Advice needed!

[tomba27]

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Hey guys, I'm a little worried about my score in VR. The graphs provided above did give me a little more comfort (60% chance of acceptance based on overall GPA and MCAT score of 29) but I wanted to get some more input.

Bio 11
Phy 11
VR 7

29O
GPA 3.7
Science GPA (pre 2005) 3.8
Post-Bac GPA (all sciences) 4.0

Substantial volunteer hours, home health care provider, started a nonprofit to provide life assistance to uninsured and underinsured citizens of my community, Masters in Business and CPA (earned and used in my past post-bac life), substantial shadowing hours, sit on a couple of health care related committees in my community, ~5 good LORs.

I know my verbal isn't ideal but I don't feel I could raise it much without risking losing a point or two from the sciences. My advisor recommended me to fire off the applications and roll the dice based on my resume. I'm not looking for Harvard but am aiming for MD. I'm thinking of applying to ~17 schools and believe I will excel if given the interview opportunity. My advisor also told me I might have more success with private schools that tend to perform more of a holistic review. Anybody, care to state my chances???

 

[sector9]

Thanks MedAdComMD,

One last thing. A decent amount of lower tiered schools per the new MSAR state the VR 10th to 90th percentile range at 8 to X. Doesn't that mean that 10% of the class accepted last year scored below a 8 (more than likely a 7)? Thus, reject 6's and anything below?

I'm reaching and applying to all low tiered schools that show this as I honestly don't see myself doing better on VR. Plus, I have a list of 15 schools that have the 8 to X range and one school with a 7 to X range. Any response is very much appreciated.

EDIT: I just feel as long as I make that VR 'floor' score cutoff, I stand a decent chance with this many schools and my resume.

(this is a post from another thread, but I figured I would respond over here)

The 10th percentile thing doesn't mean that 10% of the accepted students score LOWER than the number printed in the MSAR. It just means that if you lined up all of the scores from the accepted students, the score listed is at the 10th percentile. You have no way of knowing if all the students at 1-9% all got 8's, or if some of them dipped lower than that.

The MSAR gives three numbers for each subscore: 10th %ile, median, and 90th %ile.

Suppose a school accepted 10 students with the following VR scores:

7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 10 11
This gives us the following stats for our theoretical school:
10th %ile (bold): 7
Median (underline): 9 (in this case, you have to take the average of the two numbers in the middle, but it's still 9 since they're both 9)
90th %ile (italics): 10

However, you could get something like this:
5 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 10 11
This gives us the following stats for our theoretical school:
10th %ile (bold): 7
Median (underline): 9 (in this case, you have to take the average of the two numbers in the middle, but it's still 9 since they're both 9)
90th %ile (italics): 10

The MSAR would list the exact same stats in each scenario for our hypothetical school, but this time, someone got in with a 5.

So basically, you can't tell based on the MSAR.

As a real-life example, look at the stats provided by UC Irvine for their class profile http://www.meded.uci.edu/Admissions/first_year_profile.asp

They give actual ranges of scores (rather than 10th and 90th %ile) broken down by subscore. If you look at the MSAR, the 10th percentile listed there is higher than the absolute range listed in the class profile. That shows that they don't have a cutoff at the number listed in the MSAR.

However, other schools MIGHT have a cutoff. Each school is different.

So, the moral of the story is that you should probably focus on schools where the 10th %ile is 7 or 8. Once you get up to a 9 for the 10th %ile, your chances really start dropping off a lot with a 7 on VR.

 

[tomba27]

(this is a post from another thread, but I figured I would respond over here)

The 10th percentile thing doesn't mean that 10% of the accepted students score LOWER than the number printed in the MSAR. It just means that if you lined up all of the scores from the accepted students, the score listed is at the 10th percentile. You have no way of knowing if all the students at 1-9% all got 8's, or if some of them dipped lower than that.

The MSAR gives three numbers for each subscore: 10th %ile, median, and 90th %ile.

Suppose a school accepted 10 students with the following VR scores:

7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 10 11
This gives us the following stats for our theoretical school:
10th %ile (bold): 7
Median (underline): 9 (in this case, you have to take the average of the two numbers in the middle, but it's still 9 since they're both 9)
90th %ile (italics): 10

However, you could get something like this:
5 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 10 11
This gives us the following stats for our theoretical school:
10th %ile (bold): 7
Median (underline): 9 (in this case, you have to take the average of the two numbers in the middle, but it's still 9 since they're both 9)
90th %ile (italics): 10

The MSAR would list the exact same stats in each scenario for our hypothetical school, but this time, someone got in with a 5.

So basically, you can't tell based on the MSAR.

As a real-life example, look at the stats provided by UC Irvine for their class profile http://www.meded.uci.edu/Admissions/first_year_profile.asp

They give actual ranges of scores (rather than 10th and 90th %ile) broken down by subscore. If you look at the MSAR, the 10th percentile listed there is higher than the absolute range listed in the class profile. That shows that they don't have a cutoff at the number listed in the MSAR.

However, other schools MIGHT have a cutoff. Each school is different.

So, the moral of the story is that you should probably focus on schools where the 10th %ile is 7 or 8. Once you get up to a 9 for the 10th %ile, your chances really start dropping off a lot with a 7 on VR.

You really know how to break it down Sector9. Thanks for the link. Can't tell you how much I appreciate it. The last line, the moral of the story, is what took a little weight off my shoulders. I'm revising my list and dropping all schools that have above a 8 for the 10th %ile. I'm just crossing my fingers that some of the schools take a more holistic approach as opposed to pure MCAT/GPA. VR gives me nightmares to this day...and I swore I heard my testing computer actually laugh at me when I was in the middle of taking VR.

Thanks again.