How many "high stat" applicants didn't get into T20's?

  • Thread starter Thread starter 977968
  • Start date Start date
Get Your Med School Admissions Questions Answered!
This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
9

977968

So I'm an Arizona resident. From what I understand, I'm a "high stat" applicant. I was complete everywhere super early on, but haven't really heard back from anyone yet. As I'm seeing more and more interviews go out, I'm curious how many people with my stats or higher actually just don't get into Top 20 med schools.
I have pretty solid EC's (I think) but to be honest my PS and secondaries were pretty rough. Idk what I was thinking when I wrote them. I haven't really been on this website, so I guess I thought my numbers would carry me, not realizing that there's a whole lot more that goes into these applications.
Members don't see this ad.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I know a few people with high stats & really good EC’s who didn’t get into a single med school.

Two of them were complete really early but didn’t get interview invited until December/January leading to late interview days.

It’s all a waiting game. I wish you the best of luck.
 
I don't think the answer to your question will answer your underlying worry.
But around 11% don't get in (at all) according to this: https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf
The AAMC doesn't recognize "top 20" as a subset, I'm afraid.
Many state schools tend to be quite forgiving, though. Give it time.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
BlueStripedPajamas said:
So I've got a 3.94 cGPA, 3.89sGPA, and 520 MCAT. From what I understand, that makes me a "high stat" applicant. I was complete everywhere super early on, but haven't really heard back from anyone yet. As I'm seeing more and more interviews go out, I'm curious how many people with my stats or higher actually just don't get into Top 20 med schools.
I have pretty solid EC's (I think) but to be honest my PS and secondaries were pretty rough. Idk what I was thinking when I wrote them. I haven't really been on this website, so I guess I thought my numbers would carry me, not realizing that there's a whole lot more that goes into these applications.
Click to expand...
@BlueStripedPajamas -- What everyone else has said so far (it's early and 9 out of 10 applicants with your stats ultimately are successful) is very true, so you should probably chill in July, and not start to worry until October-November in terms of IIs.

That said, I have been stressing about the 11% @gyngyn referred to ever since I started this journey (and that's making the huge assumption that I am fortunate enough to make it through with stats like yours). I just assumed that the unsuccessful 11% had terrible or too small school lists, or really bad applications, so I am curious --why do you think your PS and secondaries were rough, and how many and which schools did you apply to? The answers to those questions will ultimately reveal whether or not you are worrying about nothing.

Of course, bad interviews could also explain the 11%, but that's not an issue at this point in the process.
 
Last edited:
Sloppy applications can definitely sink otherwise fine applicants.

The primary and secondary applications are essentially a job application. If someone isn't going to put in the effort to make a presentable application, what kind of effort and quality can we expect when they've matriculated?
 
Moko said:
Sloppy applications can definitely sink otherwise fine applicants.
Click to expand...

If you were going to go into the specifics of what a sloppy application is, what would that be outside of having poorly written essays?
 

Here's the AAMC grid for the past two cycles.... Around 2100 matriculate each cycle with a 3.8+ 518+

I would say around ~1400 applicants matriculate with a 3.8+ 520+ by looking at this graph



There are 12 schools whose Median MCAT accepted is 520 (NYU, WASHU, Yale, Chicago, JHU, Penn, Vandy, Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Stanford, Mayo...)

Assuming 50% of the students who go to these schools score above 520+, and 50% score below

I take the class size of each school and divide by 2 to get a total of 719.... Not all of these 719 students will also have a GPA of 3.8+ but I would say 85% will... This leads us to a total of 612 matriculants of a 520+ 3.8 + into these 12 schools alone

612/1400 is around 44%

This doesn't consider the 10-15 other schools which could also be considered "Top 20"


Now for the 11% who don't get accepted anywhere... It can be a plethora of factors
1. Applying Late
2. Applying to few schools
3. Misguided School lists (Applying to OOS unfriendly schools or making a school list of research powerhouses with no research experience)
4. None to very little Clinical Exposure (Less than 100 hours)
5. International Applicants
6. Students with Red Flags (IAs, Bad LORs)
7. Completely half-assing Primaries and Secondaries
8. Blowing the interviews
9. Hail-marying a last second application to avoid taking a gap year


I would say this probably accounts for the vast majority of those 11%
 
Last edited:
LonelyBoi said:
Now for the 11% who don't get accepted anywhere... It can be a plethora of factors
1. Applying Late
2. Applying to few schools
3. Misguided School lists (Applying to OOS unfriendly schools or making a school list of research powerhouses with no research experience)
4. None to very little Clinical Exposure (Less than 100 hours)
5. International Applicants
6. Students with Red Flags (IAs, Bad LORs)
7. Completely half-assing Primaries and Secondaries
8. Blowing the interviews
9. Hail-marying a last second application to avoid taking a gap year


I would say this probably accounts for the vast majority of those 11%
Click to expand...
In other words, the same reasons everybody else doesn't get in (minus stats).
 
N=1 I’ll admit I had 3.92 cGPA / 3.87 sGPA / 519 MCAT and did not get into a T20. However I was invited to interview at one (WL) and got into 2 MD schools I feel I could be happy/successful at - which is to say aim high but don’t put all your eggs in one basket

That being said, I only had 2-2.5 years or so of “pre-med” under my belt when I applied and did not come from a particularly strong undergrad so either of those could have counted against me in some sense. People with similar stats who are willing to put more time in and/or get better ECs might have better luck at these schools
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Getting into a top 20 is a crap shoot. This is coming from someone who served on the admissions committee for a top 20 institution.

The reality is that these institutions have more than enough high-quality, high-number applicants. There are more of these applicants than there are spots for the incoming class. Consequently, these institutions can be EXTREMELY picky about who they choose to interview and accept, and often this can be perceived as "random" and arbitrary from the perspective of applicants (because it is). Maybe there's a specific activity that the committee is interested in or feels like is truly unique. Maybe you have a combination of life experiences that the committee feels will be valuable to the incoming class. Who knows.

"High stat" applicants will not get interviewed or accepted everywhere because there are more than enough of these applicants in the applicant pool. If a school wanted to, they could interview ONLY applicants with a 3.8+ GPA and 90+ percentile MCAT and fill their interview schedule. There has to be something more to your application than numbers. At my institution, in fact, extremely high numbers could actually be a bit of a detriment as so many of these applicants were "weird." If there was nothing else going on in the application beyond their numbers, it's very unlikely that they would get far in the process.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
KnightDoc said:
@BlueStripedPajamas -- What everyone else has said so far (it's early and 9 out of 10 applicants with your stats ultimately are successful) is very true, so you should probably chill in July, and not start to worry until October-November in terms of IIs.

That said, I have been stressing about the 11% @gyngyn referred to ever since I started this journey (and that's making the huge assumption that I am fortunate enough to make it through with stats like yours). I just assumed that the unsuccessful 11% had terrible or too small school lists, or really bad applications, so I am curious --why do you think your PS and secondaries were rough, and how many and which schools did you apply to? The answers to those questions will ultimately reveal whether or not you are worrying about nothing.

Of course, bad interviews could also explain the 11%, but that's not an issue at this point in the process.
Click to expand...
So, to clarify, I'm not terribly worried about getting in. I'm interested in attending a Top20 and really Top15 school, so that's what I'm more worried about. (I hope that doesn't make me sound arrogant haha, I've just obviously worked quite hard to get here)
As for why I'm not confident in my PS and secondaries, my PS I only started a weekish before submitting, and I rewrote the entire thing pretty much the day before with someone's input to incorporate research and now I feel that it doesn't flow as well; basically I didn't spend enough time on it, and I think it comes across as kind of blunt. For secondaries, many I just wrote and submitted without even proofreading because I cannot bring myself to do that; found some typos in them later (brought that on my self) and I also wrote these suuuper fast. I didn't spend more than a day on any one of them and was more concerned with sending them out super quick.
 
@BlueStripedPajamas, I feel you it's hella nerve-racking to complete early and see other people hear back. From what I can tell, however, is that quite a few high stat applicants (at least on SDN) are having this problem? Also, most T20s don't send interviews out until mid-august! Just keep waiting 🙂
 
BlueStripedPajamas said:
So, to clarify, I'm not terribly worried about getting in. I'm interested in attending a Top20 and really Top15 school, so that's what I'm more worried about. (I hope that doesn't make me sound arrogant haha, I've just obviously worked quite hard to get here)
As for why I'm not confident in my PS and secondaries, my PS I only started a weekish before submitting, and I rewrote the entire thing pretty much the day before with someone's input to incorporate research and now I feel that it doesn't flow as well; basically I didn't spend enough time on it, and I think it comes across as kind of blunt. For secondaries, many I just wrote and submitted without even proofreading because I cannot bring myself to do that; found some typos in them later (brought that on my self) and I also wrote these suuuper fast. I didn't spend more than a day on any one of them and was more concerned with sending them out super quick.
Click to expand...
Hopefully the quality of your essays will not reflect the amount of time and attention put in. The application is the first impression that schools will have of you. Applications are routinely thrown out at top-whatever schools for at times seemingly trivial reasons. Hopefully the schools you've applied to will overlook any potential blunders.

Also, ask yourself what specifically you hope to achieve at a top X school that cannot be done at a lower ranked school. These rankings are based heavily on name recognition and research funding, and do not necessarily correlate to the quality of training or experience that you'll get. Just my thoughts
 
BlueStripedPajamas said:
So, to clarify, I'm not terribly worried about getting in. I'm interested in attending a Top20 and really Top15 school, so that's what I'm more worried about. (I hope that doesn't make me sound arrogant haha, I've just obviously worked quite hard to get here)
As for why I'm not confident in my PS and secondaries, my PS I only started a weekish before submitting, and I rewrote the entire thing pretty much the day before with someone's input to incorporate research and now I feel that it doesn't flow as well; basically I didn't spend enough time on it, and I think it comes across as kind of blunt. For secondaries, many I just wrote and submitted without even proofreading because I cannot bring myself to do that; found some typos in them later (brought that on my self) and I also wrote these suuuper fast. I didn't spend more than a day on any one of them and was more concerned with sending them out super quick.
Click to expand...
Why does getting into a T20 matter? What do they have that a T40 doesn't have?
 
BlueStripedPajamas said:
So, to clarify, I'm not terribly worried about getting in. I'm interested in attending a Top20 and really Top15 school, so that's what I'm more worried about. (I hope that doesn't make me sound arrogant haha, I've just obviously worked quite hard to get here)
As for why I'm not confident in my PS and secondaries, my PS I only started a weekish before submitting, and I rewrote the entire thing pretty much the day before with someone's input to incorporate research and now I feel that it doesn't flow as well; basically I didn't spend enough time on it, and I think it comes across as kind of blunt. For secondaries, many I just wrote and submitted without even proofreading because I cannot bring myself to do that; found some typos in them later (brought that on my self) and I also wrote these suuuper fast. I didn't spend more than a day on any one of them and was more concerned with sending them out super quick.
Click to expand...
Note the last line in my sig lines. Makes screener's jobs a lot easier.
 
LabileEmotions said:
Your statement, "I'm not terribly worried about getting in" is worrisome to me.

If, in fact, you half-assed your essays, as you claim, you have clearly put yourself at risk for admission to top schools.

But, given your self-proclaimed high stats, you may be at risk at lower ranked schools, who may view you as a strong candidate for a top school and thus pass you over. They may never even read your essays. They may just assume you will get into a top school, and thus not come to theirs.

You could be in the 60% who don't get an acceptance this cycle. Your haste may have made waste.
Click to expand...
As pointed out by gonnif many times, arrogance is a common app killer for high stats candidates. It is also lethal for interviews as well.
 
EmbryonalCarcinoma said:
:eyebrow:
Click to expand...
LOL good point but I took my MCAT right before that and with that on top of finals and some personal things I was suuuuper burnt out.
Also to further clarify, it's not so much that I didn't put effort into my secondaries; I thought the topics and writing weren't terribly bad, I just had trouble proofreading and was told that the earlier you send them out the better, so I sacrificed speed for even better quality. That's why I'm worried.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
thedivider said:
@BlueStripedPajamas, I feel you it's hella nerve-racking to complete early and see other people hear back. From what I can tell, however, is that quite a few high stat applicants (at least on SDN) are having this problem? Also, most T20s don't send interviews out until mid-august! Just keep waiting 🙂
Click to expand...
Thanks a ton!
 
Moko said:
Hopefully the quality of your essays will not reflect the amount of time and attention put in. The application is the first impression that schools will have of you. Applications are routinely thrown out at top-whatever schools for at times seemingly trivial reasons. Hopefully the schools you've applied to will overlook any potential blunders.

Also, ask yourself what specifically you hope to achieve at a top X school that cannot be done at a lower ranked school. These rankings are based heavily on name recognition and research funding, and do not necessarily correlate to the quality of training or experience that you'll get. Just my thoughts
Click to expand...
That's actually a super useful response, thanks for putting it in perspective 🙂
 
LabileEmotions said:
Your statement, "I'm not terribly worried about getting in" is worrisome to me.

If, in fact, you half-assed your essays, as you claim, you have clearly put yourself at risk for admission to top schools.

But, given your self-proclaimed high stats, you may be at risk at lower ranked schools, who may view you as a strong candidate for a top school and thus pass you over. They may never even read your essays. They may just assume you will get into a top school, and thus not come to theirs.

You could be in the 60% who don't get an acceptance this cycle. Your haste may have made waste.
Click to expand...
That rhyme really got to me.
Haha when I say I'm not overly worried about getting in, I'm just saying that I'm confident in getting into my state school hopefully (bc I'll be putting in significantly more effort in their secondary and I'm well above their stats). Obviously, anything could happen, but that wasn't me being like arrogant, just comfortably confident lol.
My main issue was that I was told that these essays are not super important...I definitely should've looked elsewhere to check that advice, but that's why I gave these essays less emphasis in the process, not out of some unearned sense of my own special snowflakeness haha. Thanks for the input though, wish I'd heard it sooner!
 
Honestly, I think it's disappointing that everyone believes the 11% don't get in because of arrogance or lack of clinical experience or whatever other reasons we want to come up with. Med school has become more and more competitive where every other applicant has 520+ and a 3.9 GPA. I think one of the biggest issues is the new traffic rules mixed with rolling admissions. I know a handful of people who did not interview until late February/ early March despite being complete mid-July. And even then the SDN threads were dead as very few people were accepted after these dates vs. in November/December where every post was "I GOT INN!!!" this coupled with the little to no movement I think saw a lot of high stat applicants left without acceptances.
 
nurse2doc2367 said:
Honestly, I think it's disappointing that everyone believes the 11% don't get in because of arrogance or lack of clinical experience or whatever other reasons we want to come up with. Med school has become more and more competitive where every other applicant has 520+ and a 3.9 GPA. I think one of the biggest issues is the new traffic rules mixed with rolling admissions. I know a handful of people who did not interview until late February/ early March despite being complete mid-July. And even then the SDN threads were dead as very few people were accepted after these dates vs. in November/December where every post was "I GOT INN!!!" this coupled with the little to no movement I think saw a lot of high stat applicants left without acceptances.
Click to expand...
And what is less apparent is that high stats re-applicants are at a particular disadvantage.
 
gyngyn said:
And what is less apparent is that high stats re-applicants are at a particular disadvantage.
Click to expand...

Why are they at more of a disadvantage than reapplicants with more conventional, yet still competitive stats?
 
gyngyn said:
And what is less apparent is that high stats re-applicants are at a particular disadvantage.
Click to expand...
I would be curious to know what the percentage of high stats reapplicants is that don’t get in and what portion of the high stat applicant pool is reapplicant. If reapplicants face a much higher reject rate than first time applicants and the proportion of reapplicants among high stats is sufficient, could that mean a high proportion of those 11% that do get rejected are getting rejected for the second time? Then that would mean the first time acceptance rate for high stats is actually higher than it seems?
 
nurse2doc2367 said:
Honestly, I think it's disappointing that everyone believes the 11% don't get in because of arrogance or lack of clinical experience or whatever other reasons we want to come up with. Med school has become more and more competitive where every other applicant has 520+ and a 3.9 GPA. I think one of the biggest issues is the new traffic rules mixed with rolling admissions. I know a handful of people who did not interview until late February/ early March despite being complete mid-July. And even then the SDN threads were dead as very few people were accepted after these dates vs. in November/December where every post was "I GOT INN!!!" this coupled with the little to no movement I think saw a lot of high stat applicants left without acceptances.
Click to expand...
I can see that You've never interviewed people like this. We have.
 
nurse2doc2367 said:
Honestly, I think it's disappointing that everyone believes the 11% don't get in because of arrogance or lack of clinical experience or whatever other reasons we want to come up with.
Click to expand...

Because most of the time that's why they don't get in..... and a bad school list.
nurse2doc2367 said:
Med school has become more and more competitive where every other applicant has 520+ and a 3.9 GPA.
Click to expand...

No it hasn't.
MyOdyssey said:
Why are they at more of a disadvantage than reapplicants with more conventional, yet still competitive stats?
Click to expand...

Because schools will wonder why they didn't get in the first time. If someone has a 3.7/513 it's easy to say, looks like they just slipped through the cracks because this is competitive, whereas with 3.9/520 schools will wonder why other schools didn't want them.
 
nurse2doc2367 said:
Honestly, I think it's disappointing that everyone believes the 11% don't get in because of arrogance or lack of clinical experience or whatever other reasons we want to come up with. Med school has become more and more competitive where every other applicant has 520+ and a 3.9 GPA. I think one of the biggest issues is the new traffic rules mixed with rolling admissions. I know a handful of people who did not interview until late February/ early March despite being complete mid-July. And even then the SDN threads were dead as very few people were accepted after these dates vs. in November/December where every post was "I GOT INN!!!" this coupled with the little to no movement I think saw a lot of high stat applicants left without acceptances.
Click to expand...
The numbers do not seem to have changed significantly from past years. The traffic rules changed the pacing, but changed very little of the end results.
 
nurse2doc2367 said:
Honestly, I think it's disappointing that everyone believes the 11% don't get in because of arrogance or lack of clinical experience or whatever other reasons we want to come up with. Med school has become more and more competitive where every other applicant has 520+ and a 3.9 GPA. I think one of the biggest issues is the new traffic rules mixed with rolling admissions. I know a handful of people who did not interview until late February/ early March despite being complete mid-July. And even then the SDN threads were dead as very few people were accepted after these dates vs. in November/December where every post was "I GOT INN!!!" this coupled with the little to no movement I think saw a lot of high stat applicants left without acceptances.
Click to expand...
@nurse2doc2367 -- I hear what you're saying about the process becoming more and more competitive every year, and while it may seem (especially on SDN!🙂) that "every other applicant has 520+ and 3.9," the reality is that less than 5% of applicants have those stats (4.96% have 518+ and 3.8+), and 89% of them are successful, so something other than bad luck is going on with the 11% -- their lack of success is not due to "competition," because they are literally at the top of the statistical pool! It also has nothing to do with rolling admissions, since, again, something other than bad luck or bad timing is going on if someone complete in mid-July with those stats is not interviewed until February/March.
 
BlueStripedPajamas said:
So, to clarify, I'm not terribly worried about getting in. I'm interested in attending a Top20 and really Top15 school, so that's what I'm more worried about. (I hope that doesn't make me sound arrogant haha, I've just obviously worked quite hard to get here)
As for why I'm not confident in my PS and secondaries, my PS I only started a weekish before submitting, and I rewrote the entire thing pretty much the day before with someone's input to incorporate research and now I feel that it doesn't flow as well; basically I didn't spend enough time on it, and I think it comes across as kind of blunt. For secondaries, many I just wrote and submitted without even proofreading because I cannot bring myself to do that; found some typos in them later (brought that on my self) and I also wrote these suuuper fast. I didn't spend more than a day on any one of them and was more concerned with sending them out super quick.
Click to expand...

Everything you said here sounds terrible. Why would you work your butt off for years for a high GPA, MCAT, volunteering hours, shadowing, getting LoR, etc, all to wrap it in a turd and ship it out as fast as you can? I really don't think anyone should ever have the mentality of not worrying about getting in. I've seen posts from people with 4.0/528 who got into one school. You really never know, and you should do the best you can in every aspect and have as much humility as possible.
 
gyngyn said:
The differential Dx is pretty short and even more off-putting.
Click to expand...
@gyngyn - to follow up on @MemeLord's question, do you have any guestimate from your experience as to how many in the upper slice (518+; 3.8+) are reapplicants, and how much worse are their results as compared to the 11%? The answer might give some added confidence to first timers in that group. 🙂
 
Typeracer said:
Everything you said here sounds terrible. Why would you work your butt off for years for a high GPA, MCAT, volunteering hours, shadowing, getting LoR, etc, all to wrap it in a turd and ship it out as fast as you can? I really don't think anyone should ever have the mentality of not worrying about getting in. I've seen posts from people with 4.0/528 who got into one school. You really never know, and you should do the best you can in every aspect and have as much humility as possible.
Click to expand...
You obviously didn't read any of the other replies where I addressed this. I was given bad advice, both about how admissions work for your state school and how much these essays matter. In addition, I had significant personal issues at the time. I'm not an arrogant toerag, although I'm sure you'll be annoyed to hear that. It was the result of bad advice. I came here to hear if anyone might be able to give me an unbiased opinion of where I stand, not to be admonished for the third or fourth time in a single thread. Nothing in your reply was beneficial to me at this time to be perfectly honest. My genuine apologies if I misinterpreted any of that, but that was fairly insulting to read when I've already addressed parts of that and am not an arrogant jerk. Had that been the case I wouldn't have been able to post here for advice while admitting my mistake.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
BlueStripedPajamas said:
I came here to hear if anyone might be able to give me an unbiased opinion of where I stand
Click to expand...

You have a very good chance of not getting any acceptances. If your secondaries have a bunch of typos you have a good chance of getting zero interviews.

That is the brutal reality.
 
BlueStripedPajamas said:
You obviously didn't read any of the other replies where I addressed this. I was given bad advice, both about how admissions work for your state school and how much these essays matter. In addition, I had significant personal issues at the time. I'm not an arrogant toerag, although I'm sure you'll be annoyed to hear that. It was the result of bad advice. I came here to hear if anyone might be able to give me an unbiased opinion of where I stand, not to be admonished for the third of fourth time in a single thread. Nothing in your reply was beneficial to me at this time to be perfectly honest. My genuine apologies if I misinterpreted any of that, but that was fairly insulting to read when I've already addressed parts of that and am not an arrogant jerk. Had that been the case I wouldn't have been able to post here for advice while admitting my mistake.
Click to expand...

Who gave you this advice? I feel for you.

I was given bad advice in high school by a high school advisor that hurt my college admissions process so I feel for you.
 
AnatomyGrey12 said:
You have a very good chance of not getting any acceptances. If your secondaries have a bunch of typos you have a good chance of getting zero interviews.

That is the brutal reality.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the feedback, I do appreciate it. Thankfully, it was a one letter typo in one of my secondaries. I have not found any other typos in any other secondaries thankfully! I glanced over some of my essays today, and I honestly feel fairly good about their quality. It's not that they're bad by any means, nor were they "half-assed" as one person put it- I just think I could've made them even better if I'd been aware that 1) they are very important, moreso than was admitted to me and 2) the speed with which you submit is not the determining factor in an II
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

D
Possible to get into t20 mdphd without pubs?
Replies
10
Views
2K
Med Ed
Med Ed
smc285
Chances of Getting Into a T20 Medical School
Replies
5
Views
2K
wysdoc
wysdoc
D
How many high stat applicants do NOT get into any T20s?
2
Replies
76
Views
9K
DZ2106
D
S
Can LPR gratuated abroad get into medschool?
Replies
14
Views
629
AJS59
AJS59
L
  • Locked
What does it take to get into Stanford BRUH
Replies
3
Views
813
chilly_md
chilly_md
Top