Admit Standardized Score and School List Builder

[HappyRabbit]

Worked when I was not on my work VPN. Would be interesting if the tool said why it was or was not recommending a certain school.

Yup, working on it!

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[RunnerDad]

Hey everyone, as some of you might have seen, I’ve been working on a machine learning model over the last few months that can both score an application based on every data point used in the admissions process as well as build a school list specific to an applicant’s holistic profile. The goal of the created school list is to maximize the probability of at least one acceptance as well as the chance of the highest-ranked acceptance.

It accounts for every exception and every decision, such as when to apply DO/MD (even with high stats), how X-factors change your ability to apply to reaches, MCAT retakes, GPA upward trends, in-state vs out-of-state schools, research, extracurriculars, etc. The best way to see it in action is to just try it with any combination of stats and ECs that you can think of and see how the school list and score changes.

Applicants with the same score, for example, can have drastically different school lists depending on the builder’s holistic evaluation of the application (research-focused, service-focused, state of residence, etc).

The reason I made the school list builder was because I saw so many applicants missing out on their full potential simply because they weren't making the right lists - either by applying to the wrong schools and having to reapply, or by not applying to schools they were competitive for. As a low SES applicant, I know how much harder the process can be when you don’t have the same resources others do, whether that’s family in medicine or access to consultants/advisors.

This should hopefully make it much easier for everyone to know where to apply and what schools you are competitive for. The builder also allows you to customize your list by suggesting schools that you are competitive for that can replace the recommended ones.

That’s essentially the TL;DR of the post, you can try it out below:

Link: https://admit.org/

If you want to learn more about how it was developed, you can read this doc here.

Note: I still need to include post-bacc to the calculator, which is coming soon. However, you can still get an idea of where to apply if you did a post-bacc by increasing your GPA score (this isn’t exactly correct because only some schools reward reinvention, but post-bacc is being added soon).

Thank you, this has tremendous potential. How do you factor in schools where the applicant is applying for a branch campus (e.g., Mayo-AZ) and is an In-State applicant because they live in AZ? Or is the assumption that the admission criteria is the same whether the person is applying to the home campus (e.g., Mayo-Rochester) or the branch campus?

 

[HappyRabbit]

Thank you, this has tremendous potential. How do you factor in schools where the applicant is applying for a branch campus (e.g., Mayo-AZ) and is an In-State applicant because they live in AZ? Or is the assumption that the admission criteria is the same whether the person is applying to the home campus (e.g., Mayo-Rochester) or the branch campus?

I don't account for any special programs at the moment (Columbia Basset, Mayo, etc) - there isn't enough public data to either train the model on or even manually adjust. The issue that I'm working towards now aside from improvements to the builder is access to application data that can be used to make the builder even more accurate.

I'm thinking about making a marketplace where applicants can list their applications and essays (with personal info censored) for other applicants to buy. This model would solve two problems:

1) Incentive to share application info - at the moment, I think that applicants would be comfortable with sharing their applications (plenty of videos on YouTube, Sankey's, etc) but there is no medium to do so or even an incentive to do so aside from goodwill.

2) Helps new applicants learn specifically what makes an application successful and unsuccessful. Unless you spend dozens of hours on SDN which >99% of applicants don't do, it's quite difficult to know how to craft a great application even with all the resources (MCAT, GPA, ECs) available to make one. The only alternative at the moment for applicants is spending what seems to be a minimum of $10,000 on private admissions consultants, most of whom are far removed from the admissions process and don't give the same quality of advice that SDN does for free. That's an absurd amount to be spending on applying and only makes the playing field more unfair for low SES and disadvantaged applicants applying to med school (the same population that we need more more physicians of!).

I've been busy working on the builder so I haven't fully developed my thoughts on how to approach this next feature, but this is what I've initially come up with and the reasons for why I think it would be beneficial.

 

[mistertwister]

This is really exciting. I was wondering why the builder doesn't ask about science GPA?

 

[HappyRabbit]

This is really exciting. I was wondering why the builder doesn't ask about science GPA?

Science GPA, Post-bacc/SMP, abstracts/posters, and everything else will eventually be supported. I wanted to take my time with releasing these new criteria to ensure that it's 100% accurate across every single combination of inputs and accounts for every single exception (of which there are a lot).

I just finished adding reasons for why schools are not recommended as well as added a yellow icon for schools that are either a little out of reach or too low for an applicant (risk of yield protection) rather than classifying these schools as not recommended. Applicants who wish to apply to these 'riskier' schools will see which they can add because of this. The changes will be live soon, then I'll start working on the above.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Not that this would happen to this, but I would not be so sure that it is a good idea to store too much personal information.

College Board fined for selling students' information

The College Board, the nonprofit that owns and administers the SAT and PSAT as well as AP tests, will pay a $750,000 settlement to the New York State attorney general’s office for illegally sharing and selling students’ personal data collected through its exams.

www.insidehighered.com

Tools ideally should be used to guide students, not do the work in its entirety. It's nice to see that the suggestions are spot on or close. It means that a lot of general advice we have given here is already very good to follow.

Tools should not substitute for actual work to determine fit or find out about branch campuses or newer tracks. The endgame is as much about finding a successful program to prepare for a future career as getting offers.

When I see a WAMC, I often wonder if the poster is embellishing stats or experiences... that the description is not accurate. They just want to test reactions, much like ghost jobs that are often posted just to draw applications to see how the description can be further refined to get the "right" candidates. I'm sure some bot out there can score a person's social media profile to see if they are a good fit for their company/program; that's in the very near future... or today.

The last thing I want to see is our advice being monetized for other people without our permission. We want our community to be easily accessible to those who want our support.

Yes, I think explanations can help people recognize why their profile doesn't fit specific schools or programs. I find many applicants don't want to be told they "can't apply to Ivy+ Med..." and they will take their shot because why not. I would love to see explanations why an applicant should consider applying to osteopathic schools or maybe consider options like podiatry, PA, or anesthesiology assistant.

For now, people use WAMCs transactionally to get a quick response or feedback and skip a lot of homework (some tedious, some very useful). If most applicants are like most medical students, they generally HATE self-reflections or calls to self-assess. They hate the wait to a decision (which would also be good to factor). They don't know why they fail at interviews (format should be noted, including requiring SJTs), and they don't know more than what is on the website.

Just thinking through philosophically.

 

[HappyRabbit]

Yeah definitely, lots of very fair points. I'll try to go through each of them below and also explain what my general goal is for Admit.

When it comes to any type of valuable tool or resource in the med school admissions process, I think accessibility is the most important feature. This ensures that the highest possible number of applicants can benefit from it.

If it's a restricted tool, similar to let's say private admissions consultants, the value creation is extremely limited to a select few who have the resources to access it.

Limitations to accessibility, however, don't have to strictly be financial like in the previous example - it can oftentimes just be from a lack of knowledge. How do applicants know what schools to apply to? How do they know what the best time is to submit the primary, or the secondary, or update letters, or gather letters of recommendation, or take the MCAT, or know they need research, or when to apply DO...

Med school admissions is a black box for applicants, less so for those who completed the cycle. The opacity decreases as one gets closer to applying, and by the end of the cycle, I think a lot of applicants (including myself) can reflect on their journey and realize they made mistakes that may have changed the optimal outcome of their cycle. For some, that means having to reapply because they didn't know an SMP/Post-bacc was needed, or that they should have retaken their MCAT, or they needed 50 more clinical hours to avoid being screened out, or they needed more than 10 hours of shadowing, etc.

SDN is a great resource but the accessibility is incredibly limited - most applicants never even step foot on the forums! Even after making it to SDN, there's a significant time investment needed to even begin developing the knowledge to have a successful, optimal cycle. One has to make a WAMC (with their entire profile, which is only usually completed a few months before they apply), learn about the intricacies of dozens of schools to improve writing and assess mission fit, figure out how to improve their application based on the provided feedback, etc. This can easily come out to hundreds of hours spent reading thousands of threads - assuming the applicant even knows SDN exists in the first place. Most disadvantaged students, or those with no physicians in their family still rely on their premed office to give admissions advice and have no idea that SDN exists.

If we think about this time investment, who does it favor when it comes time to apply? The applicant who had to work two jobs to pay for application fees and college tuition, with limited time to spend on SDN and no physicians in their family, or the privileged applicant (myself included) who didn't need to and could sit on SDN for hours?

By the time the former applicant realizes they need to make changes to their application, it's usually too late (either near the start of the cycle or after needing to reapply). If a first-year in college wants to learn what is needed to get into medical school, they only have a vague idea of what to do (focus on classes, maybe start some research, and get some clinical hours). A lot of this knowledge isn't even concrete - you hear one thing from the premed advising office, another from your friend, another from your parents, and then you have SDN telling you that all three are wrong. For those that know the value of the forums, it's an easy choice to know who to follow - but the number of posts on the premed Reddit asking for school list help (or other simple questions) only shows how limited SDN's reach and accessibility is.

The school list builder on Admit is just one example of how a tool can be used to increase accessibility - it's a simple 20 question calculator that takes under a minute to fill out and can generate a school list with let's say ~95% accuracy. For those who don't know SDN exists, it's a helpful tool that gives them direction in deciding where to apply and where they are competitive. It's not supposed to replace that discovery process - only the applicant can know which specific schools to apply to (after all, they can't apply to 50 schools that they may be eligible for). For example, a lot of URM applicants don't have a grasp of how competitive they actually are for top schools simply because they have no physicians in their family, have no connection to the admissions process, and only see the number that MSAR tells them. The current system is failing these applicants who come from disadvantaged backgrounds or aren't as connected - it's not a system that promotes accessibility and we see this all the time in the WAMC forum.

That's why applicants are recommended an initial list, and then can drag and drop schools, remove them from the recommended list, etc - the builder simply replaces what most applicants do now: look schools up manually and write them down in an excel file before doing the research. It also allows prospective applicants to change any variable they wish in their profile and understand what improvements that need to be made - an applicant can't make a dozen WAMC posts trying to understand how their school list changes if they add 300 clinical hours, or get a publication, etc.

While the builder should never replace this discovery/research process, I don't think it's of any benefit for an applicant to individually look up 200 medical schools just to find out which has an in-state bias and which does not. This is dozens of hours of manual, low-value researching - medical schools don't make this easier either. You have to click 10 links on their website and find the one dropdown among five that says they only accept XYZ residents.

If there was a choice between allowing OOS applicants to continue applying to these IS-heavy schools and donating application fees, to their known detriment, or having a tool that tells them not to apply there (substituting the research process completely), I think most can agree that the latter example is more beneficial and net positive. I say this simply because, on average, low SES and disadvantaged applicants who don't have the knowledge to know the idea of IS/OOS even exists are making these mistakes at higher frequencies than privileged applicants. If we want to solve these major issues, such as the lack of physician diversity (including race, social status, backgrounds, diversity of thought, etc) in the current physician pool, I believe that the most impactful way is to make improvements to the beginning of the funnel - in this case, med school applications.

In the case of monetization and the idea I made earlier, the school list builder will always be 100% free. The idea of having an application marketplace was simply to take the quality of the builder from 95% to 99% based on the contributed data of applicants who willingly want to help. Regarding the College Board selling private user information, aside from the fact that what they did is blatantly illegal, it's also why an account is not required to make a school list. You can simply open your browser anonymously, make a list, and leave with 0 data stored. The same applies to every other resource available on Admit. It's also important to note that it's incredibly expensive to maintain and develop the website - it's essentially living off of Google free server credits that I apply for every week and my savings because there is a lot more traffic than I expected. My idea to make this sustainable is by following what similar services like Ghost (blog service) have done - what's called sustainable open-source development. The free features will always be free which 99% of users will solely use, and 1% of users can make a purchase that allows the platform to exist and serve the other 99%.

Anyway, that's just me dumping all of my thoughts - I hope I answered all of the questions and gave more insight into the motivation behind creating the site and what (and why) I hope it will be used for.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Med school admissions is a black box for applicants, less so for those who completed the cycle. The opacity decreases as one gets closer to applying, and by the end of the cycle, I think a lot of applicants (including myself) can reflect on their journey and realize they made mistakes that may have changed the optimal outcome of their cycle. For some, that means having to reapply because they didn't know an SMP/Post-bacc was needed, or that they should have retaken their MCAT, or they needed 50 more clinical hours to avoid being screened out, or they needed more than 10 hours of shadowing, etc.

I'm doing the same philosophical walk (stream of consciousness, whatever).

This was definitely the case when SDN was first established in 1999 and earlier. Back then there were books and the printed MSAR which went over the AMCAS application process. SDN published guides on how to apply to medical school, dental school, vet school, pharmacy school, optometry school, and podiatry school, among other professions (PT, OT, Aud/SLP, I think).

It has completely changed. The AAMC, AACOM, ADEA, and other professional societies' websites are robust in walking through the application process, and prehealth advisors leverage this information now. The 2010's saw a lot of effort from these organizations and the student orgs like AMSA, SNMA, ASDA, etc. to provide insights into the admissions process so that there is more specific guidance and "steps" to applying. (I know, I and other advisors helped with the feedback.) AAMC created a database of postbac programs for future MD students that since has grown, and there is a move to develop a new database that is more robust and inclusive.

We and others developed GPA calculators, application organizers, and guides to help people with interviewing. We have guides for reinvention, surviving the first steps of clinical rotations, and looking at student insurance policies if you were LGBTQ+ in the forums. This information can be found with Google searches that are more robust than 5-10 years ago.

Data reporting is better now than 10 years ago, thanks to digitizing applications and school-specific portals that help with streamlining applicant data into review systems. And I admit to having done my own analysis on my applicant pools because that's what I think admissions professionals should be doing to help students apply to their programs. The data from looking at the applicant pools over the years have been fairly consistent regarding experience hours that raise you up from "the pack" of applications. I'm always shocked when I see a medical school applicant with zero clinical experience hours. Zero... like no shadowing, no hospital volunteering, no pharm tech, no CRA, no health fair screening.... nothing! Just their strong GPA and MCAT! And it's not just one person!

I get where you are thinking, but the problem is that today's student has lots of options to find information and subsequently a community online. SDN isn't the only place where premeds get their information as one can get them from AAMC newsletters, Discord servers, YouTube, reddit, or Tiktok influencers. There have always been books and videos talking about people's application journey for the last 10 or so years. The information is out there. I don't think the lack of accessing good information is the problem. I'm sure the genAI bots can garner the consensus opinions of SDN, Kaplan, Shemassian, Accepted, etc., and I can pretty much assure you we concur about 90% of the time when it comes to getting a strong, competitive application. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, BBC, and CBC all cover the same news stories with similar descriptions or perspectives most of the time (just talking the facts, not the opinion spin).

You could learn a lot from TMDSAS if you watched their videos and attended their office hours. You can attend and network with schools at recruitment fairs (on your campus, online, on their campus, at conferences) and get a pretty good idea of what you need to do. Again, it's not as hard as you think to know what the basic foundation of a solid application is. Their advice for a successful medical school application doesn't stray much from ours. It shouldn't other than the nuances of their process (including the match).

I am just reminded of the premise that people shouldn't be using the Admit List Builder as definitive. It's going to happen. it happened with Cliffs notes in the 70's-80's and SparkNotes from the 90's to the 00's. We aren't talking about cheating, but just as you mention people want to get to their answers fast, I expect most will do it. That's fine... I'm sure that's why LizzyM and WARS have been popular with us before the MCAT change and additional nuances with application review in the past 5 years.

Many people who come to the forums underutilize resources that their predecessors have developed for them. A mobile app to help track their AMCAS applications. The 100-day MCAT planner. The Activity Finder. The article archive has so many articles on preparing for Casper that it summarizes good strategies to attack it. A lot of times we old-timers forget how much knowledge there is here after 25 years of being an online community! Wisdom is lost on youth (contrary to GBS). We have a lot of tools that are available to help students without strong prehealth infrastructure to develop a plan to be successful, especially for becoming a physician.

In short, the medical school application process isn't a black box because of unnecessary mystery. (Some things are just going to be confidential, sorry.) There are enough people who are helping or will help anyone who wants it. I have insights into many mentoring organizations who will not hesitate to help prospective applicants (AMSA, SNMA, LMSA, MSPA, APAMSA, and a lot of other orgs depending on one's passion or motivation to pursue medicine, dentistry, whatever). URM candidates can align with a mentor specifically set up to help them overcome the societal barriers and insecurities that come with a competitive application process; some with scholarship help. Good advisors have had the answers to these questions from their connections with admissions professionals (we can talk about "good" advisors another time).

What one fails to understand is that medicine still is not for everyone, but we still need a lot of diverse health professionals in all the fields we support here (dentistry, pharmacy, optometry, vet, pod, etc.), and they have a LOT LESS help from advisors than premeds do with fewer people interested in devoting resources to helping them with school lists (albeit there aren't 120 podiatry schools; you just apply to all 9/10). Worldwide about 60% of nursing and medical students don't plan to treat patients!

I acknowledge the tools are very useful as are many tools we have had on SDN, like the MDApplicants and DDSApplicants websites. We want to update many of the resources like the Interview Feedback Database since more schools have used MMI and recorded video interviews since the Database was first created over 10 years ago!

I hope that the tool will actually inspire people to seek our expert advice more, and you should not worry about doing everything. There is a great benefit to our crowdsourced but diverse expert advice here. Just as one cannot fully trust a result from a genetics test (like Ancestry, 23andme), the results from the tools should also inspire proper analysis and guidance with admissions experts (mission fit, mission fit, mission fit). That's at least why Becoming a Student Doctor was built to help applicants find that balance in their school fit. But to be successful, one should use a lot of tools to build that house... it doesn't just take a hammer.

 

[HappyRabbit]

Just deployed another update, thank you everyone for the feedback!

1. Schools that may be out of reach (or below range) of an applicant will show up with a yellow icon. These schools show up on the right side, not in the recommended list, and applicants can drag them into the main list if they want to reach higher than recommended or add schools that may yield protect.

2. The reason for schools not being recommended is now added.

3. Stanford/Harvard are now added in certain cases with high research applicants even with low nonclinical/clinical.

4. Baylor and UTSW are now added to school lists in certain cases on the sidebar.

5. Some minor changes here and there related to extreme applications (thousands of clinical hours + 0 shadowing)

Going to take a break from the builder for a few days and redesign all of the logos to be readable instead of what they are now.

 

[xNinjaBurrito1]

Just deployed another update, thank you everyone for the feedback!

1. Schools that may be out of reach (or below range) of an applicant will show up with a yellow icon. These schools show up on the right side, not in the recommended list, and applicants can drag them into the main list if they want to reach higher than recommended or add schools that may yield protect.

2. The reason for schools not being recommended is now added.

3. Stanford/Harvard are now added in certain cases with high research applicants even with low nonclinical/clinical.

4. Baylor and UTSW are now added to school lists in certain cases on the sidebar.

5. Some minor changes here and there related to extreme applications (thousands of clinical hours + 0 shadowing)

Going to take a break from the builder for a few days and redesign all of the logos to be readable instead of what they are now.

View attachment 382943

Not sure if others are experiencing this, but sign-in using Google is being blocked by both my institution and Bitdefender, and the list builder is giving a "failed to fetch" error.

 

[HappyRabbit]

Not sure if others are experiencing this, but sign-in using Google is being blocked by both my institution and Bitdefender, and the list builder is giving a "failed to fetch" error.

It’s happening to some people when they connect on school internet (not sure why) but it works fine on data or home internet.

I’ll try to look into this over the next few days - the issue was a lot worse when Admit was first released but seems to be better now. It could just be that institutions have stricter internet rules and it takes time to add the site to the whitelist, but just throwing a guess.

 

[chssoccer7]

This is what happens when comp sci majors get accepted and then have too much free time before school starts 😆

Kidding, in all seriousness, this is a cool tool. It is very similar to how I think of the LizzyM or WARS calculators. It just gives you a reference point. I hope that applicants using this will not use this as an end-all be-all tool for creating a list, but more as a "oh I wasn't even thinking of that school" when using it to check their ideas etc.

As a datapoint for you if you're looking for it, I didn't get any interviews from the baseline schools it suggested (tbf, I only applied to 1 of them). I had an interview and an acceptance from the target schools and 3 interviews, 1 acceptance and 2 waitlist from the reach schools. (It didn't mention ETSU in any of the lists, which I also had an interview at. I think you might be missing some correlating formula and/or weight with clicking the veteran button and proximity to ETSU, as I am in a neighboring state). It also recommended UCLA in the reach schools, and while I appreciate the vote of confidence, I am an east coaster with 0 research and an MCAT that's not competitive for them.

 

[HappyRabbit]

This is what happens when comp sci majors get accepted and then have too much free time before school starts 😆

Kidding, in all seriousness, this is a cool tool. It is very similar to how I think of the LizzyM or WARS calculators. It just gives you a reference point. I hope that applicants using this will not use this as an end-all be-all tool for creating a list, but more as a "oh I wasn't even thinking of that school" when using it to check their ideas etc.

As a datapoint for you if you're looking for it, I didn't get any interviews from the baseline schools it suggested (tbf, I only applied to 1 of them). I had an interview and an acceptance from the target schools and 3 interviews, 1 acceptance and 2 waitlist from the reach schools. (It didn't mention ETSU in any of the lists, which I also had an interview at. I think you might be missing some correlating formula and/or weight with clicking the veteran button and proximity to ETSU, as I am in a neighboring state). It also recommended UCLA in the reach schools, and while I appreciate the vote of confidence, I am an east coaster with 0 research and an MCAT that's not competitive for them.

Haha thanks for the feedback, looking at ETSU's residency requirements they only accept OOS students who are within 250 miles of the school, which isn't really something I can quantify yet at least. It's currently marked as an IS-heavy school so only students from the state of Tennessee are recommended it - soon I'll work on having a state ties question that can go into more detail into these questions (high school residency, etc).

UCLA looks extremely favorably at OOS Veterans and URM applicants, and also has a wide MCAT range so even if your MCAT is in the 505 range or so I agree with the calculator's recommendation to apply there (and research isn't a requirement for Veteran/URM applicants applying to UCLA).

 

[chssoccer7]

Haha thanks for the feedback, looking at ETSU's residency requirements they only accept OOS students who are within 250 miles of the school, which isn't really something I can quantify yet at least. It's currently marked as an IS-heavy school so only students from the state of Tennessee are recommended it - soon I'll work on having a state ties question that can go into more detail into these questions (high school residency, etc).

UCLA looks extremely favorably at OOS Veterans and URM applicants, and also has a wide MCAT range so even if your MCAT is in the 505 range or so I agree with the calculator's recommendation to apply there (and research isn't a requirement for Veteran/URM applicants applying to UCLA).

View attachment 382982

Fair enough.

ETSU is also extremely favorable for veterans fwiw, that's why I mentioned it. It's recommended for pretty much all veterans to apply there (assuming their stats are MD competitive).

 

[HappyRabbit]

Fair enough.

ETSU is also extremely favorable for veterans fwiw, that's why I mentioned it. It's recommended for pretty much all veterans to apply there (assuming their stats are MD competitive).

I see, will manually add that to the calculator then. Thanks!

Edit: Added now you can check 🙂

 

[Tennis&soccer]

Hey everyone, as some of you might have seen, I’ve been working on a machine learning model over the last few months that can both score an application based on every data point used in the admissions process as well as build a school list specific to an applicant’s holistic profile. The goal of the created school list is to maximize the probability of at least one acceptance as well as the chance of the highest-ranked acceptance.

It accounts for every exception and every decision, such as when to apply DO/MD (even with high stats), how X-factors change your ability to apply to reaches, MCAT retakes, GPA upward trends, in-state vs out-of-state schools, research, extracurriculars, etc. The best way to see it in action is to just try it with any combination of stats and ECs that you can think of and see how the school list and score changes.

Applicants with the same score, for example, can have drastically different school lists depending on the builder’s holistic evaluation of the application (research-focused, service-focused, state of residence, etc).

The reason I made the school list builder was because I saw so many applicants missing out on their full potential simply because they weren't making the right lists - either by applying to the wrong schools and having to reapply, or by not applying to schools they were competitive for. As a low SES applicant, I know how much harder the process can be when you don’t have the same resources others do, whether that’s family in medicine or access to consultants/advisors.

This should hopefully make it much easier for everyone to know where to apply and what schools you are competitive for. The builder also allows you to customize your list by suggesting schools that you are competitive for that can replace the recommended ones.

That’s essentially the TL;DR of the post, you can try it out below:

Link: https://admit.org/

If you want to learn more about how it was developed, you can read this doc here.

Note: I still need to include post-bacc to the calculator, which is coming soon. However, you can still get an idea of where to apply if you did a post-bacc by increasing your GPA score (this isn’t exactly correct because only some schools reward reinvention, but post-bacc is being added soon).

I had a general question on how the school statistics are found. Is the admitted number including waitlist acceptances or not?

 

[HappyRabbit]

I had a general question on how the school statistics are found. Is the admitted number including waitlist acceptances or not?

It does include waitlist acceptances - the stats come from a variety of sources, including school websites, class profiles, third party stats, etc

 

[cfn]

@HappyRabbit: Thank you very much for the awesome school list builder.

Quick question, did you make changes to the algorithm ? The school list generated for me couple day is different the one generated today. The new list has more schools (32) vs the previous list (25) with more schools added to Reach , Target and Baseline. Also, couple schools were removed from the list.

 

[HappyRabbit]

@HappyRabbit: Thank you very much for the awesome school list builder.

Quick question, did you make changes to the algorithm ? The school list generated for me couple day is different the one generated today. The new list has more schools (32) vs the previous list (25) with more schools added to Reach , Target and Baseline. Also, couple schools were removed from the list.

It depends on what your profile looks like - no significant changes were made aside from the ones mentioned in this thread. Every hour of ECs and other info impacts your list so you may have input it wrong last time.

 

[HappyRabbit]

Newly designed school logos are up now and should make it a lot easier to see the schools. Working on building the application marketplace in the meantime as well as expanding the stats included on the school stats page.

 

[cfn]

@HappyRabbit : Great job and thank you for making a great tool for us premed.

Can I request as an enhancement ? 🙂 If possible, from the result school list, can I click on the school and be able to see school statistic ? And Is there a way to compare schools from the result list ?

 

[HappyRabbit]

@HappyRabbit : Great job and thank you for making a great tool for us premed.

Can I request as an enhancement ? 🙂 If possible, from the result school list, can I click on the school and be able to see school statistic ? And Is there a way to compare schools from the result list ?

Yup that's the next feature I'm working on alongside the application marketplace. I'm in the middle of aggregating all the info that MSAR doesn't include, like curriculum-specific info (P/F, AOA, etc), hospitals that students rotate at, etc. After that I'll decide to either include these after you click on an individual school, or put it all in a new table so you can look at all the schools at once.

After this info is collected then a school compare feature is straight forward where you can pick the schools you want to compare and it'll show all the info side-by-side.

Let me know if this is what you were thinking and if you have anything else in mind!

 

[cfn]

@HappyRabbit : Thank you for putting great effort to create a great tool for us premed student in choosing med schools to apply.

You are spot on on the design but I think some info like hospital rotation and/or AOA are not that important initially but it's nice to have since it saves time from having to go school website to get them. One of the wishful idea, is after generate the list, it also include a predictive index for chances of II from the list of Builder 🙂.

 

[RunnerDad]

I'm in the middle of aggregating all the info that MSAR doesn't include, like curriculum-specific info (P/F, AOA, etc), hospitals that students rotate at, etc. After that I'll decide to either include these after you click on an individual school, or put it all in a new table so you can look at all the schools at once.

After this info is collected then a school compare feature is straight forward where you can pick the schools you want to compare and it'll show all the info side-by-side.

This would be so, so invaluable to applicants. Researching this information takes many hours - time that could otherwise be spent prewriting (or writing) secondaries, etc.

 

[HappyRabbit]

@HappyRabbit : Thank you for putting great effort to create a great tool for us premed student in choosing med schools to apply.

You are spot on on the design but I think some info like hospital rotation and/or AOA are not that important initially but it's nice to have since it saves time from having to go school website to get them. One of the wishful idea, is after generate the list, it also include a predictive index for chances of II from the list of Builder 🙂.

Personally I think there is minimal value in making a predictive index for individual schools - there is too much randomness in the process to account for that (the builder was already extremely difficult to make and is probably 5x easier than doing it on a per school basis) and also serves no value to applicants besides fueling neuroticism. It's also highly dependent on essays, LORs, and a holistic evaluation of all the activities which is impossible to quantify.

 

[HappyRabbit]

This would be so, so invaluable to applicants. Researching this information takes many hours - time that could otherwise be spent prewriting (or writing) secondaries, etc.

Yeah haha, I've already spent dozens of hours writing emails to every school, just to only get half of the information and told to go to a 300-page student handbook for the rest that has no mention of let's say internal ranking, and then I have to crosscheck all the info with the school website as well as current students (since sometimes the emails I get have wrong info!).

Probably the most painful feature to add but will be so helpful to applicants deciding what school to attend.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

This would be so, so invaluable to applicants. Researching this information takes many hours - time that could otherwise be spent prewriting (or writing) secondaries, etc.

I don't think it's valuable to applicants at the point where they should be focusing on their applications. It can be useful once you have to weigh a couple of offers, but I don't think this information helps you as much as you think it does. Otherwise, we might as well incorporate the USNWR hospital rankings as another factor, and we're asking @HappyRabbit for a heck of a lot...

Modeling is as good as the data you put into the model. You want to put in the data that points to significant factors, not the ones where it contributes to 0.00001% of the variability.

Besides the hospital rankings say nothing about the quality of preceptors, residents, or attendings whose evaluations are extremely important for the MSPE. There's too much variability that the curriculum/clinic education admins have to process already!

Remember, admissions is not a science. It's a process. Don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "excellent".

 

[Tennis&soccer]

It does include waitlist acceptances - the stats come from a variety of sources, including school websites, class profiles, third party stats, etc

If these are accurate, why does acceptance differ so much from this one from 2021

If you look at Michigan State, the number of acceptances from 2021 is 263 and the admit.org website for MSUCHM (for 2023?) has 325. Why are the numbers so different? Does one include the waitlist and not the other? Which do you think is more accurate?

 

[HappyRabbit]

If these are accurate, why does acceptance differ so much from this one from 2021

If you look at Michigan State, the number of acceptances from 2021 is 263 and the admit.org website for MSUCHM (for 2023?) has 325. Why are the numbers so different? Does one include the waitlist and not the other? Which do you think is more accurate?

The numbers on Admit are the most recent values - 2021 is several years old and there is a lot that changes in terms of yield in that time span for schools.

 

[Tennis&soccer]

The numbers on Admit are the most recent values - 2021 is several years old and there is a lot that changes in terms of yield in that time span for schools.

I had a general question. To my knowledge most people don’t withdraw an acceptance from schools until April. 3/15 is the deadline for schools to accept at least their class size. So, does that mean most schools’ acceptances that sent are roughly their class size by March 15 and if there’s a discrepancy between total acceptances and matriculated then those are WL acceptances?

 

[HappyRabbit]

I had a general question. To my knowledge most people don’t withdraw an acceptance from schools until April. 3/15 is the deadline for schools to accept at least their class size. So, does that mean most schools’ acceptances that sent are roughly their class size by March 15 and if there’s a discrepancy between total acceptances and matriculated then those are WL acceptances?

What discrepancy are you referring to? The acceptances on the website represent the total number of acceptance offers given to applicants at any time in the cycle (including waitlists) so the number of acceptances are always higher than matriculants (since school yield is never 100%).

 

[Tennis&soccer]

What discrepancy are you referring to? The acceptances on the website represent the total number of acceptance offers given to applicants at any time in the cycle (including waitlists) so the number of acceptances are always higher than matriculants (since school yield is never 100%).

I meant more as a difference. Like do schools normally give out acceptances up to their class size by the March 15 deadline and the rest is WL acceptances? So for msu as another example, they gave out 325 acceptances but their class size is 190. So I’m wondering, generally, would msu have sent out only 190 acceptances by the 3/15 deadline or not (since most people don’t withdraw acceptances until April). Or is it largely dependent at per school?

 

[HappyRabbit]

I meant more as a difference. Like do schools normally give out acceptances up to their class size by the March 15 deadline and the rest is WL acceptances? So for msu as another example, they gave out 325 acceptances but their class size is 190. So I’m wondering, generally, would msu have sent out only 190 acceptances by the 3/15 deadline or not (since most people don’t withdraw acceptances until April). Or is it largely dependent at per school?

Most schools send out more acceptances than seats even prior to waitlists opening up (AAMC mandates that they at least send out 1:1 acceptances to seats I believe, but schools have to send out more) - however the acceptances sent out * yield is usually still lower than the target class size, which is where the waitlist plays a role (school dependent).

 

[adt158]

Very interesting tool and glad to see it pick up steam among the applicants of this cycle. I've read through this thread, and just wanted to ask generally, How confident are you in Interview / Acceptance stats? The Northeast Ohio Thread is tearing itself apart right now because of the crazy high (99% or so) number for In-State Acceptance post interview.

 

[HappyRabbit]

Very interesting tool and glad to see it pick up steam among the applicants of this cycle. I've read through this thread, and just wanted to ask generally, How confident are you in Interview / Acceptance stats? The Northeast Ohio Thread is tearing itself apart right now because of the crazy high (99% or so) number for In-State Acceptance post interview.

Thanks! The application data comes directly from the schools, I don't just make them up 😀

NEOMED has a high in-state interview acceptance rate because most of the filtering happens after secondaries (except if you're a psychopath I assume and get rejected post-II)

 

[deleted1174679]

Thanks! The application data comes directly from the schools, I don't just make them up 😀

NEOMED has a high in-state interview acceptance rate because most of the filtering happens after secondaries (except if you're a psychopath I assume and get rejected post-II)

What about neomed OOS acceptance ? Will they accept me
?

 

[HappyRabbit]

What about neomed OOS acceptance ? Will they accept me
?

It's 42%

 

[deleted1174679]

It's 42%View attachment 385291

Ok but they are looking to interview more people on May June . Could they exhaust waitlist ?

 

[HappyRabbit]

Ok but they are looking to interview more people on May June . Could they exhaust waitlist ?

I don't know the specifics for NEOMED sorry - I'm working on adding an application tracker / improved cycle track to Admit that will hopefully make this info more readily accessible to future applicants. Best place to look would be in old SDN school specific threads for the time being.

 

[deleted1174679]

I don't know the specifics for NEOMED sorry - I'm working on adding an application tracker / improved cycle track to Admit that will hopefully make this info more readily accessible to future applicants. Best place to look would be in old SDN school specific threads for the time being.

I did and they do take OOS

 

[troy&abedintheAM]

hi, i was wondering why "clinical volunteering hours" is not a question for the school list? are clinical volunteer hours supposed to be included in overall clinical hours? if so, that doesn't make sense to me, as there is a huge difference in being paid (to be a scribe, for example) vs volunteering at hospice. would love to hear your thoughts. thanks!

 

[HappyRabbit]

hi, i was wondering why "clinical volunteering hours" is not a question for the school list? are clinical volunteer hours supposed to be included in overall clinical hours? if so, that doesn't make sense to me, as there is a huge difference in being paid (to be a scribe, for example) vs volunteering at hospice. would love to hear your thoughts. thanks!

From my experience looking at admissions rubrics, clinical volunteering is mainly a checkbox activity and the specific type (paid vs volunteering) is insignificant compared to applicant’s writing and reflections of the experience.

 

[Tom Yi]

This website is super easy to use! It also have a good match with my own list. However as an international student, it'll be really nice if this tool can filter out schools that only accept US citizens. Let's see how it goes this cycle!

 

[HappyRabbit]

This website is super easy to use! It also have a good match with my own list. However as an international student, it'll be really nice if this tool can filter out schools that only accept US citizens. Let's see how it goes this cycle!

Thanks! I plan on further improving the builder for this upcoming cycle to support post-bacs, international students, and using the data from the live cycle results to recommend schools more specifically.

 

[HappyRabbit]

Moved message to other thread

 

[Timetocrunch]

Are the admit profiles real? They seem a little funky and some of the basic information like race and the photos don't match.

 

[HappyRabbit]

Are the admit profiles real? They seem a little funky and some of the basic information like race and the photos don't match.

The photos and names are not to protect the privacy of the students, everything else is and manually verified.

 

[medseek]

Hey everyone, as some of you might have seen, I’ve been working on a machine learning model over the last few months that can both score an application based on every data point used in the admissions process as well as build a school list specific to an applicant’s holistic profile. The goal of the created school list is to maximize the probability of at least one acceptance as well as the chance of the highest-ranked acceptance.

It accounts for every exception and every decision, such as when to apply DO/MD (even with high stats), how X-factors change your ability to apply to reaches, MCAT retakes, GPA upward trends, in-state vs out-of-state schools, research, extracurriculars, etc. The best way to see it in action is to just try it with any combination of stats and ECs that you can think of and see how the school list and score changes.

Applicants with the same score, for example, can have drastically different school lists depending on the builder’s holistic evaluation of the application (research-focused, service-focused, state of residence, etc).

The reason I made the school list builder was because I saw so many applicants missing out on their full potential simply because they weren't making the right lists - either by applying to the wrong schools and having to reapply, or by not applying to schools they were competitive for. As a low SES applicant, I know how much harder the process can be when you don’t have the same resources others do, whether that’s family in medicine or access to consultants/advisors.

This should hopefully make it much easier for everyone to know where to apply and what schools you are competitive for. The builder also allows you to customize your list by suggesting schools that you are competitive for that can replace the recommended ones.

That’s essentially the TL;DR of the post, you can try it out below:

Link: https://admit.org/

If you want to learn more about how it was developed, you can read this doc here.

Note: I still need to include post-bacc to the calculator, which is coming soon. However, you can still get an idea of where to apply if you did a post-bacc by increasing your GPA score (this isn’t exactly correct because only some schools reward reinvention, but post-bacc is being added soon).

hi
thank you for all your work on this! I'm wondering how you get the admit rates? the one you have for the school I'm interested in (Kimmel), and what they said at the interview are different--what they said was less than what you have(for post interview). Just trying to understand. thanks!