way to know what private schools inflate/deflate without building their own dataset to look at GPA vs MCAT or GPA vs Step or GPA vs some other metric. If you're at a pretty unknown, really ****ing gnarly school with few premeds (eg. Harvey Mudd) good chance you'll be majorly screwed by the adcom having no idea that your 3.65 is towards the top of the class among an MIT-caliber student body.

/rant

Ah I see. What about Podunkville.com University?

 

[efle]

Ah I see. What about Podunkville.com University?

Depends I guess. For the most selective private MD schools you're probably SOL unless you're a total standout. For public schools they won't care where you're from so just do your best and hope that comes out to be a 3.7+

 

[Gandyy]

Depends I guess. For the most selective private MD schools you're probably SOL unless you're a total standout. For public schools they won't care where you're from so just do your best and hope that comes out to be a 3.7+

Ah I have that! Its my MCAT we were worried about remember! Dont tell me you forgot about me already! Check your PMs if you did!


I was just joking about Podunkville.com though... Podunkville.com is the name I use for my degenerate highschool

 

[Spinach Dip]

Yikes along with GTLO that makes a few brilliant premeds with very low opinions of their big public school :/

I mean, they're four year unis not community schools right? People are forking over major bucks and taking fulltime course loads, they can't all be slackers ?

When you are a state school which has to accept (virtually) everyone, you get a much larger proportion of slackers/people who shouldn't be there/etc than Yale/Harvard/et al.

I'm not sure how this works.
It wouldn't be counted as 70% when people who drop out of the class are not factored in, right? So the "overall" class fail rate would be pretty low by the time finals roll in. So that what should have been a 70% fail rate would be counted as a 20% fail rate at the end of the semester or something.

Also, not all 70% fail the first term. Some fail the second. Some fail the third. Some pass the first, but don't register for the following terms. Etc, etc.

So then, what I'm trying to figure out is how adcoms figure out exactly how much a school inflates, deflates or no flates based on other stuff.

That's why the MCAT is so important. (At least...that's what I want to think.)