How do you make a "school list" ?

[texas aggie]

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I bought the MSAR but I'm a bit confused as to how I should utilize it to make my school list. A few questions I have...

1) How can you tell whether a school is OOS friendly?
2) When looking at the GPA and MCAT, how should your numbers match up? (If I have a 3.71, should I not apply to a school with a 3.88 median? How close does my MCAT have to be within the median?)

Thanks for any help guys...

 

[Mt Kilimanjaro]

.

 

[PanRoasted]

1.) Go to matriculant demographics. If an overwhelmingly large number of matriculants are in state, the school is an OOS-unfriendly school. Most schools will have at least a small bias for in-state students.

2.) You should aim mostly for schools where your MCAT and GPA line up with the school's median MCAT and GPA. Your reaches and "safeties" will be dictated by whether you fall in the 75th+ or 25th- percentile for either of these.

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

1.) Go to matriculant demographics. If an overwhelmingly large number of matriculants are in state, the school is an OOS-unfriendly school. Most schools will have at least a small bias for in-state students.

2.) You should aim mostly for schools where your MCAT and GPA line up with the school's median MCAT and GPA. Your reaches and "safeties" will be dictated by whether you fall in the 75th+ or 25th- percentile for either of these.

Where would you get that kind of information? The MSAR only lists 10th and 90th percentiles, and most schools don't provide stats beyond average GPA, average MCAT, and average number of applicants accepted.

 

[Lucky Louie]

Sometimes these things are a starting point. You can also go to the school sites themselves. It does take a lot of digging.


This was found on another site, where someone wrote in about UVm's OOS acceptance rate:

UVM

OOS applicants: 5328
OOS accepted: 192
OOS acceptance rate: 3.6%


And this is from USN&WR: 10 medical schools with the lowest acceptance rates for fall 2012.

Medical school (name) (state) OOS Applicants / OOS Acceptances / OOS Acceptance rate
George Washington University (DC) 14,700 316 2.1%
Mayo Medical School (MN) 4,081 85 2.1%
Stanford University (CA) 6,810 189 2.8%
Wake Forest University (NC) 8,161 256 3.1%
Brown University (Alpert) (RI) 6,782 228 3.4%
Georgetown University (DC) 11,733 398 3.4%
Harvard University (MA) 5,804 226 3.9%
University of California—SF 6,926 273 3.9%
Columbia University (NY) 7,466 309 4.1%
University of California—LA (Geffen) 6,771 279 4.1%

 

[gyngyn]

Where would you get that kind of information? The MSAR only lists 10th and 90th percentiles, and most schools don't provide stats beyond average GPA, average MCAT, and average number of applicants accepted.

Go to selection factors and acceptance information.

 

[Dingo Mango]

And this is from USN&WR: 10 medical schools with the lowest acceptance rates for fall 2012.

That would be a silly thing to pay attention to.

All medical schools have low acceptance rates...

 

[Dingo Mango]

I bought the MSAR but I'm a bit confused as to how I should utilize it to make my school list. A few questions I have...

1) How can you tell whether a school is OOS friendly?
2) When looking at the GPA and MCAT, how should your numbers match up? (If I have a 3.71, should I not apply to a school with a 3.88 median? How close does my MCAT have to be within the median?)

Thanks for any help guys...

Do you have online MSAR? because they have the percentage OOS applied/interviewed and that will show you whether they are OOS friendly.

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

Go to selection factors and acceptance information.

Yeah, in my version of the online MSAR it gives the 10th and 90th percentiles when you go to that tab unless I'm missing something obvious.

 

[pyrrion89]

Go to MSAR, go to the final tab on the bottom. A table there says how many OOS seats they have and how many OOS applied. Divide those two figures and multiply by 100% to get the OOS acceptance percentage.

 

[csx]

Yeah, in my version of the online MSAR it gives the 10th and 90th percentiles when you go to that tab unless I'm missing something obvious.

this

 

[Escape_Goat]

Made a spreadsheet of schools that I could see myself attending. In-state schools are automatically applied to. I then calculated OOS interview and acceptance rates for each of the other schools. If the rates for each school exceeded a predetermined threshold and my GPA and MCAT were within a standard deviation of the mean, I would add that school to the short-list. From that short-list, I culled some schools again based on price/location/rotation sites.

Simple.

 

[PanRoasted]

Where would you get that kind of information? The MSAR only lists 10th and 90th percentiles, and most schools don't provide stats beyond average GPA, average MCAT, and average number of applicants accepted.

They give you 10%, median, and 90%. You can generally guess the 25% and 75%ile from there.

I noticed from another thread that you're applying MD/PhD. I would field some application questions to that forum, as I know the GPA/MCAT are weighted a bit differently for MSTP programs, with a high MCAT being much more desirable than high GPA.