avg mcat and gpa

[docmemi]

---

Members do not see this ad.

just wanted to know people's thoughts about the avg gpa and mcat reported by schools. some friends of mine say that the avg means nothing since those below are usually urm's. i strongly disagree. if someone is reasonably below avg and not urm, should they still have hope. this is of course assuming only numbers matter for the moment. the question: what exactly do the avg mean, should we even put any meaning to them, does it hold for all racial/ethnic groups.... i am not trying to open a can of worms hear with mentioning the urm thing; that is not even the direction im going for. i am strictly talking about the avg and how we should use them to gage our chances. please do not blast off on stereotypes, prejudices, and other related topics.

thanks for the thoughts.

 

[TTSD]

Here..

Check your pulse
Is it beating?
Do you have a desire?
Are you reasonably intelligent?
Willing to put in a lot of work?
No terminal illness?

Then whether it takes one year or ten.. you WILL get in. Screw statistics. Everyone has a different set of circumstances, and if yours is reasonable enough to show you have the brains and committment, there will be an ad comm somewhere that is sympathetic.

 

[Gleevec]

Averages are just that, averages. They are for a whole body of applicants, URM, ORM, and otherwise. In general I would assume there is a +/- 3 point MCAT range for most schools, and a +/2 0.3 GPA range. Of course this is just a guess, I have no standard deviation or median data to support it.

So just use the average as another tool in determining what schools to apply to. But think of it more as a range (of which the bounds are unknown) rather than an exact science.

Originally posted by trojan2004
just wanted to know people's thoughts about the avg gpa and mcat reported by schools. some friends of mine say that the avg means nothing since those below are usually urm's. i strongly disagree. if someone is reasonably below avg and not urm, should they still have hope. this is of course assuming only numbers matter for the moment. the question: what exactly do the avg mean, should we even put any meaning to them, does it hold for all racial/ethnic groups.... i am not trying to open a can of worms hear with mentioning the urm thing; that is not even the direction im going for. i am strictly talking about the avg and how we should use them to gage our chances. please do not blast off on stereotypes, prejudices, and other related topics.

thanks for the thoughts.

 

[edfig99]

just ask the schools what the RANGE of incoming GPAs and MCATs is (or is it are? 😉 ) that's much more useful info than an average. Averages are VERY easily skewed, and are notoriously NOT HELPFUL.

 

[zinjanthropus]

i think you can think about percentile distributions. In other words, there are a whole bunch of ways to come up with an average of 30 for the entire class. For example, you could take only people with 30s, or you could take an equal number of people with 29 and 31. If you break this second option down a bit you can probably start to see where averages might come from.

For example, if you had a 100 person class and you wanted the average to be a 30, then 75 of students might have a 32, 20% might have a 28, and 5% might have a 24. That comes out to right about 30 but the majority of the students will have an above average score.

I would imagine the entire admissions process works like this. The committe has some idea of how many people of type X they would like to have and then set out to fill a class. Type X can of coure come from a number of different variable (i.e. maybe they also want to have a particular age breakdown, GPA breakdown, race breakdown, sex breakdown, etc.)


Therefore, an applicant will have a better chance of getting into that school with a score higher then the reported mean because there are probably more spaces for students with scores higher then the reported mean.

In addition, most schools will not provide the standard distribution for the MCAT scores. This would be a much more telling test statistic because you could get an idea about the range of those scores and how they cluster about the mean. However, www.aamc.org at least reports the standard deviation for matriculant scores by state, so that's some help.

 

[docmemi]

mostly none will tell you the range, at least thats been my expereince.

does anyone know the usual SD of the avg's.
also does anyone know how mcat and gpa compensate for one another, if they do at all.
thanks.

 

[bnichols0330]

I don't have any mathematical advice for you. However, I am not a urm, have a slightly above average gpa, and 5 points below average MCAT for my respective school. I did very well in my interviews, and was accepted off the waitlist. I hope this gives you a little insight adn helps you out. Good luck.

 

[Gleevec]

Originally posted by trojan2004
mostly none will tell you the range, at least thats been my expereince.

does anyone know the usual SD of the avg's.
also does anyone know how mcat and gpa compensate for one another, if they do at all.
thanks.

I dont think any school will tell you anything more about their class's stats other than their overall avg GPA and MCAT. They wont tell you SDs or ranges or anything.

MCAT and GPA dont really compensate for each other. A high MCAT confirms a high GPA or signals that the curriculum was rigorous, while a lower MCAT indicates that a high GPA might be due to ease of courses or institution.

They look at both pretty much is the answer. The MCAT gives adcoms a standardized measure of ability, while GPA tells adcoms your ability to sustain work, or so it seems at least to me.

Just my .02

 

[Fizz]

I had a below average GPA, but a good MCAT and got tons of interviews and a few acceptances. I was really worried about the averages when I started this process because my science GPA was so below average, but it ended up being ok. : )

 

[....]

If your concerned about what a white person's averges would be in general the AAMC posts average GPA/MCAT for matriculants by race also.

The gpa i THINK was 3.7 and MCAT of 30....but thats from distant memory..check it out.