A small segment of people post on there in the first place, so it is "exaggerated" even if everyone who is the type who would post were completely honest. If only the people proud of their numbers post, the stats will seem higher than average.
most people who post on mdapps are: 1) a very small % of total applicants 2) probably those who are 'confident" about posting their stats b/c they're so stellar. not saying those who didnt post aren't confident, or did bad. it's just natural to showcase your stats if you did better.
A while back I correlated # of students saying they had an acceptance on MDApps compared to the total # accepted by a school (as reported by USNews) -- it was pretty constantly between 6 and 10% for all schools I checked. Like others have said, those are probably some of the strongest students anyway, so worry not.
Yeah, it's a representativeness issue. I can't imagine that people would lie about their stats (though I'm sure there are some people out their that). Who are they trying to impress?
I'd imagine it would completely negate the entire rationale for the existance of mdapps if people lied on it. The entire point it was created was so premeds could compare stats and ec's to people that were/weren't successful.
Why would someone lie about thier application statistics an an anonymous internet information source? Talk about pointless and masturbatory...
Well, there are periodic fakes that turn up on there, but they tend to be more the variety of the dude with a claimed 2.5/20 who gets into all the top 10 schools.
