Efle's MCAT 2015 to Old MCAT Percentile Comparison/Conversion Tables

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Cotterpin said:
I think you're being a huge jerk here.
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Please stop. Just stop. Act mature for once and take responsibility for your actions.

And as creepy as it is that you went through my post history, you didn't seem to pick up on the fact that I'm a woman.
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1) It's a public forum
2) I stopped as soon as I found your MCAT posts. I have better things to do with my time than read the rest of your posts.

I'm bailing out of here because I have a lot of work that needs to be taken care of.
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Oh my god it looks like COTTERPIN IS THE LAST MAN* STANDING

*claims to be a woman, but as we all know: the internet is where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents
 
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I do love when someone states she's going to stop arguing but then sticks around to continue arguing.
 
efle said:
Oh my god it looks like COTTERPIN IS THE LAST MAN* STANDING

*claims to be a woman, but as we all know: the internet is where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents
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Actually, all the children on the Internet are Chris Hansen from Dateline MSNBC. :p
 
Mm... given the possibility that CARS might have been the easiest section for April testers (given AAMC FL scores), maybe they just upped the standards for getting into a certain percentile relative to the other sections to keep the distribution near the center. In other words, easy test = harsher scoring .

So I don't think it has to do with your verbal ability, and more to do with the difficulty of the test. That's why we have +/- , but people don't seem to give a flying pancake about that.
 
( Not sure if this has been discuss already) Looking at the conversion chart, it seems like some schools are more lenient when it comes to MCAT2015. For example Emory states that a person should have a 27 pre-MCAT2015 score or a 500 MCAT2015 score to receive a secondary. According to the chart 500 is a 25. I'm guessing it is due to the lack of practice material.
 
NothingWasTheSame said:
( Not sure if this has been discuss already) Looking at the conversion chart, it seems like some schools are more lenient when it comes to MCAT2015. For example Emory states that a person should have a 27 pre-MCAT2015 score or a 500 MCAT2015 score to receive a secondary. According to the chart 500 is a 25. I'm guessing it is due to the lack of practice material.
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Yes they are being a slight bit more lax with the new test requirement, probably out of a desire to err on the loose side when dealing with a somewhat unknown test.

In reality nether a 500 nor 27 is anywhere approaching competative for a place like Emory unless you are a very atypical applicant...so I doubt this is going to make or break anybody's cycle results
 
Aww I missed the MCAT argument. Did it really devolve to a discussion on absolute vs relative truth? Lol.
 
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Lawper said:
Okay that is important especially if AAMC posted the score scale for June-August
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What do you mean "the score scale for June-August"? Isn't it the same?
 
Lawper said:
The percentiles efle used were for April to May. That should be fine but it looks a little small, so it is best strengthened with more data for June to August if the AAMC released it
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They haven't released more data and it doesn't seem like they're going to. My score from July still matches up with the April-May chart they released.
 
Ill try to update this chart with the new data whenever it comes out (end of year maybe?)

This thread is one of the top hits when you google "new mcat old mcat percentile" and variations on that, so hopefully it will be easily found by the many anxious test takers itching to compare their performance to med school ranges
 
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efle said:
Ill try to update this chart with the new data whenever it comes out (end of year maybe?)

This thread is one of the top hits when you google "new mcat old mcat percentile" and variations on that, so hopefully it will be easily found by the many anxious test takers itching to compare their performance to med school ranges
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It beat out Kaplan and lost to AAMC. Impressive.

Thread also appeared on first page when I google "efle", "old mcat to new mcat", and "mcat percentiles"
 
@efle @WedgeDawg and anyone else interested

I added a calculator for converting new MCAT scores to old scores, so feel free to take a look. Some points:

1. I didn't bother with the histograms in comparing with the upper extremes. It's meaningless because we are suddenly jumping from 41 for 526/527 to 45 to 528. So what I did was setting 522 = 39 and moving incrementally from there. Let's not tear our hair apart by dissecting the upper 99th percentiles.

2. I didn't add the subsection conversions. There is no reason for it. First, there isn't a conversion for the psych/soc section. Second, the conversions are skewed to the ends. Third, all that matters for subsection scores is that you are above the critical values, which are found by dividing the median (50th percentile) by the number of sections. Here it's 500/4 or 125, so make sure your subsection scores are > 125. Anywhere less warrants a retake because your subsection score falls below <10th percentile.

3. I didn't use any statistical models for exact comparisons. It's just a method of procedural programming using conditional statements, since it's the fastest way to calculate conversions. Once more info is out, I can very easily change a couple of values to make it updated.

4. The calculator ensures the validity of LizzyM scores by adding the 10*GPA term to the calculated old MCAT scores. Unless for some reason, the demand of shortcut formulas are necessary (which is taken care of anyways), the conventional score works effectively.

5. I rounded the new scores to the old scores based on the closest bins found in the tables. So it wasn't unnecessarily rounding down/rounding up.

Let me know if you run into any problems, questions, concerns etc. Hope you find this useful!
 
Lawper said:
1. I didn't bother with the histograms in comparing with the upper extremes. It's meaningless because we are suddenly jumping from 41 for 526/527 to 45 to 528. So what I did was setting 522 = 39 and moving incrementally from there. Let's not tear our hair apart by dissecting the upper 99th percentiles.
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Please explain. I haven't really been following along.

What do the 8 520+ scores correlate to now?
 
Uh but did you say 526/527 is equivalent to 41 or is that referring to something else. Sorry I'm confused
 
AirplaneFruit said:
Uh but did you say 526/527 is equivalent to 41 or is that referring to something else. Sorry I'm confused
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After a certain point, the distinction becomes effectively meaningless from a statistical standpoint, so instead of arguing about whether a 524 is a 41 or a 43, he just set a linear scale for any scores in the 99th percentile.
 
Reviving an old thread here lol, but I'm confused on something. I'm just curious as to why the AAMC decided to give med schools the percentile scale that it did. Let me explain. I've seen 34's be as low as 90-91 percentiles on some old MCAT administrations. Yet, on the scale the AAMC decides to give med schools so that they can make sense of the new MCAT, a 34 is a whopping 94 percentile (this is the highest I've seen). Shouldn't they have given med schools a more "lenient" curve? After all, wasn't one of the reasons for a new MCAT that scores were getting clumped up at the higher ends of the scale? If so, how does it make sense to use this scale from the last administration were a 34 is ALREADY in the 94th percentile (I.e. The high ends of the scale are going to be clumped vs when a 34 is, say a 91 percentile)?
 
phosphoenol said:
Reviving an old thread here lol, but I'm confused on something. I'm just curious as to why the AAMC decided to give med schools the percentile scale that it did. Let me explain. I've seen 34's be as low as 90-91 percentiles on some old MCAT administrations. Yet, on the scale the AAMC decides to give med schools so that they can make sense of the new MCAT, a 34 is a whopping 94 percentile (this is the highest I've seen). Shouldn't they have given med schools a more "lenient" curve? After all, wasn't one of the reasons for a new MCAT that scores were getting clumped up at the higher ends of the scale? If so, how does it make sense to use this scale from the last administration were a 34 is ALREADY in the 94th percentile (I.e. The high ends of the scale are going to be clumped vs when a 34 is, say a 91 percentile)?
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I'm not sure I follow. How can percentile scores ever be more or less lenient?
 
I'm actually surprised the new data isn't already out, since the last 2015 administration scores were sent out like a month ago
 
efle said:
I'm not sure I follow. How can percentile scores ever be more or less lenient?
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I knew that was gonna happen, I had a hard time explaining that. Let me retry. I know at the end of the day a percentile is a percentile is a percentile. But take a hypothetical example. Assume a 508 is 77th percentile on the new exam, and a 30 fluctuates between 76 and 83 percentile on the old exam (this all hypothetical, don't take these numbers as fact). Now, if AAMC would have given med schools the scale where a 30 was a 76th percentile, the 508 would be the the equivalent of a 30. However, if the AAMC gives schools the scale where a 30 is an 83, then the 508 wouldn't be a 30 anymore, now would it? Shouldn't they have given med schools a scale where the percentiles for a certain score aren't so high as the they were in the last MCAT administration? After all, one reason for the new test is so that the scores at the higher end of the scale aren't so clumped up.
 
They did do this a little bit! The top fifth used to be distributed across essentially 10 score bins (30-38 each individually, and 39+). Now it is distributed across essentially 13 score bins (509-518 each individually, 519-20, 521-22, and 523+). I agree they could've spread it out even more though, maybe having the span from middle to highest go across ~20 score bins.

And of course to really max things out they could've just switched to a straightforward report of percentile, values 1-100, rather than doing any kind of conversion to these arbitrary scales at all.
 
efle said:
They did do this a little bit! The top fifth used to be distributed across essentially 10 score bins (30-38 each individually, and 39+). Now it is distributed across essentially 13 score bins (509-518 each individually, 519-20, 521-22, and 523+). I agree they could've spread it out even more though, maybe having the span from middle to highest go across ~20 score bins.

And of course to really max things out they could've just switched to a straightforward report of percentile, values 1-100, rather than doing any kind of conversion to these arbitrary scales at all.
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It's difficult to analyze subsection scores with percentiles though. That and it's no longer additive (you can't add the subsection percentiles to get the overall percentile; it'd be a slightly complicated weighted average).
 
Guess I'm not the only one that thinks using the last MCAT administrations is a bit weird lol. That's AAMC logic for you though o_O. I hope adcoms will be understanding of this, and not just view the 508 in my example above as a sub 30 score (but view it as a solid 30 - 31). I mean, after all, what matters is the percentile, But I feel that the old mcat scores are so ingrained in us that a lot of people (adcoms included) will judge you based on what the equivalent old mcat score would be rather than percentile, since everyone's more familiar with the old scale. You can't compare the "wow-factor" between saying you got a 30 and saying you got a 28-29, for example. And I feel the fact that they used this high scale just sets you up to have a lower equivalent score on the old test.
 
Why is it difficult to analyze subsections as percentiles?

If you treat percentiles equivalently across the sections, it is extremely straightforward to find overall percentiles; total up each subsection percentile (out of 400 percentile points now), rank all test takers in order by this value, now you have an easy way to make composite percentile ranks. I'd bet a good amount this is how they do it now!
 
efle said:
Why is it difficult to analyze subsections as percentiles?

If you treat percentiles equivalently across the sections, it is extremely straightforward to find overall percentiles; total up each subsection percentile (out of 400 percentile points now), rank all test takers in order by this value, now you have an easy way to make composite percentile ranks. I'd bet a good amount this is how they do it now!
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Because you can't readily correspond percent correct to the percentile. It's nonlinear that plateaus in the end.

And i thought we were rating the overall composite out of 100 so we'd just divide the total of subsection percentiles by 4. But that's not even because the way the overall percentiles are distributed is different from distribution of subsection percentiles, even when these differences may be minimal
 
Going to bump this thread because AAMC has updated their score percentiles for April 2016 through the next year @efle take a look

https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fast...repercentileranks_and_bar_chartsv2_merged.pdf

Nothing groundbreaking at all, but basically this is a bit more generous to people taking the test in the next year. 505 is the new 29, 513 is a 33 now, 510 is a borderline 31-32, 507 is the new 30, 516 the new 35 etc.

Question is what should people who took the MCAT in 2015 who are applying this year use as their score conversion, not that it really matters much at all. I doubt schools will use two separate scoring scales for 2015 test takers and 2016.

Edit: The biggest thing I noticed was for those lower end borderline CARs scores. They made 124 38th-49th percentile which almost perfectly corresponds to 8 on the verbal on the old scale.
 
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GrapesofRath said:
Going to bump this thread because AAMC has updated their score percentiles for April 2016 through the next year @efle take a look

https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fast...repercentileranks_and_bar_chartsv2_merged.pdf

Nothing groundbreaking at all, but basically this is a bit more generous to people taking the test in the next year. 505 is the new 29, 513 is a 33 now, 510 is a borderline 31-32, 507 is the new 30, 516 the new 35 etc.

Question is what should people who took the MCAT in 2015 who are applying this year use as their score conversion, not that it really matters much at all. I doubt schools will use two separate scoring scales for 2015 test takers and 2016.
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I imagine the official one will become the gold standard. That being said, I'm a 100% sure at least one adcom in this country referenced efle's chart out of convenience (easily googled, accurate as to the reported percentiles).

@efle 's original chart was basically right on the money though.
 
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Thanks Grapes, I'll update shortly.

I really dislike that they start at 1st percentile and go to 100th - why fill the natural place to begin looking with all the values too low for exact percentile to be meaningful? Maybe they have some psychological reasoning, helps your esteem to climb up the percentiles as you scan towards your score instead of descending to it....
 
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efle said:
Thanks Grapes, I'll update shortly.

I really dislike that they start at 1st percentile and go to 100th - why fill the natural place to begin looking with all the values too low for exact percentile to be meaningful? Maybe they have some psychological reasoning, helps your esteem to climb up the percentiles as you scan towards your score instead of descending to it....
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Who knew the AAMC gods were so merciful
 
Interestingly, a lot of scores climbed a bit, only a few at the bottom dropping. Changes, for those curious, were:

Gain 3 percentile: 504, 502
Gain 2 percentile: 509-505, 503, 501-496
Gain 1 percentile: 515-510, 495-491, 488, 486
Drop 1 percentile: 482-479, 475
 
GrapesofRath said:
Going to bump this thread because AAMC has updated their score percentiles for April 2016 through the next year @efle take a look

https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fast...repercentileranks_and_bar_chartsv2_merged.pdf

Nothing groundbreaking at all, but basically this is a bit more generous to people taking the test in the next year. 505 is the new 29, 513 is a 33 now, 510 is a borderline 31-32, 507 is the new 30, 516 the new 35 etc.

Question is what should people who took the MCAT in 2015 who are applying this year use as their score conversion, not that it really matters much at all. I doubt schools will use two separate scoring scales for 2015 test takers and 2016.

Edit: The biggest thing I noticed was for those lower end borderline CARs scores. They made 124 38th-49th percentile which almost perfectly corresponds to 8 on the verbal on the old scale.
Click to expand...

Ah, vindication after arguing for 2 weeks 9 months ago that a 507 is a 30! ;)
 
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Ok percentiles are fine, but where can I find data on average raw scale -> scaled score conversions? I hate how AAMC is being like North Korea and not telling anyone anything.
 
salemstein said:
Ok percentiles are fine, but where can I find data on average raw scale -> scaled score conversions? I hate how AAMC is being like North Korea and not telling anyone anything.
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Unfortunately the raw -> scaled data is not available for MCAT2015 the way it used to be with old practice exams. I'm sure they keep it secret to avoid the kind of comparisons I'd want to do with the info. I plotted the rough conversion curves for the old test but it's tough to predict with, since on the new test you might be able to get a lot more questions right/wrong for the same percentile.
 
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