2015 MSAR released

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Goro said:
Beat the system? Nope, just you kids getting smarter and smarter. Hopefully some of you will go into Geriatrics and take care of me in my old age!
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Smartness is a factor yes, but there's also a major underlying problem here in this applicant pool...
 
Ace-Co-A said:
I thought your comment was more profound than that.
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I made a similar argument last year. I actually believe the economic situations going on right now (the recession's still here but it's recovering) is forcing numerous people to plan ahead and the safest best is job security. When people plan accordingly, they take the prereqs/MCAT/ECs seriously and annihilate them, so the applicant pool is stronger and tougher during recession times. This is very much true for nontrads and for driven trads.
 
Wow, since when did University of Washington have around 50/50 IS and OOS matriculation?! 2014 MSAR had 200 IS and 20 OOS... That's a huge departure from their usual WWAMI mission statement...
 
Agent B said:
I made a similar argument last year. I actually believe the economic situations going on right now (the recession's still here but it's recovering) is forcing numerous people to plan ahead and the safest best is job security. When people plan accordingly, they take the prereqs/MCAT/ECs seriously and annihilate them, so the applicant pool is stronger and tougher during recession times. This is very much true for nontrads and for driven trads.
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Oh I totally misunderstood you. My bad. Your comment is more interesting than I thought. Makes a lot of sense actually. It puts lower and lower-middle class people at a big disadvantage, I think. But what are you gonna do?
 
Unless they included WWAMI in the OOS category this time around, even though it says otherwise...
 
Ace-Co-A said:
Oh I totally misunderstood you. My bad. Your comment is more interesting than I thought. Makes a lot of sense actually. It puts lower and lower-middle class people at a big disadvantage, I think. But what are you gonna do?
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No. Only the middle class is at a disadvantage. The upper class can attend Ivys (in general), have strong connections with adcoms, have "godly" ECs etc. The lower class is favored by numerous disadvantaged "reforms". The middle class, however, is completely screwed. Too rich to receive benefits; too poor to rule the world.
 
abcde54321 said:
Wow, since when did University of Washington have around 50/50 IS and OOS matriculation?! 2014 MSAR had 200 IS and 20 OOS... That's a huge departure from their usual WWAMI mission statement...
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That's a huge surprise. Maybe they have counted the WY, AK, MT & ID residents as out of state, despite saying that they count as "in-state?"

Also, what does "this school has progressed to a competency-based admission process?" (Einstein for example)
 
the new 33 median on the mcat is just disgusting considering how much difficulty a lot of people have even pulling a 30. No wonder they're changing the format of the mcat, otherwise the median would probably be 38 in a few years.
 
cookiemonsters said:
USC too. Case Western went up to 36 😱

edit: last year's WashU picture was an Asian female holding a white baby with a pink background, this year it's a whitish male holding a black baby with a blue background lol.
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Forget that, Case's 10th percentile went up to 33!!!
 
Agent B said:
No. Only the middle class is at a disadvantage. The upper class can attend Ivys (in general), have strong connections with adcoms, have "godly" ECs etc. The lower class is favored by numerous disadvantaged "reforms". The middle class, however, is completely screwed. Too rich to receive benefits; too poor to rule the world.
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I would argue that the lower class still has it worse than the middle class. If you look up average family income of medical students it's always much much higher than the median population income. It's very hard without a stable family income to take on huge debt and pursue medicine, reforms or not.
 
Other than median accepted MCAT, what info does the MSAR have that the individual schools' websites don't? I didn't even know about it when I applied this past cycle, and I'm debating if it's worth buying for re-application.
 
Keladry said:
Other than median accepted MCAT, what info does the MSAR have that the individual schools' websites don't? I didn't even know about it when I applied this past cycle, and I'm debating if it's worth buying for re-application.
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Median accepted GPA, 10th percentile and 90th percentile for MCAT/GPA

Also, it has IS/OOS ratios, and demographics info.
 
Can someone post the new MCAT median/10/90 for Stanford, UCLA, UCSD, and UCSF?


As for the higher stats and increasing difficulty, that surprised no one who went through this cycle. Outside of a handful of SDN superstars, just about everyone realized their competitiveness was lower than what they had thought.
 
Keladry said:
Other than median accepted MCAT, what info does the MSAR have that the individual schools' websites don't? I didn't even know about it when I applied this past cycle, and I'm debating if it's worth buying for re-application.
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If nothing else, it's really nice to have all the data standardized and in one place instead of having to go hunting around schools websites. I considered the cost worth it on convenience alone, and the information in the MSAR is much more comprehensive than what is on most schools' websites.
 
Microglia said:
Median accepted GPA, 10th percentile and 90th percentile for MCAT/GPA

Also, it has IS/OOS ratios, and demographics info.
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Okay, thanks. A decent number of schools do put the IS/OOS ratios and demographics on their websites too, though.

SN12357 said:
If nothing else, it's really nice to have all the data standardized and in one place instead of having to go hunting around schools websites. I considered the cost worth it on convenience alone, and the information in the MSAR is much more comprehensive than what is on most schools' websites.
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All right, that's basically what I thought. Thanks. 🙂
 
Agent B said:
I made a similar argument last year. I actually believe the economic situations going on right now (the recession's still here but it's recovering) is forcing numerous people to plan ahead and the safest best is job security. When people plan accordingly, they take the prereqs/MCAT/ECs seriously and annihilate them, so the applicant pool is stronger and tougher during recession times. This is very much true for nontrads and for driven trads.
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We are no longer in a recession. The economy isn't great, but we aren't in recession. Income, however has grown inproportionally with the top 1% earners gaining 95% of growth over the past 4-5 years. Regardless of the technical vernacular, most middle class people still feel economically weak and that should drive the kind of admissions changes you mention. It would be interesting to see the demographics of accepted students shift if the middle class begins to generate more competitive applicants. I agree that there is an entitlement dead zone that the middle class tends to fall into.
 
J Senpai said:
We are no longer in a recession. The economy isn't great, but we aren't in recession. Income, however has grown inproportionally with the top 1% earners gaining 95% of growth over the past 4-5 years. Regardless of the technical vernacular, most middle class people still feel economically weak and that should drive the kind of admissions changes you mention. It would be interesting to see the demographics of accepted students shift if the middle class begins to generate more competitive applicants. I agree that there is an entitlement dead zone that the middle class tends to fall into.
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Recessions are narrowly defined. In my opinion there are fundamental changes to the structure of the workforce, particularly with regards to the availability and quality of entry-level jobs, that are actually the driving force pushing people into medical school as a 'safe' profession. Regardless of whether or not we are technically in a recession, this motivator has only gotten stronger and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon if ever.
 
Does anyone have any numbers on the average MCAT of matriculants over the years? It's possible that the top applicants have just pulled in more acceptances, skewing the average to the right. If the average matriculant MCAT remains constant or didn't increase as rapidly as the accepted MCAT, that would be evidence for such a phenomenon.
 
The New MCAT is 6+ hours long and has biochem. Average will be back down to 30.
 
Underu said:
Does anyone have any numbers on the average MCAT of matriculants over the years? It's possible that the top applicants have just pulled in more acceptances, skewing the average to the right. If the average matriculant MCAT remains constant or didn't increase as rapidly as the accepted MCAT, that would be evidence for such a phenomenon.
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https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/
Best I could do.

If you look at table 23 matriculant average has gone up about 1 point in the last 10 years (from ~30 to ~31)
 
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Underu said:
Does anyone have any numbers on the average MCAT of matriculants over the years? It's possible that the top applicants have just pulled in more acceptances, skewing the average to the right. If the average matriculant MCAT remains constant or didn't increase as rapidly as the accepted MCAT, that would be evidence for such a phenomenon.
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I mean, I don't know how it's calculated, but your explanation couldn't work if they only counted each applicant once. Surely the median MCAT figure is taken of all candidates who were accepted counted once, right? Am I missing something here?
 
Ace-Co-A said:
I mean, I don't know how it's calculated, but your explanation couldn't work if they only counted each applicant once. Surely the median MCAT figure is taken of all candidates who were accepted counted once, right? Am I missing something here?
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Mmm you're right, my hypothesis would only explain how individual medical school averages would go up, not the average of all students who have at least once acceptance.
 
In other news, water is still wet.

🙂

Microglia said:
I would argue that the lower class still has it worse than the middle class. If you look up average family income of medical students it's always much much higher than the median population income. It's very hard without a stable family income to take on huge debt and pursue medicine, reforms or not.
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Ace-Co-A said:
I mean, I don't know how it's calculated, but your explanation couldn't work if they only counted each applicant once. Surely the median MCAT figure is taken of all candidates who were accepted counted once, right? Am I missing something here?
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That depends, is the overall average looking at it from the perspective of the students(overall average MCAT of accepted students) or from the perspective of the schools(take the data from each school and average them)? Im inclined to think its the latter as it seems to be a metric used to compare schools. However that is just a guess.
 
Tommyguns89 said:
That depends, is the overall average looking at it from the perspective of the students(overall average MCAT of accepted students) or from the perspective of the schools(take the data from each school and average them)? Im inclined to think its the latter as it seems to be a metric used to compare schools. However that is just a guess.
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Exactly. I'm saying that only the first measure provides useful information.
 
Goro said:
In other news, water is still wet.

🙂
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I'm not sure if this has been asked before, and ignore me if this is private information, but is your avatar your pet cat? Or are you an enthusiast for cats with glowing eyes? Or do you transform into that cat with wizard powers, and haunt the students in your school?
 
My cat Eyedrop approved this picture.

Underu said:
I'm not sure if this has been asked before, and ignore me if this is private information, but is your avatar your pet cat? Or are you an enthusiast for cats with glowing eyes? Or do you transform into that cat with wizard powers, and haunt the students in your school?
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What are competency based systems of admissions? I was looking at good ol' louisiana university of shrevport and i saw "this school has progressed to a competency based system of admissions".
 
General economic trends might influence more students to go into medicine, but I think a poor job market for natural science PhDs (especially in biology) in particular are pushing kids into medicine. Have fewer students been enrolling in molecular biology (and related) PhD programs?
 
milski said:
https://www.aamc.org/download/308462/data/admissionsinitiativesummary.pdf
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Taken from that document, under Mid-Term Opportunities...

"As highlighted above, medical schools face a significant challenge in trying to
efficiently learn more about applicants during the screening process that precedes inviting applicants to interview. Our goal, over the next few years, is to investigate, test and deploy a measurement instrument (or instruments) that will provide medical schools with better and timely information about the intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies identified above."

AAMC is trying to find to give schools a quantitative assessment of how well-adjusted you are *before* the interview invitation screening decision is made... ostensibly measuring something they can't get from your written application.

This is a good goal, but all the more reason to keep your anonymity on SDN 😉

Maybe they should hit up the NSA for advice?
 
In my estimation it doesn't matter very much if the new MCAT does make the average go down, since it will be equally challenging for everyone. Stated another way, it is not becoming more difficult to get into medical school because MCAT scores are rising, but rather because the level of competition is rising. The increase in MCAT averages is an outcome of an increase in smart and dedicated applicants. While the average numerical scores will shift with the new MCAT, I imagine the same people scoring in the 99th percentile now will score in the 99th percentile in the future.

One obvious flaw in my reasoning above is that by adding sections to the new test the test-makers have made it more difficult to study for. This factor likely makes the MCAT easier or harder for specific groups, namely those who were relying more on extensive studying rather than exceedingly above average talent will have a harder time. I think this will have a small effect but I certainly could be wrong. 😛
 
mrh125 said:
what does that mean in simple terms? i'm sorry, but i don't understand?
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If you can't read that and make sense of it, medical literature is going to be a real pain... just kidding. sort of. I guess as long as you have "Capacity of Improvement" everything will be just fine.

Just skip to the second page and read item #3 under short-term opportunities and the associated tables to the right...that's the gist of how it's going to change the admission process in the near term for those schools already on board.
 
Why has no one addressed the fact that the table posted toward the beginning of the thread has the average MCAT of matriculants for 2013 at 31.3 up only 0.1 from the year previous. Am I reading this wrong or has this thread really gone on that long without this correction?
 
mrh125 said:
the new 33 median on the mcat is just disgusting considering how much difficulty a lot of people have even pulling a 30. No wonder they're changing the format of the mcat, otherwise the median would probably be 38 in a few years.
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Lol
 
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WierdScience said:
Why has no one addressed the fact that the table posted toward the beginning of the thread has the average MCAT of matriculants for 2013 at 31.3 up only 0.1 from the year previous. Am I reading this wrong or has this thread really gone on that long without this correction?
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Check the current MSAR, the data is real.
 
Bovary said:
General economic trends might influence more students to go into medicine, but I think a poor job market for natural science PhDs (especially in biology) in particular are pushing kids into medicine. Have fewer students been enrolling in molecular biology (and related) PhD programs?
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I definitely consider scientists underpaid relative to their importance in society. If a post-doc could make $60,000+ and a scientist with his own lab could make $100,000+, I feel it would significantly dent the number of people applying to medical school.
 
Geeeeeez. Applying in 2015 cycle, do y'all expect ADCOMS to look more favorably upon scores from the new MCAT versus, say, a solid 'old' MCAT score (38-41) ??? Even with this 'MCAT inflation'?
 
WierdScience said:
Why has no one addressed the fact that the table posted toward the beginning of the thread has the average MCAT of matriculants for 2013 at 31.3 up only 0.1 from the year previous. Am I reading this wrong or has this thread really gone on that long without this correction?
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If I understand correctly the MSAR national average MCAT is the average of all schools mean MCAT for accepted students. This means that a student accepted to multiple schools is counted multiple times. This is going to pull the average for accepted students up since people seem to be applying to more schools and the people with super high MCAT scores are going to be accepted at many places.
 
Some of you guys are forgetting how the MCAT is scaled, general statistics, or perhaps both.

The MCAT doesn't need revamped because the average accepted student has a 33.

The MCAT is scored so that the same approximate percentage of test-takers achieves a certain score over time.

"People figured out how to beat the MCAT!" is not a valid reason for this trend...as the same % of people are scoring a 20 today as were 5 years ago, and same with those scoring a 40.

With increasing numbers of students applying to schools, you have a larger pool of applicants with high scores (and a larger pool of applicants with lower scores); however, the high scores are more successful more often -> increasing averages.

Also, in regards to average accepted student scores...they are averages. The curve goes both ways. If you have a 30 or whatever, all is not lost.
 
Boolean said:
Check the current MSAR, the data is real.
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So your telling me, it took 10+ years for the average MCAT to go up by <2 pts but the average went up by 2 pts between the year 2013 and 2014? There is a pretty stable trend in the data for 11 years and so I have an extremely hard time believing that there could be that much of a change. If it was even reported that the average was 33, then I think the data was reported incorrectly. A Q test shows that if the average was a 33 then this data point can be thrown out as it is an outlier since Q>Qtable. Something is not right here. Screen shot of the reported data please.
 
The MSAR is giving the median and not the average (mean).
 
WierdScience said:
So your telling me, it took 10+ years for the average MCAT to go up by <2 pts but the average went up by 2 pts between the year 2013 and 2014? There is a pretty stable trend in the data for 11 years and so I have an extremely hard time believing that there could be that much of a change. If it was even reported that the average was 33, then I think the data was reported incorrectly. A Q test shows that if the average was a 33 then this data point can be thrown out as it is an outlier since Q>Qtable. Something is not right here. Screen shot of the reported data please.
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Pretty sure this breaches one of SDN's rules. We had to remove some of the AAMC data from the SDN spreadsheet, I'm not about to get my account banned (and possibly my MSAR access revoked). It's a useful tool and if you purchase it you can confirm yourself (or perhaps someone else can confirm this w/o requiring a screenshot). FWIW, I believe I may have made a mistake. The 33 MCAT is the MEDIAN score, not the average. My mistake.
 
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