How many LizzyM points are these worth?

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lifesajoke

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Curious as to how much you guys think these experiences would be worth in terms of LizzyM points? These would be experiences/qualifications that are "above average"...

General
- URM
- Financially very disadvantaged <20K/yr household
- military service

Awards
- Rhodes
- Marshall
- Fulbright
- Soros

Other
- Founder of a small company
- 1st author paper in a PubMed Indexed Journal
- 1st author paper in Nat/Sci/Cell/NEJM/etc
- peacecorp/TFA
- Clinical jobs such as CNA, EMT, Scribe
 
That's tough to say because numbers such as the MCAT and GPA which the 'LizzyM' score are predicated on are much more concrete. However EC's are tough to distinguish because every school is looking for something different. Some schools want clinical work as a forefront, some schools want research, and some want a history of compassion for the undeserved.
 
LizzyM is only used to get a general outlook on comparing which schools one would be competitive applying to. Therefore, activities never play a role in the score. Use @WedgeDawg 's system if you want to play around a bit with some different factors.

LizzyM = GPA*10 + MCAT

It seems to work pretty well.
 
I think if you are Rhodes then you are basically a shoe-in for all the top schools* (and I'm including business and law in there too) and would get auto-interviewed at many highly selective employers for their entry-level jobs (e.g., Goldman Sachs IB analyst, MBB consulting analyst/associate, etc.)

*Barring something like a criminal conviction, IA, etc.
 
If what you just listed is truly you, barring an abysmal MCAT/GPA/blatant serial killer appearance, you're going to have an application cycle most can only dream of.
 
Hahaha I wish...I would think its crazy unlikely for someone to have even half of what's listed here...it's just out of curiosity.
 
You might as well try to ask: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What's outside the known universe? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Where can you get some decent deli outside of the NYC metro area?



OK, I'll play...these are just my own opinion.


- URM +5
- Financially very disadvantaged <20K/yr household +1-2
- military service +5

Awards
- Rhodes +5
- Marshall ??
- Fulbright ??
- Soros ??

Other
- Founder of a small company +1
- 1st author paper in a PubMed Indexed Journal +1
- 1st author paper in Nat/Sci/Cell/NEJM/etc +5 [even for PhD, you do realize how rare these achievements are???]
- Peace Corp/TFA +3-5
- Clinical jobs such as CNA, EMT, Scribe[/QUOTE] +1-2
 
Seems weird that MCAT/GPA could ever be compared directly in value to most ECs.

Things like extensive volunteerism, tons of clinical exposure or a lowlevel medical job like scribe, military service, etc are all things which require time and effort but most people could do - time and effort aren't rare. A stellar GPA and high MCAT measure ability as well as requiring time and effort, and so it's rare to find someone capable of a high 70s+ LizzyM.

Really, you should use LizzyM to ask "how much academic ass am I able to kick compared to others accepted here?" and the rest of it is more "so I kick enough ass...what have I put time and effort into that helps me stand out among this group of high ability?"
 
Seems weird that MCAT/GPA could ever be compared directly in value to most ECs.

Things like extensive volunteerism, tons of clinical exposure or a lowlevel medical job like scribe, military service, etc are all things which require time and effort but most people could do - time and effort aren't rare. A stellar GPA and high MCAT measure ability as well as requiring time and effort, and so it's rare to find someone capable of a high 70s+ LizzyM.

Really, you should use LizzyM to ask "how much academic ass am I able to kick compared to others accepted here?" and the rest of it is more "so I kick enough ass...what have I put time and effort into that helps me stand out among this group of high ability?"
A lot of these aren't most ECs though. Like URM, cell paper, starting a company Rhodes scholar etc. I also think you're being quite elitist by saying military service just requires effort. I doubt most premeds could survive the rangers for ex.

A lot of what they're looking for is leadership and tenacity. In my mind literally nothing is as good as military service in this regard, and I say that as someone that has never served.

Say you have an applicant with a 35 MCAT and served in Iraq, vs. a 40. When something goes wrong, who do you think would better lead their team to address the problem?

Harvard could fill their whole class with people with LizzyMs of >80, but they don't. It's not by accident.
 
A lot of these aren't most ECs though. Like URM, cell paper, starting a company Rhodes scholar etc. I also think you're being quite elitist by saying military service just requires effort. I doubt most premeds could survive the rangers for ex.

A lot of what they're looking for is leadership and tenacity. In my mind literally nothing is as good as military service in this regard, and I say that as someone that has never served.

Say you have an applicant with a 35 MCAT and served in Iraq, vs. a 40. When something goes wrong, who do you think would better lead their team to address the problem?

Harvard could fill their whole class with people with LizzyMs of >80, but they don't. It's not by accident.
Sure, there are some ECs that aren't time and effort, which is why I said most ECs - not many people out there with Rhodes and Cell on their CV, but many with extensive volunteerism and such. URM isn't an EC at all, and still you can't equate the value in, say, starting a company to having a high LizzyM because again one is related to a desired academic ability and the other to that magic something interesting/diversity/drive/whatever.

Military service does not = the rangers. You're way off if you think you need leadership/tenacity/much at all to sign up for the military. Could Harvard really? You'd start with about 100 people with the minimum req of a 41+ MCAT and Harvard has a class size of 164, not to mention that not everyone with that high of MCAT has sufficiently high GPA, don't all apply to H, don't all matriculate if accepted. Wustl pretty clearly values maximizing LizzyM and they only land up at a median ~77!
 
Sure, there are some ECs that aren't time and effort, which is why I said most ECs - not many people out there with Rhodes and Cell on their CV, but many with extensive volunteerism and such. URM isn't an EC at all, and still you can't equate the value in, say, starting a company to having a high LizzyM because again one is related to a desired academic ability and the other to that magic something interesting/diversity/drive/whatever.

Military service does not = the rangers. You're way off if you think you need leadership/tenacity/much at all to sign up for the military. Could Harvard really? You'd start with about 100 people with the minimum req of a 41+ MCAT and Harvard has a class size of 164, not to mention that not everyone with that high of MCAT has sufficiently high GPA, don't all apply to H, don't all matriculate if accepted. Wustl pretty clearly values maximizing LizzyM and they only land up at a median ~77!
You don't need leadership at all to sign up for the military, but you have a good chance of having "greatness thrust upon you" in the military.

Ok say I'm interviewing the 40 MCAT applicant and the 35 MCAT applicant.
"Tell me a time when you were a leader"
"Well I was in this club" vs.
"Well we were pinned down in fallujah"
Tell me about a time you failed
"Well once I got a C" or "I wasn't a good girlfriend/boyfriend" vs.
"Well an IED hit our caravan and I had to choose which of my friends I would try to save knowing that the other would die"

Do you see why adcoms go nuts for military service? Sure some military people just sit around and don't do much, but those aren't the guys that get a big leg up in the admissions game. It's worth noting that 30 years ago the median MCAT was like a 26 or something, and yet we still have competent surgeons today from that era.

And yeah Harvard could:
89k took it in 2012, 95k in 2013 estimated 100k+ 2014.
In 2013 >.3% scored a 41 or higher, >6We can therefore assume that >300 applicants will score a 41 or higher, enough to fill their class 🙂.

HMS has 726 students, which would be 181-182 if it were only MD, but it also includes MDPhD which take twice as long to graduate so its likely closer to ~160.

in spite of all this the median person Harvard accepts has a mere 37, which is matched or surpassed by 3000 people get every cycle 😛.

>300 people get a 41 every year, not sure where you're getting 100. Harvard accepts 230 for their class. I would say the majority of people with a lizzyM of ~80 apply to HMS. If only for the intellectual curiosity component.

It's telling their median is literally 1/10 as selective as what they could get if they accepted only people with crazy stats.

WUSTL values lizzyM...sure. But WUSTL is less desirable (on average) for people compared to stanford/JHU/Harvard/Penn/UCSF etc. since they're usually in better locations, don't have preclinical grading (except Penn) and offer more prestige. This is in aggregate, I think WUSTL is a great school but it's not hard to see why they can't poach from the top 5 effectively. Look at the bottom 10% for WUSTL though, they're clearly accepting on more than just stats too. There's no reason why WUSTL would need to accept anyone with less than a 3.8/37 yet they accept people with 34s/3.7s and below. And this is the allegedly stat-crazy school!

If you look at Harvard's breakdown they actually only accept ~5% of the 41+ MCAT scorers. That's surprisingly low to be honest.

The bottom 10% at Harvard stats-wise would be advised to retake their MCATs on this board. It really is more than stats these days, like it or not.
 
You don't need leadership at all to sign up for the military, but you have a good chance of having "greatness thrust upon you" in the military.

Ok say I'm interviewing the 40 MCAT applicant and the 35 MCAT applicant.
"Tell me a time when you were a leader"
"Well I was in this club" vs.
"Well we were pinned down in fallujah"
Tell me about a time you failed
"Well once I got a C" or "I wasn't a good girlfriend/boyfriend" vs.
"Well an IED hit our caravan and I had to choose which of my friends I would try to save knowing that the other would die"

Do you see why adcoms go nuts for military service? Sure some military people just sit around and don't do much, but those aren't the guys that get a big leg up in the admissions game. It's worth noting that 30 years ago the median MCAT was like a 26 or something, and yet we still have competent surgeons today from that era.

And yeah Harvard could:


>300 people get a 41 every year, not sure where you're getting 100. Harvard accepts 230 for their class. I would say the majority of people with a LizzyM of ~80 apply to HMS. If only for the intellectual curiosity component.

It's telling their median is literally 1/10 as selective as what they could get if they accepted only people with crazy stats.

WUSTL values lizzyM...sure. But WUSTL is less desirable (on average) for people compared to stanford/JHU/Harvard/Penn/UCSF etc. since they're usually in better locations, don't have preclinical grading (except Penn) and offer more prestige. This is in aggregate, I think WUSTL is a great school but it's not hard to see why they can't poach from the top 5 effectively. Look at the bottom 10% for WUSTL though, they're clearly accepting on more than just stats too. There's no reason why WUSTL would need to accept anyone with less than a 3.8/37 yet they accept people with 34s/3.7s and below. And this is the allegedly stat-crazy school!

If you look at Harvard's breakdown they actually only accept ~5% of the 41+ MCAT scorers. That's surprisingly low to be honest.

The bottom 10% at Harvard stats-wise would be advised to retake their MCATs on this board. It really is more than stats these days, like it or not.
Agreed, but that is not what service involves for the vast majority of the US military (80% of positions never see any combat). What you describe is like a first authorship in a major journal vs the research experience for most undergrads. If you really have saved lives in intense situations, dealt with loss etc of course that makes sense to be a huge +, but to put "military service" on your app is not to see combat in fallujah

What the hell, why does the 2013 distribution provide different values in percentile vs percent above? If a 40 is 99.8th, how can 0.3 score above 40?
But even using the 285 with 41+, only 62% of people with 39+ MCATs earned a 3.8+ so you'd still have nowhere near 230 to accept. I really think the max you could get while still requiring exposure to med, reasonable interview skills, some volunteering and/or research experience would be upper 70s

If they only accept 5% of 41+ I imagine far fewer 41+ are applying than you'd expect, since their overall accept is 3.5-4%. I know I likely won't apply there
 
Agreed, but that is not what service involves for the vast majority of the US military (80% of positions never see any combat).

Being in the path of an IED is not necessarily combat, nor is coming upon the aftermath of an IED. By definition, clinical services in the field are not combat positions either.

And, the vast majority of US military are not applying to med school. Those who do and who are chosen for interview usually have had experiences that are far different and more impressive than those of college seniors.
 
You might as well try to ask: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What's outside the known universe? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Where can you get some decent deli outside of the NYC metro area?



OK, I'll play...these are just my own opinion.


- URM +5
- Financially very disadvantaged <20K/yr household +1-2
- military service +5

Awards
- Rhodes +5
- Marshall ??
- Fulbright ??
- Soros ??

Other
- Founder of a small company +1
- 1st author paper in a PubMed Indexed Journal +1
- 1st author paper in Nat/Sci/Cell/NEJM/etc +5 [even for PhD, you do realize how rare these achievements are???]
- Peace Corp/TFA +3-5
- Clinical jobs such as CNA, EMT, Scribe +1-2
URM status counts for as much as a Nature publication? :wideyed:
 
Ba
Agreed, but that is not what service involves for the vast majority of the US military (80% of positions never see any combat). What you describe is like a first authorship in a major journal vs the research experience for most undergrads. If you really have saved lives in intense situations, dealt with loss etc of course that makes sense to be a huge +, but to put "military service" on your app is not to see combat in fallujah

What the hell, why does the 2013 distribution provide different values in percentile vs percent above? If a 40 is 99.8th, how can 0.3 score above 40?
But even using the 285 with 41+, only 62% of people with 39+ MCATs earned a 3.8+ so you'd still have nowhere near 230 to accept. I really think the max you could get while still requiring exposure to med, reasonable interview skills, some volunteering and/or research experience would be upper 70s

If they only accept 5% of 41+ I imagine far fewer 41+ are applying than you'd expect, since their overall accept is 3.5-4%. I know I likely won't apply there
based on the MCAT gpa grid I count 900 in the 3.8+ 39+ category for 2 years. Every year an additional ~70 people score a 39+ From last year so it's a bit of a lower estimate. We will call it 500 given that it would be ~480 this past cycle and 510 this coming cycle.

So 500 people have LizzyMs ranging from 77 to 85. Yet Harvard accepts people with a median of 76. With absolute certainty Harvard could get their median to be 80 (maybe 81)and lower 10% to be 76-78, but they choose not to. They are looking for extraordinary individuals, not extraordinary test-takers.

Other examples of top schools with "low" LizzyMs:
UCLA: 71.8
Duke: 73.3
UCSD:73.1
UCSF: 73.4
Mayo 72.9

As an ex. The people I met in top 20s with LizzyM around the same as the top 5 I interviewed at were just as smart..:but what the people at the top 5 had that the people in the top 20 didn't have was an amazing passion or experience. Or at least the proportion varied (seemed like everyone at the top 5 basically had a successful career-level EC before going to med school). Some wrote successful novels, some were published in nature, some had spent 5 years in Africa with their global health initiative, some had invented absolutely amazing things and had patents on it, some were pro athletes, some had an amazing military record etc.

It's not hard to imagine why Harvard doesn't prioritize stats above all else. Which impresses you more: someone with a 3.9/37 and a paper in nature, or someone with a 4.0/40 and cookie cutter EC? I don't know about you but my practice MCAT scores were between 38 and 43, I think to an extent the test fails to distinguish above 38 but that's just my opinion. Maybe it's shared by @gyngyn and @LizzyM ?

and to clarify: if your ECs aren't something like I listed above its cookie cutter. Not bad, 90+% of premeds have cookie cutter EC, but not Harvard level (loosely speaking).
 
If they only accept 5% of 41+ I imagine far fewer 41+ are applying than you'd expect, since their overall accept is 3.5-4%. I know I likely won't apply there


This guy...
 
You might as well try to ask: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What's outside the known universe? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Where can you get some decent deli outside of the NYC metro area?



OK, I'll play...these are just my own opinion.


- URM +5
- Financially very disadvantaged <20K/yr household +1-2
- military service +5

Awards
- Rhodes +5
- Marshall ??
- Fulbright ??
- Soros ??

Other
- Founder of a small company +1
- 1st author paper in a PubMed Indexed Journal +1
- 1st author paper in Nat/Sci/Cell/NEJM/etc +5 [even for PhD, you do realize how rare these achievements are???]
- Peace Corp/TFA +3-5
- Clinical jobs such as CNA, EMT, Scribe
+1-2[/QUOTE]

lol URM=Rhodes
 

lol URM=Rhodes[/QUOTE]
Top medical schools want 5-10% of their class to be URM. So let's just say in the top 10 that's 1500 students or 75-150 desired AA applicants. 35 AA applicants score above 3.8/32. I think being an AA is a greater advantage than Rhodes at top schools if your stats are decent.
 
Top medical schools want 5-10% of their class to be URM. So let's just say in the top 10 that's 1500 students or 75-150 desired AA applicants. 35 AA applicants score above 3.8/32. I think being an AA is a greater advantage than Rhodes at top schools if your stats are decent.

I'm not doubting it; I just think it's pretty crazy how being (black)=(white with probably the most competitive/prestigious scholarship in the world) with everything else equal. Makes me wonder how long it will be until we reach a point where it isn't necessary to have AA to engineer those kind of demographics in schools.
 
Ba

based on the MCAT gpa grid I count 900 in the 3.8+ 39+ category for 2 years. Every year an additional ~70 people score a 39+ From last year so it's a bit of a lower estimate. We will call it 500 given that it would be ~480 this past cycle and 510 this coming cycle.

So 500 people have LizzyMs ranging from 77 to 85. Yet Harvard accepts people with a median of 76. With absolute certainty Harvard could get their median to be 80 (maybe 81)and lower 10% to be 76-78, but they choose not to. They are looking for extraordinary individuals, not extraordinary test-takers.

Other examples of top schools with "low" LizzyMs:
UCLA: 71.8
Duke: 73.3
UCSD:73.1
UCSF: 73.4
Mayo 72.9

As an ex. The people I met in top 20s with LizzyM around the same as the top 5 I interviewed at were just as smart..:but what the people at the top 5 had that the people in the top 20 didn't have was an amazing passion or experience. Or at least the proportion varied (seemed like everyone at the top 5 basically had a successful career-level EC before going to med school). Some wrote successful novels, some were published in nature, some had spent 5 years in Africa with their global health initiative, some had invented absolutely amazing things and had patents on it, some were pro athletes, some had an amazing military record etc.

It's not hard to imagine why Harvard doesn't prioritize stats above all else. Which impresses you more: someone with a 3.9/37 and a paper in nature, or someone with a 4.0/40 and cookie cutter EC? I don't know about you but my practice MCAT scores were between 38 and 43, I think to an extent the test fails to distinguish above 38 but that's just my opinion. Maybe it's shared by @gyngyn and @LizzyM ?

and to clarify: if your ECs aren't something like I listed above its cookie cutter. Not bad, 90+% of premeds have cookie cutter EC, but not Harvard level (loosely speaking).
No doubt some schools could prioritize stats a lot more than they do, but I still say by the numbers not even Harvard could manage a 80/81 median. Too few people with 40+ will also have high enough GPA (I calculate the entire 3.8-4.0 range would hold only 300 40+ scorers, and all the 40s would need 4.00s...), and many will not apply to H. But there isn't the data to answer this.

My range was the exact same with 7/10 tests landing 40-42. And I think the MCAT as a whole is a piece of garbage testing your ability to accurately answer many easy questions under time pressure, with zero questions that probe past shallow memory or 1-2 step softball reasoning problems. But that's a whole separate debate.


Everything over 37 is statistically equivalent.

Interesting. Source?
 
AAMC: How to interpret the MCAT.
IIRC last time I glanced at the AAMC material they said the 67% confidence bands were +/- 2. Seems a 45 and 37 would then not be equivalent?

In fact if I'm reading this correctly out of 61 retakers with an initial 36-38 the biggest improvement seen was a +4 and median was +0
 
IIRC last time I glanced at the AAMC material they said the 67% confidence bands were +/- 2. Seems a 45 and 37 would then not be equivalent?
At the edges of comparison (ends of the bell shaped curve) the differences are not statistically different.
 
At the edges of comparison (ends of the bell shaped curve) the differences are not statistically different.
Hard to believe considering the median +0 max +4 in the large retaking group I mentioned above (here)

Is this something explicitly stated/calculated somewhere or just your impression?
 
Hard to believe considering the median +0 max +4 in the large retaking group I mentioned above (here)

Is this something explicitly stated/calculated somewhere or just your impression?
The point differences at the extremes of analysis are useless in differentiating between individual examinees.
In the middle they correspond to a significant difference in correct responses.
This is a basic principle of testing that has been explicitly stated by the AAMC in their communications with admissions officers. All scores above 37 are delivered to us as 99%+.
 
The point differences at the extremes of analysis are useless in differentiating between individual examinees.
In the middle they correspond to a significant difference in correct responses.
This is a basic principle of testing that has been explicitly stated by the AAMC in their communications with admissions officers.
Damn, why don't they release this information in the public MCAT interpretation guide? Then people who can hit 37 on their first few practice tests don't have to sweat studying to push up towards 40s.
Any idea why they don't just lump 37+ together as one score if a 45 has no valid reason to be more desirable?
 
Damn, why don't they release this information in the public MCAT interpretation guide? Then people who can hit 37 on their first few practice tests don't have to sweat studying to push up towards 40s.
Any idea why they don't just lump 37+ together as one score if a 45 has no valid reason to be more desirable?
Your wrath might be reasonably directed at US Snooze and the Deans who compare themselves by their school's entrance stats.
 
Your wrath might be reasonably directed at US Snooze and the Deans who compare themselves by their school's entrance stats.
You're telling me pop prestige and bragging rights trump data/reason and holistic review in the eyes of the head honchos??

This frickin premed game i swear to god
 
You're telling me pop prestige and bragging rights trump data/reason and holistic review in the eyes of the head honchos??

This frickin premed game i swear to god
It's a game we are all stuck in, I'm afraid.
 
It's a game we are all stuck in, I'm afraid.
Can't reasonable adcoms such as yourself break this trend in a jiffy just by ignoring any differences beyond 37? Like how can a dean really get their baseless desire for more 39+ applicants
 
Top medical schools want 5-10% of their class to be URM. So let's just say in the top 10 that's 1500 students or 75-150 desired AA applicants. 35 AA applicants score above 3.8/32. I think being an AA is a greater advantage than Rhodes at top schools if your stats are decent.

Without a doubt. And it's not just top schools that want URM. I know an AA that was accepted to MD with a <25 MCAT and <3.0 GPA. It's a significant advantage.
 
"1,000 points" -Drew Carey. So, I guess those are worth a thousand. Too bad everything's made up and the points don't matter.
 
Like how can a dean really get their baseless desire for more 39+ applicants
They actually know it's baseless. It doesn't seem to matter, though.
A school that can fill a class with 35+ MCAT scores doesn't really need to do much teaching! We mostly just need to give broad direction and get out of their way. A school that admits 25 to 27 MCAT kids and actually teaches them to do well enough to serve effectively is really deserving of their teaching cred (and a high ranking) instead of the "low" rank they currently get .
 
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She just implied that that's exactly what she does.
I meant can't a group of informed adcom members stop the class from being unnecessarily stats based in spite of what the dean wants, not that he personally is part of the trend

They actually know it's baseless. It doesn't seem to matter, though.
A school that can fill a class kids with 35+ MCAT scores doesn't really need to do much teaching! We mostly just need to give broad direction and get out of their way. A school that admits 25 to 27 MCAT kids and actually teaches them to do well enough to serve effectively is really deserving of their teaching cred (and a high ranking) instead of the "low" rank they currently get .

Yeah it seems ranks indicate more where the best applicants want to go rather than a "most improved" sort of assessment
 
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