"are your scores competitive" site

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likeasurgeon said:
Has anybody heard anything about whether the ratings from this website are basically reliable?

http://www.studentdoc.com/medfind.html

i dont think its very reliable.....for it gives me the red for ohio state....but they offered me an interview in sept....in the first batch... :sleep:
 
Members don't see this ad :)
The numbers are accurate in the sense that it lets you see how your gpa and mcat stack up at various schools but it is not very predictive (based on my experience and that of others this past application cycle).
 
OOS and in state numbers are way off for some schools. but still a good way to judge what schools to APPLY TO, not what schools u will GET INTO.
 
likeasurgeon said:
Has anybody heard anything about whether the ratings from this website are basically reliable?

http://www.studentdoc.com/medfind.html

Everything on the internet is true. :D

I think a magic 8-ball is going to give you the same "reliable" results...
...will I get into Pritzker...shake...shake...shake..."maybe". Damn. I was really hoping for "yes." Good thing this 8-ball experiment is repeatable! :D
 
well, i think the advantage of this site is that it relates mcats to gpa on the same scale, something that the msar doesnt. The problem is, it does it poorly. For people with skewed numbers like myself, this oucld be useful (if it was any accurate).
 
geno2568 said:
well, i think the advantage of this site is that it relates mcats to gpa on the same scale, something that the msar doesnt. The problem is, it does it poorly. For people with skewed numbers like myself, this oucld be useful (if it was any accurate).

I agree.

Good concept, MAYBE you can use it to think of some schools to apply to, but the formula's pretty weird, and it doesn't account for any ECs so it's pretty unreliable.
-Dr. P.
 
likeasurgeon said:
Has anybody heard anything about whether the ratings from this website are basically reliable?

http://www.studentdoc.com/medfind.html
Huh. I tried putting in my numbers, and interestingly, it was pretty accurate. Several schools that rejected me came out to be red, while most of the ones that accepted me came out to be blue. I guess if you have no GPA, it might be a pretty accurate site as far as telling you which schools will ding you heavily for that.
 
Be warned, that site also takes points off based on your primary state of residence for some private schools which could care less where you came from.

Definitely agree with what the others have been said about using it to start your school search, but not taking it as gospel truth.
 
I mean I think you need to look at the key word "competitive." Being competitive means you have about the right numbers to get in, but it in no way guarantees admission. I used this site when I was looking for schools to apply to. Agree with you guys - good tool, but use in conjunction with others.
 
jackieMD2007 said:
Everything on the internet is true. :D

I think a magic 8-ball is going to give you the same "reliable" results...
...will I get into Pritzker...shake...shake...shake..."maybe". Damn. I was really hoping for "yes." Good thing this 8-ball experiment is repeatable! :D


i used the following methods tonight at an arcade: "if i can get the ball in the 50 circle (skee ball) I will get into Pitt" (scored a 50 three times in a row!)

put a quarter in a fortune teller machine (like in Big) and she told me "Blue is your lucky color". not sure if that is good news or bad news... :laugh:
 
Members don't see this ad :)
+.3 points for every .1 GPA point...
+.8 points for every 1 MCAT point...

This makes a 4.0 30 MCAT about as competitive as a 33 3.2 or 36 2.4

But for some reason I think one of these is a shoe-in for a med school acceptance, one will be sweating it out, and one will get rejected pre-interview almost everywhere
 
MiesVanDerMom said:
i used the following methods tonight at an arcade: "if i can get the ball in the 50 circle (skee ball) I will get into Pitt" (scored a 50 three times in a row!)

put a quarter in a fortune teller machine (like in Big) and she told me "Blue is your lucky color". not sure if that is good news or bad news... :laugh:

Skee Ball is by far the best arcade game ever at predicting medical school admission results :)
 
UMP said:
+.3 points for every .1 GPA point...
+.8 points for every 1 MCAT point...

This makes a 4.0 30 MCAT about as competitive as a 33 3.2 or 36 2.4

But for some reason I think one of these is a shoe-in for a med school acceptance, one will be sweating it out, and one will get rejected pre-interview almost everywhere
SWEATING IT OUT!!! YEAHHH!!!!
oh wait, I wanted the shoe in...
 
likeasurgeon said:
Has anybody heard anything about whether the ratings from this website are basically reliable?

http://www.studentdoc.com/medfind.html

Lots of people who are in med school now would not be if they placed much stake in programs like this. Adcoms consider the whole application, not one dimensionally like a computer program. If schools just took the best numerical stats, there would be much higher average stats at the top 10 schools and a much greater range from top to bottom of the rankings than there is. Schools simply don't work this way. Apply broadly and ignore the computers.
 
Law2Doc said:
Lots of people who are in med school now would not be if they placed much stake in programs like this. Adcoms consider the whole application, not one dimensionally like a computer program. If schools just took the best numerical stats, there would be much higher average stats at the top 10 schools and a much greater range from top to bottom of the rankings than there is. Schools simply don't work this way. Apply broadly and ignore the computers.
Good point... but that comes to my next question:
For someone like me who has boarderline numbers, would you say using the lower number schools from web sites like this would be good or bad? I'm applying broadly, but basing my list off of schools with lower GPA+MCAT numbers. Is this almost sabatoging myself since perhaps everyone who has an app like mine will submit to the same schools as I am? Thoughts? Should I perhaps look more into schools that cater to my field (geriatrics) that I want to go into? I have some genetics research experience to, so look for strong molecular genetics programs related to medicine? Advice?
 
Compass said:
These numbers are also compared to the average. Below average people get in too.


Right on. A friend of mine was accepted into Case Western (aka. Top 25 USNews Medical School for research) with a 3.1 science GPA. Overall about 3.3...

Admissions committees look at everything.
 
eerapido said:
Right on. A friend of mine was accepted into Case Western (aka. Top 25 USNews Medical School for research) with a 3.1 science GPA. Overall about 3.3...

Admissions committees look at everything.

How good was his MCAT score though?
 
This site had me green for Hopkins, Harvard and Mayo. All rejected me (post-secondary).

This site treats high scores as a linear asset, but I would say that one quickly runs into diminishing returns. The top schools are very fussy and are looking for everything -- grades, MCAT, research, experience, underrepresented, etc.

In what may be an apt analogy, Jarod Diamond talks about the "Anna Karenia" phenomenon in animal domestication -- to be suitable, everything must be a certain way, and one one factor can doom efforts at domestication.

The tougher the school, the more they demand universal satisfaction -- hence, the difference between a 38 and a 42 on the MCAT, or a 3.9 and a 4.0, is blurred.
 
ok, so I put in my hopeful stats (practice MCAT scores:36) with my GPA of 3.1, and behold: almost half the schools are in green, and everything else is in blue (except for stanford and WUSTL).... so if I pull this 36 am I actually the very competitive candidate (for low-tier in-state schools) that it says I am?
 
UMP said:
ok, so I put in my hopeful stats (practice MCAT scores:36) with my GPA of 3.1, and behold: almost half the schools are in green, and everything else is in blue (except for stanford and WUSTL).... so if I pull this 36 am I actually the very competitive candidate (for low-tier in-state schools) that it says I am?

No. As all of the above posts suggest, there is really no science to this. It is meaningless.The raw numbers tell you nothing -- you still know little about what kind of nonnumeric credentials those with a 3.1 who actually get in have. (I would suggest it takes more than just a good MCAT, but you can never know from this kind of program.) People do not get into med school on numerical stats alone. No schools admit people strictly based on some formulaic combination of GPA and MCAT (although a small handfull of schools reportedly reject folks below a certain combined score as a form of early screen). And wishing for a 36 does not make it so.
 
Law2Doc said:
No. As all of the above posts suggest, there is really no science to this. It is meaningless.The raw numbers tell you nothing -- you still know little about what kind of nonnumeric credentials those with a 3.1 who actually get in have. (I would suggest it takes more than just a good MCAT, but you can never know from this kind of program.) People do not get into med school on numerical stats alone. No schools admit people strictly based on some formulaic combination of GPA and MCAT (although a small handfull of schools reportedly reject folks below a certain combined score as a form of early screen). And wishing for a 36 does not make it so.

Sure it does... in my case at least :thumbup:
 
haha. blue, blue, blue, green, red, blue, blue, blue, green, blue, and then wham! big fat red -4.09 for wash u! not that i would live in st. louis for any school anyway . . .
 
jackieMD2007 said:
Everything on the internet is true. :D

I think a magic 8-ball is going to give you the same "reliable" results...
...will I get into Pritzker...shake...shake...shake..."maybe". Damn. I was really hoping for "yes." Good thing this 8-ball experiment is repeatable! :D

I think the person was asking a valid question.
 
xaelia said:
The HTML is a broken shell, and the sorting isn't totally working yet, but I threw together this little toy from a chunk of the mdapplicants.com data....

http://mdpotential.com/

If it doesn't work for you, don't expect it to work until I'm done with my surgery sub-I. ;)

Interesting idea. When you finish your sub-I, could you have the site rank the schools that applicants would be most competitive for?
 
deuist said:
Interesting idea. When you finish your sub-I, could you have the site rank the schools that applicants would be most competitive for?
Theoretically, sorting the columns by interview and acceptance percentages should imply competitiveness.
 
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