The Official August 9, 2013 MCAT Thread

[IL Pre Med]

Just started studying today. Anyone else with me?

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[mcloaf]

Your wording was that adcoms "know of each college" which is absolutely false. Now you have qualified this statement with "many." I recognize that some committee packets may include this type of information, but that is not what you said.

Sorry to distract from the high brow debate going on ITT.

But for any of you actually interested in how some schools may try to account for grade inflation/deflation...

Some admissions offices keep pretty extensive data on the entering stats of their students and their alma maters and follow them forward in time to see how they do in their classes/exams as well as step 1 and eventual matches. It's not perfect, but if they see another kid applying from the same school with a similar GPA it gives them some idea of what to expect.

I know my school does this and there's no way they're the only ones.

 

[inycepoo]

Don't see why the word Ivy is thrown around so much when there is just a good number of schools in the same top tier. I mean, look at Stanford, WashU (especially for premeds) and others. Meh, just a thought.

It's not intentional. It's just easy because they're grouped together already, and it's easier to type "Ivy" than list top tiers and name specific schools and stuff like that

 

[inycepoo]

Oh ivy league. I always forget how much weight our degrees carry in places that don't matter, like anonymous arguments online. All going to Columbia, SUNY Ithica, Jail, UPenis, Brownstain, Haaahvaad, or Princetoenail means is that you worked hard during high school and got lucky. We pay a lot of money to continue to work hard (or else) and be taught by people with Noble Prizes and lucrative labs who are, for the most part, too apathetic to bother to learn how to teach. Our sports teams suck and you all probably had a much more fun time. Now that I bombed premed and am at another 4-year university doing post bacc, I at least know of one place where the classes are easier. That's not always a bad thing.

Everyone just just needs to chill out, get off SDN, and work on their personal statements and interview person to make sure it they are nothing like how they portray themselves online.

+1 for SUNY Ithaca and Jail.

 

[ashtray81]

In the case of med schools with big feeder universities in close proximity, admissions can be quite familiar with courses and letter writers at those universities For example, there is a general physiology class at my university which is taught by two ruthless professors and has the highest fail rate of any class at our school. Applicants grades in this class are notorious for holding a lot of weight in admissions at our state schools. Also, the head of our pre-med organization is a well respected histology professor and is damn near on the admissions council at our state med schools with regard to his letters. This is definitely a neighborhood thing I guess you could say and aamc provides no such information.

Merrill? Goelfetti??

 

[fightthatebola]

Eh. Got a 35 but with an uneven breakdown. (Always Verbal, was below a 10 :/) Really hard to improve on verbal. Did EK 101 passages and Princeton Review hyperlearning and never really got the hang of it. Even did LSAT passages.
Got biochemistry as my trial section thought that was the easiest (was a biochem major). Wish it counted to my real score.

At least it's all over though! Applied to med school in the 2014-2015 cycle and still got into my #1 choice med school!