50% of 524+ students matriculate to DO school - Bizarre Statistics From My School's Health Profession's Office

[Derovaton]

I came across this document from my school's HPO, and I can't make heads nor tails of it. This is from 2017.
Around Half of the people who scored 524+ at my school matriculated to DO school. Why is this? The majority of these people had really good GPAs (looking into the breakdown further down) as well. Maybe all of these people had bad ECs or something, but why would that apply only to the 524+ crowd? Not a single person with a 521 matriculated DO. Is this some odd case of yield protection? I cannot figure this out for the life of me.

For anyone interested, please read the full analysis, it has a ton of interesting information.

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[deleted555445]

I came across this document from my school's HPO, and I can't make heads nor tails of it. This is from 2017.
Around Half of the people who scored 524+ at my school matriculated to DO school. Why is this? The majority of these people had really good GPAs (looking into the breakdown further down) as well. Maybe all of these people had bad ECs or something, but why would that apply only to the 524+ crowd? Not a single person with a 521 matriculated DO. Is this some odd case of yield protection? I cannot figure this out for the life of me.

For anyone interested, please read the full analysis, it has a ton of interesting information.
View attachment 329803

That seems wrong. According to this document by AACOM, there are only 34 matriculants per year who have a 519 or higher. I highly doubt 21 of those came from one school and all had a 524. Unless UNTHS isn't included in AACOM data for some reason, this looks like a clerical error that no one noticed.

 

[deleted555445]

So I looked through some of the more detailed analysis and 7 of the 524+ applicants went to UNTHS and 3 to UIW. That leaves 11 to go to other DO schools. If you look at the GPA data compared with the MCAT data for those schools, its apparent the majority are low GPA (<3.5) with a 524+. Its still difficult to believe that all of those students would end up at a DO school in a state other than Texas with those stats. It could be a case of Texas-trapping, where schools outside of Texas think they'll just get into a Texas school and go there, and Texas schools for whatever reason didn't accept them, leaving them to go DO somewhere. It doesn't look like a clear-cut clerical error, but its very, very hard to square 21 524+ students matriculating in 2017 to DO schools when AACOM claims only 34 matriculated in 2018.

 

[account4premed]

They also mistyped "512-524" instead of 514 in both the chart and graph lol, idk if that might play a role

 

[Princeton Medical Student]

At this rate it will become true in 5-10 years

 

[Banco]

I love how it goes 0, 0, 0 from 515-523 and then 21.

 

[Hermes.]

I guarantee you that the sample size of 524+ scorers at any school is way too small to make accurate conclusions out of. This just seems like botched statistics to me.

 

[deleted1066189]

legitimately curious, has a 528 ever matriculated to DO school?

 

[proudofmykids]

Well, I believe 524 is the lowest 100th percentile score. Assuming 50k MCAT s would be top 0.5 percentile to get rounded up to 100 percentile for the reporting.
This would mean based in your school’s two graphs together, it had 40 people of the total 250 scores of 100 percentile, or about 18% of all. I don’t think it is a save bet based on “does this make sense”.

 

[Goro]

Apps are not defined solely by MCAT scores, BTW

 

[efle]

I'd treat this as an error. They only had 3 people with a 3.8+ GPA go to DO schools, no way they had 20+ people with 100th percentile scores.

They apparently also had only 2 people with a 524+ go to all AMCAS schools combined (one Columbia and one USC). Hard to imagine they have 10x as many high-scoring people choosing DO > MD.

 

[Princeton Medical Student]

legitimately curious, has a 528 ever matriculated to DO school?

I know of at least one person with a 526 that is in DO.

 

[LaughingGas10]

legitimately curious, has a 528 ever matriculated to DO school?

According to the AACOMAS data of the entering class for 2019 there were 154 applicants and 34 matriculants who had an MCAT of 519 or higher. They do not publish an MCAT/GPA grid as done by the AAMC. So we will not know if these were high MCAT/low GPA candidates.

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

If you take the DO 524+ total number as correct, the detailed tables in the doc make it pretty easy to pair some of the GPAs with MCATs (which is kind of weird that they'd publish such granular info, tbh, this data is very identifiable down to the individual student if you know where someone attends.)

4/21 have identifiable cGPAs of 3.5 or below. All of these have sGPAs below 3.3.
1 has a cGPA 3.51-3.6/sGPA 3.11-3.2
1 has 3.61-3.7 cGPA/sGPA 3.51-3.6. This is a California school though, and may attract higher stats folks who don't get California MD love

the remaining schools are harder to tell - max possible GPAs in the 3.6-3.9 range, but could be below that.

And of course, numbers aren't the whole picture. there may be unspecified red flags or personal reasons for choosing a specific school/location despite other opportunities. And maybe some really just want to learn OMM.

 

[deleted555445]

If you take the DO 524+ total number as correct, the detailed tables in the doc make it pretty easy to pair some of the GPAs with MCATs (which is kind of weird that they'd publish such granular info, tbh, this data is very identifiable down to the individual student if you know where someone attends.)

4/21 have identifiable cGPAs of 3.5 or below. All of these have sGPAs below 3.3.
1 has a cGPA 3.51-3.6/sGPA 3.11-3.2
1 has 3.61-3.7 cGPA/sGPA 3.51-3.6. This is a California school though, and may attract higher stats folks who don't get California MD love

the remaining schools are harder to tell - max possible GPAs in the 3.6-3.9 range, but could be below that.

And of course, numbers aren't the whole picture. there may be unspecified red flags or personal reasons for choosing a specific school/location despite other opportunities. And maybe some really just want to learn OMM.

i tried to logic through it as well, but i think there's no logical explanation other than it being a mistake. its very unlikely that 60% of DO matriculants with a 519 or higher came from one school, that they all had 524s and higher, and that only half went to an in-state DO school. its likely just an error. there are some other errors in this document as someone pointed out, someone put this together in a hurry and didn't proofread.

 

[DNAJB6]

Serious question: What percentage of MCAT scores above or equal to 518 end up in an osteopathic medical school?

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

i tried to logic through it as well, but i think there's no logical explanation other than it being a mistake. its very unlikely that 60% of DO matriculants with a 519 or higher came from one school, that they all had 524s and higher, and that only half went to an in-state DO school. its likely just an error. there are some other errors in this document as someone pointed out, someone put this together in a hurry and didn't proofread.

I actually think you're right, because checking 2017 AACOM data (to match the posted document), only 21 matriculated with 519+, and there are more than that reported here... But this is a weird mistake because it's carried through multiple tables that do add up to the same number, not just a single typo in one chart

 

[deleted555445]

Serious question: What percentage of MCAT scores above or equal to 518 end up in an osteopathic medical school?

roughly 3000 people score a 519 or higher on the MCAT every year.

34 end up at a DO school

 

[deleted555445]

I actually think you're right, because checking 2017 AACOM data (to match the posted document), only 21 matriculated with 519+, and there are more than that reported here... But this is a weird mistake because it's carried through multiple tables that do add up to the same number, not just a single typo in one chart

i agree, it threw me off that all the data matched up to itself in the document, but i think someone must've typed it in wrong or miscategorized a set of MCATs or something and no one caught it before they published the doc

 

[Goro]

If you take the DO 524+ total number as correct, the detailed tables in the doc make it pretty easy to pair some of the GPAs with MCATs (which is kind of weird that they'd publish such granular info, tbh, this data is very identifiable down to the individual student if you know where someone attends.)

4/21 have identifiable cGPAs of 3.5 or below. All of these have sGPAs below 3.3.
1 has a cGPA 3.51-3.6/sGPA 3.11-3.2
1 has 3.61-3.7 cGPA/sGPA 3.51-3.6. This is a California school though, and may attract higher stats folks who don't get California MD love

the remaining schools are harder to tell - max possible GPAs in the 3.6-3.9 range, but could be below that.

And of course, numbers aren't the whole picture. there may be unspecified red flags or personal reasons for choosing a specific school/location despite other opportunities. And maybe some really just want to learn OMM.

A confounder is that such people may have low cGPAs but reinvented themselves via post-bac or SMP.

 

[Mad Jack]

Looks like some kind of data error honestly, just given the rarity of those scores in DO matriculants in general and the huge gap in acceptances between that crowd and the next score range with DO acceptances. It just feels off