New Site in Development for Prospective Medical Students

After spending the last few months intermittently browsing this forum, there has been this one particular recurring theme I have noticed in the postings:

"My name is X, my stats are Y, do I have a chance to get into Z (or any) medical school?"

Understandably, with over twice as many applicants as their are spots available, prospective medical students are, with a dearth of tangible data for comparative self-evaluation, a little neurotic. You know who you are. 😉

Wonderfully, most of these sincere questions get answered, often by the same angels in the forums, over and over, volunteering some general information about themselves and their experiences in the process to help guide those just beginning the grasp the scope of what they face.

I thought I would create a website, in the database-driven-automated-searchable spirit of our fondly ressurrected Interview Feedback, where those who have completed the process could share a brief profile of stats, general information and the final disposition of their files at the schools they applied to.

I would appreciate it if folks would take a brief moment to visit:
http://neekbork.net/mda/

...and evaluate the draft skeleton of this website with the following questions in mind:

"Would this be a useful site for prospective premeds? Would I have searched its databases for information if I were beginning the process?"

"Would I contribute to this site? Is the information requested complete enough to be of value to prospective premeds, but limited enough to protect my identity and privacy?"

Reference http://neekbork.net/mda/addprofile.html to evaluate the data collected on each applicant.

I built this draft based partly on my own experiences in the application process in what I would look for as a tool and guide, and I would love to hear from those on this website if they would recommend any changes, improvements, etc. Nothing is hardcoded in terms of the database access engine, so everything is flexible.

Thanks!

[email protected]

Ok... very cool, but just a few suggestions...

1) add "# research experiences", "# of volunteer experiences", "# of clinical experiences", "Have you been published?", "Have you held any leadership positions (i.e. office of an organization or club, manager, teacher, etc...)?"

and...

2) What's the point of only being able to enter ONE interview/acceptance?! I mean that's not going to tell anyone much. You might want to put "Number of Interviews" "number of acceptances" instead... or even "Number of top 20 interviews/acceptances." and "Number schools applied to"


Cool start though!!

Does it search?
No matter what I search for, it just gives the followings:

You searched for applicants:
From collegiate institution: stanford
Cumulative MCAT Score: Greater than 25 and less than 45
With an acceptance at: Vanderbilt University


The following profiles matched your search:
00021 stanford university, 32 MCAT, 3.85 GPA, Biological/Life Sciences, 1999
03424 stanford, 32 MCAT, 3.85 GPA, Biological/Life Sciences, 1999
00342 Stanford University, 32 MCAT, 3.85 GPA, Biological/Life Sciences, 1999
01244 stanford, 32 MCAT, 3.85 GPA, Biological/Life Sciences, 1999
00241 Stanford, 32 MCAT, 3.85 GPA, Biological/Life Sciences, 2000
01515 stanford, 32 MCAT, 3.85 GPA, Biological/Life Sciences, 2000
00124 stanford university, 32 MCAT, 3.85 GPA, Biological/Life Sciences, 2001

Am I doing something wrong?

I got that also no matter what I typed in for criteria....

probably because there is only one entry in the database.

I think it is a great idea. Hopefully it will help people and reduce the posts that annoy people of will i get in with my mcat and gpa

I just tried to add my profile but I get an error message saying method not allowed.

Thanks everyone for looking at the site....

It doesn't work yet. 🙂

The current version only has the HTML coded, but isn't linked to any databases; the "search results" are just for demonstration of hypothetical content. I wanted to save time by getting feedback on the site before I went ahead and started writing the PHP and SQL engine that drives it.

Evidently, since people are already trying to use it, it's on the right track....

Mr. Prime, I am a little confused by your feedback. On http://neekbork.net/mda/addprofile.html, there is space to enter detail about all 141 medical schools you may potentially have applied to, as well as an area to list in a narrative your volunteer work, clinical work, leadership, publications, etc. The search engine, which is featured on the home page, doesn't allow you to search for profiles with extracurricular activities in common (though maybe it should) and only allows you to specify a search for profiles of people accepted at one school - more than that complicates the search tool and makes the results returned a little more unwieldy.

If anyone has any comments on the drop-down lists for "Ethnicity" and "Area of Study" on the Add Profile to make them more complete without becoming overwhelming, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks again!

Originally posted by xaelia
Thanks everyone for looking at the site....

It doesn't work yet. 🙂

The current version only has the HTML coded, but isn't linked to any databases; the "search results" are just for demonstration of hypothetical content. I wanted to save time by getting feedback on the site before I went ahead and started writing the PHP and SQL engine that drives it.

Evidently, since people are already trying to use it, it's on the right track....

Mr. Prime, I am a little confused by your feedback. On http://neekbork.net/mda/addprofile.html, there is space to enter detail about all 141 medical schools you may potentially have applied to, as well as an area to list in a narrative your volunteer work, clinical work, leadership, publications, etc. The search engine, which is featured on the home page, doesn't allow you to search for profiles with extracurricular activities in common (though maybe it should) and only allows you to specify a search for profiles of people accepted at one school - more than that complicates the search tool and makes the results returned a little more unwieldy.

If anyone has any comments on the drop-down lists for "Ethnicity" and "Area of Study" on the Add Profile to make them more complete without becoming overwhelming, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

You should hook up with a Statistics or Computer Science graduate student and start a Micro-Data-Mining project on this information (should the database ever become large and representative of pre-meds that go online). Maybe we'll find out that the secret of being pre-med is volunteering at the local Y on Tuesdays.

I think its a great first step.

I like the limited search criteria of home state, gpa, MCAT and schools. While keeping specifics on the applicants listed in the search results.

I would definitely post my profile.

Originally posted by xaelia

Mr. Prime, I am a little confused by your feedback. On http://neekbork.net/mda/addprofile.html, there is space to enter detail about all 141 medical schools you may potentially have applied to, as well as an area to list in a narrative your volunteer work, clinical work, leadership, publications, etc. The search engine, which is featured on the home page, doesn't allow you to search for profiles with extracurricular activities in common (though maybe it should) and only allows you to specify a search for profiles of people accepted at one school - more than that complicates the search tool and makes the results returned a little more unwieldy.

Click to expand...

Oh, oops... I didn't see that the first time. 🙂

I'm all for this site as well. Anything that can help future applicants figure out the range of schools they may need to apply to is a good thing. Thanks xaelia.

Cool idea. If the site were running and I was applying, I'd be hitting it hard. Keep up the good work!

i think it's a great idea as well. unfortunately there's no way to prevent ppl from entering bogus information, but hopefully we'll all adhere to the honor code so that the information can be as accurate and useful to the public as possible.

Yep, not much can be done other than hope for the best in terms of validity.

Interview feedback seems to do alright, so I am optimistic.

Originally posted by mvervaine
i think it's a great idea as well. unfortunately there's no way to prevent ppl from entering bogus information, but hopefully we'll all adhere to the honor code so that the information can be as accurate and useful to the public as possible.

Click to expand...

I have the add profile, view profile, and search profiles of MDapplicants.com "working", so anyone who wants to go play with the development version is welcome to. You may enter any fictional profiles you like, search among the few tests I created, etc.

http://neekbork.net/mda/

Let me know if anything seems broken or needs improvement!

Thanks!

ps. thought you might find it interesting to see a typical search, such as....
You searched for applicants:
__Age between 21 and 25
__Home State of CA
__Undergraduate College contains "california"
__MCAT score greater than 20 and less than 40
__GPA greater than 3.00 and less than 4.00
__Interviewed at Baylor University

...generates the following glorious SQL database query:
SELECT profiles.id, profiles.ugrad, profiles.mcatvr, profiles.mcatps, profiles.mcatbs, profiles.overallgpa, profiles.ugradstudy, profiles.appyear FROM profiles LEFT JOIN schooldata ON profiles.id=schooldata.profileid WHERE profiles.id AND profiles.overallgpa >= "3.00" AND profiles.overallgpa <= "4.00" AND profiles.state LIKE "CA" AND profiles.ugrad LIKE "%california%" AND profiles.age >= "21" AND profiles.age <= "25" AND (profiles.mcatvr + profiles.mcatps + profiles.mcatbs) >= "20" AND (profiles.mcatvr + profiles.mcatps + profiles.mcatbs) <= "40" AND schooldata.interview="1" AND schooldata.school="3" ORDER BY ugrad DESC;

Originally posted by xaelia
SELECT profiles.id, profiles.ugrad, profiles.mcatvr, profiles.mcatps, profiles.mcatbs, profiles.overallgpa, profiles.ugradstudy, profiles.appyear FROM profiles LEFT JOIN schooldata ON profiles.id=schooldata.profileid WHERE profiles.id AND profiles.overallgpa >= "3.00" AND profiles.overallgpa <= "4.00" AND profiles.state LIKE "CA" AND profiles.ugrad LIKE "%california%" AND profiles.age >= "21" AND profiles.age <= "25" AND (profiles.mcatvr + profiles.mcatps + profiles.mcatbs) >= "20" AND (profiles.mcatvr + profiles.mcatps + profiles.mcatbs) <= "40" AND schooldata.interview="1" AND schooldata.school="3" ORDER BY ugrad DESC;

Click to expand...

yup, give or take a few "." that's pretty much what i predicted. 😎



ya right.