Re undergrad schools.
No liberal arts colleges in there.
Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, and the Nescac schools are listed in the top school list for matriculating students at many competitive schools.
Re personal experience with Mit students: smart as heck, awkward as fark.
Sorry! I had Williams on there and for some reason they didn't make it onto the final list (to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure why - probably negligence on my part). Now I would be cautious here because although many of these schools are perceived as "prestigious", I am not sure that confers a bump in medical school admissions.
Additionally, some (or much?) of the "bump" these schools get is from the opportunities that the school provides. LACs don't contain some of the high-powered research centers that could potentially get undergrads at schools like Columbia and Harvard letters of rec or great lab names on their resume. The reason that schools like these get some sort of bump somehow in med school (and other professional school) admissions may never be known. I'm just trying to distill this list down to schools that actually (again for whatever reason) get a bump vs. similarly "prestigious" schools that might not. Again, all input is great, so if you have data/experiences to share, that would be wonderful.
by your metric i am a cat D applicant but accepted to type 1, 2, and 6 schools
i may be wrong here but this seems to be the entirety of your validation method. your weighing of various factors is arbitrary and is held to the standard of consistency with sdn suggestions. so really, it means nothing. while i have no doubt premeds will flock to this because you throw lots of numbers at them and fancy sounding stuff like "python", the truth is there is no actual hard data to back any of this formula up.
ultimately, med school admissions is a fuzzy science. no matter how hard you or anyone else tries to quantify the process there will and always will be a large number of outliers. the formula imo is really pretty much this:
meet gpa/mcat standards --> have a cool thing or two that matches what your reviewer is looking for --> don't be weird in the interview --> randomize --> get in.
No, validation can only come from large-scale data mining, which will never happen. So all we will have is an anecdote-based validation which isn't validation at all. Personally I'd rather not have a flawed tool that implies quantification of a non-quantifiable process but that's just me.
Thank you very much for your input. I would like to comment on your statement and say that this is just something that I've pulled together in my spare time as an additional tool that might help new applicants start to create a school list. I never suggested that this is an end-all-be-all for any particular applicant in terms of creating a school list. I 100% agree that it is very difficult to determine how med schools evaluate applicants or where applicants should apply - this is very clearly shown by what you and others have said about how this classified you and them and how those results proved to be contrary to what this showed (if I recall correctly, you attend a Category 1 school).
My intention is definitely not to "throw lots of numbers and fancy sounding stuff" at people, my intention is to help people who aren't sure where to start quickly and easily come up with a preliminary list of schools to apply to. If you think that there is no merit to this system at all, I strongly encourage you to recommend against it, but I even more strongly encourage you to help improve it so that applicants might benefit from an additional tool to add to their repertoire in a highly complex and often confusing process.
There is a lot in this system that is arbitrary, I agree - however, many of the arbitrations that can be found in this algorithm seem to elicit results that at least in part are accurate. One of the reasons I've so intently tried to solicit community feedback is to try and fine-tune the algorithm and thus reduce the arbitrary parts and increase the evidence-based parts.
Again, this is just something I came up with in my spare time based on what I've seen throughout my cycle and in the WAMC as well as the pre-allo forum in general. If people do not thing this is a useful tool, I have no problem scrapping it - at worst, it would be an interesting experiment that kept me from being bored on a long bus ride. However, if people see merit in it and wish to devote time and effort to continually improving it for the benefit of future applicants, I am of course all for that as well. It is now up to you to decide whether you would like to see this project scrapped or if is worth investing yourself in. Either way is fine with me.
I very much appreciate your input regardless of whether or not you choose to invest in this project.
hate to say it, but i like where you're going with this. sure, it may need some more refinements, but it's just a guide.
the idea of trying to develop an optimal list of say, 20-30 schools, for any applicant to apply to is pretty cool. the shotgunning approach is too costly for many applicants, and it probably puts a strain on some adcoms (although some may like it so they can talk about their low acceptance rates). but, giving guidance to applicants to narrow their focus and get the best bang for their application buck$ is what those WAMC threads are all about.
hope you continue to be receptive to others trying to help you improve this.
Thank you for your input! This is ultimately a tool to help applicants come up with a preliminary list of schools. As has been brought up, the amount of variability in this process is so great that it is essentially impossible for a single algorithm to account for everything. My goal is for the community to improve upon this tool so that it can be useful as a starting point for new applicants. Receptivity to improvement and community feedback are what will keep this project going.
Agreed. Trying to quantify the way ~150 different schools will view one individual is too complicated for a single equation (no matter how much applicants wish they could reduce it to a single equation).
As for other factors, let's add:
-LoRs
-Primary submission date
-Personal Statement
-Whether or not you play video games for a living, and,
-Being the grand-nephew of the dean of admissions
Hi there! Thanks for your feedback. I definitely agree that all the factors are too complex to reduce to a single equation. This is merely a tool to help people figure out how to start making a school list. I wish that medical school admissions were formulaic, but that would probably make for very boring med school classes. Generalizing based off of available data is the only method we currently have for advising current and future applicants.
As for the other factors, I don't think that the first three should be included as they vary greatly between applicants and applicants themselves (as well as anyone who reads LoRs and PSs) are not great judges of how adcoms will perceive these things. As such, I think that this tool would be most useful for choosing where to apply based on factors that are more quantifiable than these subjective things. For the last two, I don't think these are things that apply to very many applicants, but if they are important enough to list, my feeling is they could go under Misc at levels 2, 3, or 4.
@WedgeDawg
Here's a thought that might help incorporate school specific preferences that might change your school list. If you score at an A or S level and your research score is also a 5, then the percentage breakdown might change to include more top research schools, like from 45% to 60% or something like that. Similarly if you score at a B or C level and your volunteer or clinical experience levels are at the highest level, you might recommend applying to an even higher percentage of schools like creighton and other schools that emphasize service. Does that make sense?
My hope is that the overall formula will already take this into account rather than having to adjust it after getting your ARS score and level. The research category of 5 is reserved for people with truly outstanding research achievements and thus have a good shot at top research schools (which will hopefully be reflected by the score). Additionally, Category 1 and 2 schools are more interchangeable than schools in any other category, so if a Level A applicant has strong research activity and chooses to apply to more Category 1 schools than 2 schools, that is entirely their prerogative. The applicant should modify these values in order to best fit their own profile - these are merely initial guidelines to start building a school list. If you have ideas to help ensure that as many of these suggestions are encompassed by the formula prior to it giving a score and Level, I would be very happy to hear them!
Generally good though fine tuning would be of benefit. I think the research categorization is misleading, for instance. Level 5 says "first author publication, publication in a high-impact journal, and/or presentation at a major conference." with that "and/or" seeming to imply that having a presentation at a major conference alone puts you at highest level, that you can have this, this, OR presented at a conference. Even major conferences are pretty easy to get into, so I don't think that really separates a Level 4 from a 5.
Very interesting point - I think that if major conferences are that easy to get into, then perhaps they could be listed as a level 4. However, these are just examples of accomplishments that people in those categories have achieved; but, if it is thought that certain examples best fit a level 4 rather than a level 5, then it would be definitely worth changing the descriptions.