Does your state of residence really matter to private schools

[modemduck]

This site uses an algorythm to tell you what schools you should apply to.

Medical School Finder

Although it is nice to get advice on where to go, I think for the most part it is misleading. It just uses your GPA and MCAT to tell you how you compare to a schools avg, when in actuality this is fairly obvious from US News and World Reports Rankings. It also doesn't consider the fact that many of the applicants who decrease the averages for the school are URMs. Thus if you are not a URM you are not as competitive, and it is listing perhaps too difficult of schools.

One thing that is unique about it however, is the ability to test your competitiveness to a particular school from your state of residence; does anyone know where this data is coming from?? Also does anyone know if there are seperate stats for URM vs non-URM acceptance for each school. If so could you let me know... Thx

og,
modemduck

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[Jamier2]

Well, I don't know how much the lower averages of URM's have affected it, but the list it gave me was pretty surprising. Here are some of the more outstanding schools it suggested for me:

Competitive:
Columbia
UCSF
Case Western
Mayo
WVU
Harvard
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins
Nebraska (good, I'm applying there)
Baylor
Duke
Dartmouth
Cornell
UCLA
USC
Mt. Sinai
Vanderbilt
Tufts
Yale
Wake Forest
Stanford
Brown
Creighton

I thought most of these schools were out of reach, but I may rethink my application to some schools. I don't think this site is entirely reliable, but who knows?

My stats were 11, 11, 10 MCAT, 3.5 GPA, Kentucky resident. Anybody care to comment?

 

[Hopkins2010]

I dont think this website uses state residency as enough of a factor in determining your competitive status.

For me personally, several of the schools it said I would be very competitive for admissions were public med schools outside of my home state.

I looked at their number crunching, and my MCAT score was able to more than offset my state residency factor (I'm an Oklahoma resident).

It said that I would be competitive at the following:

Univ. Oklahoma
Univ. Nebraska
Univ. Virginia
Univ. Washington
Wright State
Univ. California at San Fran
Mayo
Harvard
Georgetown
Columbia
Stanford
W. Virginia
Univ. Maryland Baltimore
Baylor
Duke
Univ. of Kentucky
UT Southwestern
Vanderbilt
Yale
Wake Forest
Creighton
Michigan St

For the record, my MCAT is Bio: 9, VR: 11, PS: 11 with GPA of 3.8

I know that i'm not competitive for UCSF, Mayo, or Harvard as well as the other big private schools so that tells me this website is flawed.

Also, I seriously doubt that i'm competitive for Univ. Nebraska, Virginia, Kentucky or Washington simply becuase of my state residency. But in spite of that, the website says that my MCAT is more than enough to make up the difference for state residency. I just dont buy that.

 

[Smoke This]

That site is crap!

I tried it and found that it has a very limited value. For example, I put in my MCAT, GPA, and state of residence, and it concluded that I'm "very competitive" at University of Washington, most all the UCs, Indiana University, and so on. The problem: I am a resident of none of these states, and I know for a fact that getting in to any of them is an uphill battle, not even close to "very competitive". How likely is it that a nonresident of California would get an interview at UCI, for example? If I remember correctly from the MSAR, they accepted a whopping 0 nonresidents (and may not even have interviewed any).

The real clincher, though, is their atrocious spelling. How reputable can a site be that spells "algorithm" like some half-assed takeoff on Old English and spells "guarantee" with G-A-U?

 

[elle]

That site is interesting, but I'm not sure how realistic it is. I'm in the weird (but nice) situation of having higher scores than I expected, but now I am not sure what schools to apply to. I have about 10 schools that I definitely want to apply to, which are in my home state and in a couple of neighboring states. Other than that, I am not sure what to do... My MCAT scores were a 33S, and my GPA is around 3.65. According to that webpage, there are lots of schools to apply to, but so many of them are states schools.

The school's that I would love to also apply to are Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and Tulane. I guess my score's for a few of those are okay, but I just feel like those are such good schools, that applying to them is throwing my money away. Does anyone else feel this way? I sort of feel like I should apply mostly to school's with lower MCAT averages as possible, since I'm not someone with an amazing application. So I am pretty stuck about what to do -- anyone in a similar situation? It could be just me.

On a sidenote, do you think people's scores are ever mistyped or in some other way messed up? I had a difficult month in April, and was not expecting anything good from that month... so I am still a little skeptical that that test was fine.

Another side note (sorry), does anyone know if it matters if you turn in your application a few days or a week late? I know I'm probably not going to be ready unless I rush my personal statement, but I wouldn't want to mess things up by submitting my application later than most people.

Sorry for all the off-topic questions, and thanks for anyone's opinions!

 

[Al Dente]

I think that you have a shot at most of those schools that you mentioned. Your MCAT is good, your GPA is good, and you're probably more competitive than you think. What do you have to lose? As for me, I think $30 per school is a reasonable wager, at least for a first look at my app. I'm going to apply to about 30 schools because I feel that the application process is a crapshoot. Who knows, your safety schools might not like you as much as you think and perhaps some of your "reach" schools may be quite interested in you. It shouldn't matter if you turn in your app a few days late, just don't dither until October or something.

 

[lilycat]

On the original question, it depends on the private school -- a few (Baylor automatically comes to mind) do give significant preference to in-state residents.

I have to say I'm very, very skeptical of the site mentioned in the original post -- I tried it out, and got an absurdly long list of schools I was "competitive" for -- I applied to several of those schools and didn't even get an interview, and others were state schools that accept few, if any, out-of-state students. Personally, I think you are much better off looking at a copy of the MSAR and judging for yourself where you may be competitive based on residency factors, ave. GPA and ave. MCAT.

To address some of elle's questions, I think you have a very good shot at the schools you mentioned. In general, I would advise all applicants to apply to a good range of schools -- The Cowboy put it extremely well -- your "safeties" may not work out like you expected, while your "reaches" may work out exceptionally well. That was my case personally -- the schools I expected to interview at, I never heard from; those that I just applied to for the hell of it actually interviewed me. The process can be sort of surprising. Good luck to all of you, and feel free to continue asking more questions!

Oh, and as for when to turn your AMCAS in, it's okay to be a little late. Last year, the first day to submit was June 1, and I think I submitted mine on June 9th or 10th, which was still considered early. I think it's generally a good idea to get your application in within the first month that AMCAS accepts them -- you want to try and avoid September and October submissions if possible. However, this year is kind of strange, so I don't think anyone knows how it might turn out...