- Joined
- Jun 23, 2007
- Messages
- 1,431
- Reaction score
- 1
whats average stats for a pre- med student to get in to medical school? I am talking regular in state universities not Harvard, JH, or Berkley or anything.
whats average stats for a pre- med student to get in to medical school? I am talking regular in state universities not Harvard, JH, or Berkley or anything.
National Average is ~3.6 and ~30 MCAT.
whats average stats for a pre- med student to get in to medical school? I am talking regular in state universities not Harvard, JH, or Berkley or anything.
if 3.8 and 35 MCAT doesn't get u into a top 15, then what separates the one that do and ones that don't?
Name of undergrad college? I highly doubt many people have EC's that are that distinguishable. Most have the regular clinical, research, volunteer, shadowing, etc. So then ..O_O
National Average is ~3.6 and ~30 MCAT.
yet while going through the MSAR, virtually no MD school has avg stats that low. disappointing 🙁
Yeah I noticed the same thing... I mean, the few uber-low stat schools like Morehouse and Meharry can't drag down the average that much. What's going on?
The 3.6/30 number is old. Its been floating around for a few years. Those "averages" are increasing. Honestly I'm not sure what the averages are anymore because MSAR doesn't provide them for overall acceptees. They just have the charts.
But yeah I'm willing to bet its creeping more towards 3.65 and 31 (or even 32).
yea the 32 seems to be the average score according to the MSAR and I'd even put the GPA up to 3.7. the cumulative gpas and science gpas seem to be VERY close as well... less then 0.1 apart.
Why are there so many threads with people who SHOULD be smart (35 mcat) yet are completely unable to find this information out directly from sources on their own (eg MSAR.. it isn't that hard to read).
They aren't rounded in the MSAR, they're medians. The reason the numbers in the MSAR are much higher than those on US News (for example) is that they measure different things. Medians are a much truer sense of what the average accepted applicant brings to the table than an average. Averages are far too easily swayed by outliers. That's why the MSAR gives you a better idea of how you stack up to the "average" medical school student at a school.
Wow, am I sick of people spouting this misconception. The msar numbers are inflated for a few reasons, one being that it reports the median numbers of the ACCEPTED students, not those that matriculate. This results in number inflation because people w/ higher numbers will get into multiple schools; if they reported the matriculant numbers the median would be lower. Also, the msar doesn't actually say what the median cumulative mcat scores are, it just reports each section score. Adding the median section scores doesn't result in getting the actual median cumulative score. Finally, although the median is often a more useful value than the mean, I'm not convinced that this is the case for reporting mcat (and other test) scores. Frankly, there are not really many true outliers in this case (nobody gets into med school w/ an mcat score of 7, for instance)
Pull out the MSAR and look at the elite universities and see the low scores they have in various sections of the mcat. A 7 or an 8 will influence their average a lot more than a 14 or a 15 will. The difference between the median and the average score won't be that dramatic, but the reported average accepted scores are always lower than average accepted medians for that very reason. The same holds for GPA.
If you want to say that the average matriculant has lower stats than the average accepted student, that's fine, but where's the data? Unless there is a solid source for average matriculant data and median matriculant data, we're forced to draw conclusions from what we have- the accepted data. And the simple fact is that medians do a better job of portraying what the average applicant looks like than "averages" do.
As far as the MCAT scores go, you do have to frankenstein a number together out of the MSAR. Still, those are the median scores for each section. They didn't round the numbers up.
I'm not saying this is a perfect science and that it's not without flaws. It does, however, seem to have less distortions than a simple use of averages.
okay so i need some clarification!!
why does everyone keep saying that the cutoff is a 9 and none gets into school with a physics of 7 or lower..well i agree these aren't very competetive at all... the MSAR has a range of accepted scores and ALOT of schools completely cover the scale from a 5 - 15... i can't imagine how it could happen, I am sure that was probably just one person out of a hundred for each low score..but it could happen...
okay so i need some clarification!!
why does everyone keep saying that the cutoff is a 9 and none gets into school with a physics of 7 or lower..well i agree these aren't very competetive at all... the MSAR has a range of accepted scores and ALOT of schools completely cover the scale from a 5 - 15... i can't imagine how it could happen, I am sure that was probably just one person out of a hundred for each low score..but it could happen...
but i think the average is a 3.6/30 but this varies with circumstance and EC's...i think a 3.8/35 too high for an average...
I agree, and am not sure "who" is claiming these are the averages, but I do think that "3.6/30" is a bit dated - the average matriculant GPA in the most recent MSAR was 3.64 (I think)...
Well, I have an 8 in PS (30 MCAT and 3.78 gpa), and I've gotten a bunch of interviews so far, so I don't really believe that "under a 9 will tank your app" opinion I've seen all over SDN. I'm sure it'll hurt me at reach schools, but otherwise it doesn't seem to have had that much of a negative impact on my application in general. And I've seen a bunch of people with under a 9 in a section get interviews and acceptances in past years as well.
As for the really 5s you've seen, some schools do take URMs with lower scores, so perhaps that accounts for some of it. Otherwise, you never know. It could be a single non-URM with truly amazing ECs, and an otherwise competitive app that bombed one section that got accepted at a bunch of schools. *shrug* I have no idea.
I agree with you, in principle, that it makes sense for matriculated students to have lower stats (both in median and average) than accepted students. The difference will probably be more pronounced at less prominent and mid-tier schools than it will at elite schools, as I'd imagine that schools like Harvard and John Hopkins tend to hold on to their more qualified applicants more effectively than Wright State does. Once again, however, it's impossible to measure the difference unless we have stats for both matriculated and accepted students. Without numbers to crunch, it's all speculation.
out of curiosity... what if a school offers 100 spots for a class size of 48 (random example). what happens is, one year, like 80 students decide to matriculate at that particular school?
I agree with you, in principle, that it makes sense for matriculated students to have lower stats (both in median and average) than accepted students. The difference will probably be more pronounced at less prominent and mid-tier schools than it will at elite schools, as I'd imagine that schools like Harvard and John Hopkins tend to hold on to their more qualified applicants more effectively than Wright State does. Once again, however, it's impossible to measure the difference unless we have stats for both matriculated and accepted students. Without numbers to crunch, it's all speculation.
out of curiosity... what if a school offers 100 spots for a class size of 48 (random example). what happens is, one year, like 80 students decide to matriculate at that particular school?
out of curiosity... what if a school offers 100 spots for a class size of 48 (random example). what happens is, one year, like 80 students decide to matriculate at that particular school?
Usually they don't offer 100 at the same time. They'll wait until some people withdraw to offer more spots.
Otherwise they have to accommodate the students they accepted. I think it happened at GWU a few years ago - they had like 5 too many students or something.
In general schools know how many people will accept or deny an acceptance and they are pretty careful to not over accept.
yea the 32 seems to be the average score according to the MSAR and I'd even put the GPA up to 3.7. the cumulative gpas and science gpas seem to be VERY close as well... less then 0.1 apart.
Your whole logic goes out the window if we assume that the number of applicants (or even just people who sit for the MCAT) is increasing.Well the MCAT is still scored so that the national average performance on each section receive an 8...so a totally average MCAT taker would get a 24.
Not that this is the only factor in admission, but if MCAT scores remain unchanged by virtue of how they score it, there will be fewer people accepted overall. Because a 30 puts you somewhere in the 80s for percentile and a 35 at about 95th percentile overall.
If there are only ~15 percent of people scoring high enough to be accepted each year before you even consider GPAs and ECs (which probably eliminates some more people), there is probably only 10% still "qualified" to be accepted.
Since the national percent average of those accepted each year is in the 40s...that leads me to think the score is not over 30 you might see on SDN or even in MSAR. Just food for thought.
out of curiosity... what if a school offers 100 spots for a class size of 48 (random example). what happens is, one year, like 80 students decide to matriculate at that particular school?
Well the MCAT is still scored so that the national average performance on each section receive an 8...so a totally average MCAT taker would get a 24.
Not that this is the only factor in admission, but if MCAT scores remain unchanged by virtue of how they score it, there will be fewer people accepted overall. Because a 30 puts you somewhere in the 80s for percentile and a 35 at about 95th percentile overall.
If there are only ~15 percent of people scoring high enough to be accepted each year before you even consider GPAs and ECs (which probably eliminates some more people), there is probably only 10% still "qualified" to be accepted.
Since nationally about 45% of applicants are accepted each year and I think they are trying to increase the numbers of doctors being trained in the US over the next 10 years, that leads me to think the score is not over 30 you might see on SDN or even in MSAR. Just food for thought.
Good point. But if the % accepted isn't changing (more apply, but schools are accepting more to produce more doctors), there is still a large discrepancy between the 15% of test takers or so that score 31+ and the 45% accepted.
Strongly flawed logic here,
First of all, Not everyone who takes the MCAT applies to medical school. A lot of people take it, get a 24, and immediately realize that they don't have a chance. Hell, a lot of people get 30, and don't apply because they don't feel confident (I know a few people personally). I know I personally would have taken a year off rather than applying had I gotten anything less than 35, and believe me there are plenty of people in my situation who might have messed up, but know they can score above 35. To us, waiting a year, working, building up ECs is better than halfassing the app with a low, or even average, MCAT.
That discrepancy is easy. A huge number of people take the MCAT but don't apply. HUGE. I mean if 50% are getting less than 8 in each section then a lot of people aren't even going to bother applying.
Plus people take the MCAT multiple times more often than they apply multiple times - so they are counted more often in the test taker percentage than the acceptee percentage.
So that discrepancy really isn't an issue.
I don't think it's quite fair to call those of us who applied with a 30 MCAT as "halfassing" our apps.
That is exactly what I said,
Just look at the numbers:
75-80K mcat takers
40K applicants
17K acceptances........17/80=.21
Based soley on MCAT scores top .21 MCAT scorers are accepted.