Interesting MDapplicants conclusion...

[Denver89]

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So i was doing a little bit of research I guess you could call it, regarding the data on MD applicants, but I am not quite sure what to make of it.

This is what I found..

After searching the entire database of completed apps I found that ~3000/3050 profiles were of people who were accepted to a MD school. In other words over 95% of all applicants on that site had been accepted to at least one school. Furthermore after searching profiles with an MCAT score of 20-27 I found that even those applicants had acceptances over 95% of the time.

This didn't seam right to me so I would like to get some opinions. Basically I think there are two conclusions.

a) The profiles on MDapps largly consist of people who have already been accepted and therefore a large acceptance rate is achieved (however I do not find this very likely).

b) The quality of student that is overwhelmingly likely to post their application status on MDapplicants is such that they are accepted to medical schools 95% of the time!!

If b) is the case than MDapplicants is truly ones road map to medical school. Every applicant is different so this must be taken with a grain of salt. However I think that it is safe to assume (unless my reasoning is off) that by compiling a set of common ECs, gpa/mcat (duh), and other activities one would have a VERY good chance of getting accepted.

What do you guys think? What can be taken from this if anything?

 

[longhorn09]

Remember you can put down anything in MDapplicants.com...😉

 

[zerial]

How did you get these results? I'm assuming you didn't actually look through over 3000 profiles. Did you use a bot to comb through profiles one by one?

Assuming your results are accurate, I would assume that B is the case, but it's not necessarily huge news to be able to compile a set of qualities that would get you into med school. Most of the people that post on this board could give you a laundry list of things you need to accomplish which will allow someone a strong chance of getting into at least some school.

 

[Zoom-Zoom]

Well I think you are correct in that:

-The group of people who go to MDapps, like SDN, is self-selected and they tend to be strong applicants due to dedication/obsession.
-Accepted applicants are more likely to post their success stories
-They tend to have similar EC's

I would add:
-People who read that site are generally better prepared for the app cycle and build their cv accordingly.

I think it's incorrect that people with MCAT scores of 20-27, even on MDapps, are accepted 95% of the time....or that 95% of all applicants there are accepted.

Still, I would wager that despite being an anonymous site, people are for some reason likely to falsely state they were accepted somewhere if, after updating their page for a year, they were not. It's also possible that un-accepted applicants delete their pages.

 

[FlowLimited]

I vote for Option C.

People with favorable outcomes are more likely to update their results because, well, they're proud. Not a lot of people are going to be motivated to complete their profile if they were rejected by all the schools to which they applied. It's the same reason why high MCAT scores predominate in the MCAT forum. Very few people rush online to tell the world, "I got a 13L!"

 

[ksmi117]

Well I think you are correct in that:

-The group of people who go to MDapps, like SDN, is self-selected and they tend to be strong applicants due to dedication/obsession.
-Accepted applicants are more likely to post their success stories
-They tend to have similar EC's

I would add:
-People who read that site are generally better prepared for the app cycle and build their cv accordingly.

I think it's incorrect that people with MCAT scores of 20-27, even on MDapps, are accepted 95% of the time....or that 95% of all applicants there are accepted.

Still, I would wager that despite being an anonymous site, people are for some reason likely to falsely state they were accepted somewhere if, after updating their page for a year, they were not. It's also possible that un-accepted applicants delete their pages.

This. I suspect that's the reason for the high percentages. Of course, even without the deletions, the mdapps population is much like the SDN population in being very aware of how to have a good app.

 

[longhorn09]

I vote for Option C.

People with favorable outcomes are more likely to update their results because, well, they're proud. Not a lot of people are going to be motivated to complete their profile if they were rejected by all the schools to which they applied. It's the same reason why high MCAT scores predominate in the MCAT forum. Very few people rush online to tell the world, "I got a 13L!"

All the testtakers would void their test before the score of 13L came out.

 

[Denver89]

longhorn09: Ya thats one (very important) point that I forgot to mention as an assumption. How accurate or credible do you think MDapps is? My guess would be that most of the information posted is true but I could be completely wrong. Integrity is a quality that is generally held by most doctors so thats why I say that, but who knows.

Zerial: Basically I just used the advanced search function to find various information. To search for all profiles I simply asked the search engine to locate all complete profiles with an MCAT score over 20. Thats how I got the number 3050 (~I dont remember the exact number). I then searched for all acceptances for applicants with a 20+ MCAT.

I understand that many people here could regurgitate all the things you need to do in order to get into med school, but with 95% of all MDapps being accepted? hmm, I dont know its kinda interesting

Edit: Ok I guess the numbers I got were a bit off.. but still

 

[mmmcdowe]

While MDapps has a wonderful intention, and can be of some use/interest to many applicants, it is still at its core a pre-med penis showing contest.

 

[longhorn09]

While MDapps has a wonderful intention, and can be of some use/interest to many applicants, it is still at its core a pre-med penis showing contest.

😍I like this word !

 

[Denver89]

Well I think you are correct in that:

-The group of people who go to MDapps, like SDN, is self-selected and they tend to be strong applicants due to dedication/obsession.

This brings up another interesting question..

This may be a difficult question to answer, but would it be safe to assume that SDN members (albeit the ones that actually contribute to the site) as a whole are accepted to med school at a very high rate? I think the answer is somewhat obvious but at the very least is an encouraging notion that everyone here has a considerable advantage when it comes to applying to med school.

 

[zerial]

While MDapps has a wonderful intention, and can be of some use/interest to many applicants, it is still at its core a pre-med penis showing contest.

are you suggesting a correlation between penis size and pre-med stats, MCAT score? cuz that would certainly be an "interesting MDapplicants conclusion" 👍

 

[zerial]

This brings up another interesting question..

This may be a difficult question to answer, but would it be safe to assume that SDN members (albeit the ones that actually contribute to the site) as a whole are accepted to med school at a very high rate? I think the answer is somewhat obvious but at the very least is an encouraging notion that everyone here has a considerable advantage when it comes to applying to med school.

uh oh. *queue spike in SDN # posts/day*

 

[longhorn09]

are you suggesting a correlation between penis size and pre-med stats, MCAT score? cuz that would certainly be an "interesting MDapplicants conclusion" 👍

Are you suggesting that females have zero chance of getting acceptance?😀

 

[Denver89]

uh oh. *queue spike in SDN # posts/day*

Ya ive decided to drop everything and start posting on SDN like its my job.. That should guarantee some acceptances right? But seriously...

 

[zerial]

Are you suggesting that females have zero chance of getting acceptance?😀

now let's not get ahead of ourselves, I never said whether the correlation would be positive or negative...

 

[Denver89]

correlation = causation ? I guess in this case YES!

 

[mmmcdowe]

are you suggesting a correlation between penis size and pre-med stats, MCAT score? cuz that would certainly be an "interesting MDapplicants conclusion" 👍

Perhaps they are allowed to borrow?

 

[Excelsius]

This brings up another interesting question..

This may be a difficult question to answer, but would it be safe to assume that SDN members (albeit the ones that actually contribute to the site) as a whole are accepted to med school at a very high rate? I think the answer is somewhat obvious but at the very least is an encouraging notion that everyone here has a considerable advantage when it comes to applying to med school.

I am sure that SDN members have a much higher rate of acceptance than the national average. This is not mainly because everyone on SDN has good stats - we have every group represented from 4.0 to <3.0 - but because spending so much time on a professional forum speaks a lot about dedication. If you're dedicated to anything, chances are much higher that you will succeed, regardless of your grades. Also the information shared on these forums is great. Premed advisers cannot compete with this up-to-date information. I have seen several cases where they were wrong. And have you ever talked to a non-SDN applicant? You are in for a huge surprise. These people think that being complete by September is very good, applying to more than 10 select schools is a waste of money, and that research can substitute volunteering experience. Many don't know what is shadowing and how it is different from volunteering (I hadn't heard about shadowing before coming to SDN either). Nor do they know about MSAR, TBR, and EK. And finally, you learn here that even if you have a 4.0 and 40 MCAT you might not get in anywhere. This scares the crap out of people and makes them work extra hard to achieve that goal. Is it any wonder then that SDNers have a definite edge in medschool admissions? Not really. However, I don't think that the SDN edge is going to last that long (at least not to the same degree). As more and more people join SDN and learn all the secrets to medschool admissions the competition will increase significantly. Right now SDN represents only about 10-15% of the entire applicant pool. This is one of the reasons why those on SDN have a significant edge. It's like a secret cult here, except that the secrecy is as a result of lack of motivation on most applicants' part to discover this great resource.

By the way, an applicant who joins SDN the same year that he/she is applying is not going to benefit much. The mistakes will have been made already. This is why the dedication is important. How many people are going to spend two or more years on SDN preparing to apply? Not that many!

 

[Law2Doc]

Here's all you can conclude:
(1) most of the people who post on MDApplicants are happy with their stats, and as a result have better success than the applicant pool at large. I mean, it's not mandatory for anything, so why would you create a profile if your stats weren't good, or you were embarrassed by something. So it's far from a random distribution, it's a very small self selecting group.
(2) the rest of the people who post on MDApplicants are fakers, trolls, etc. There are many many many fake applicants on there. People who think it's a hoot to create a fake applicant who has a 25 MCAT and gets into Harvard. Or some people feel it funny to create someone who got a 45 -- that may be the closest they will ever get to such a score. SDNers used to out a lot of the obviously fake profiles a while back, and MDApplicants deleted those identified, but many many many fakes exist on there, or at least some degree of exaggeration. The fakes may actually outnumber the real ones. So there's a ton of bad data in there. Enough bad data to make any conclusion drawn from the results garbage.

 

[Law2Doc]

...Furthermore after searching profiles with an MCAT score of 20-27 I found that even those applicants had acceptances over 95% of the time....

Simple answer -- 90% of the profiles with low MCATs who claimed they got into med school(s) are fake. There is no verification. If someone thinks it would be funny to create a 19 year old sociology major with a C average who gets into every top ten school, they just have to click a button. Without real data, you can make no real conclusions. I think your above sentence, when reconciled with common sense, proves only that there are many falsehoods to be found on the MDApplicants site. Not that people are getting in 95% of the time with a 25. Because you can look at the MSAR data and see that they simply aren't. Average for US allo schools is around a 30 with a very tight distribution. A good number of 28-29s get in, and it falls off precipitously after that. Not a solid 95%. More like the other 5% as your odds. Take no solace in fake posters gaining fake acceptances.

 

[MegaProjectile]

Remember that not all of them are MD acceptances.Some are DO.

 

[phospho]

MDapps is the equivalent of "ratemyboobs". You're not going to post a picture of your boobs unless you had a feeling that they were above average, even though it's an anonymous pic and no one really knows (or cares) who you are.

 

[LittleRocker]

MDapps is the equivalent of "ratemyboobs". You're not going to post a picture of your boobs unless you had a feeling that they were above average, even though it's an anonymous pic and no one really knows (or cares) who you are.

link plz

 

[jvesco22]

link plz

thequote.org

😍

 

[Lukkie]

Right now SDN represents only about 10-15% of the entire applicant pool. This is one of the reasons why those on SDN have a significant edge. It's like a secret cult here, except that the secrecy is as a result of lack of motivation on most applicants' part to discover this great resource.

Then I propose we set up some new rules. The first rule of SDN Club is...

 

[LittleRocker]

thequote.org

😍

haha your avatar is so fitting

 

[UVAbme2009]

I am sure that SDN members have a much higher rate of acceptance than the national average. This is not mainly because everyone on SDN has good stats - we have every group represented from 4.0 to <3.0 - but because spending so much time on a professional forum speaks a lot about dedication. If you're dedicated to anything, chances are much higher that you will succeed, regardless of your grades. Also the information shared on these forums is great. Premed advisers cannot compete with this up-to-date information. I have seen several cases where they were wrong. And have you ever talked to a non-SDN applicant? You are in for a huge surprise. These people think that being complete by September is very good, applying to more than 10 select schools is a waste of money, and that research can substitute volunteering experience. Many don't know what is shadowing and how it is different from volunteering (I hadn't heard about shadowing before coming to SDN either). Nor do they know about MSAR, TBR, and EK. And finally, you learn here that even if you have a 4.0 and 40 MCAT you might not get in anywhere. This scares the crap out of people and makes them work extra hard to achieve that goal. Is it any wonder then that SDNers have a definite edge in medschool admissions? Not really. However, I don't think that the SDN edge is going to last that long (at least not to the same degree). As more and more people join SDN and learn all the secrets to medschool admissions the competition will increase significantly. Right now SDN represents only about 10-15% of the entire applicant pool. This is one of the reasons why those on SDN have a significant edge. It's like a secret cult here, except that the secrecy is as a result of lack of motivation on most applicants' part to discover this great resource.

This. I've learned so much from here in regards to the application process. I was always happy to share what I knew with my non-SDN friends. If you want to accomplish something, especially something like getting into medical school, you really need to do your homework. SDN is clearly the best place for that.

 

[pathophys17]

I am sure that SDN members have a much higher rate of acceptance than the national average. This is not mainly because everyone on SDN has good stats - we have every group represented from 4.0 to <3.0 - but because spending so much time on a professional forum speaks a lot about dedication. If you're dedicated to anything, chances are much higher that you will succeed, regardless of your grades. Also the information shared on these forums is great. Premed advisers cannot compete with this up-to-date information. I have seen several cases where they were wrong. And have you ever talked to a non-SDN applicant? You are in for a huge surprise. These people think that being complete by September is very good, applying to more than 10 select schools is a waste of money, and that research can substitute volunteering experience. Many don't know what is shadowing and how it is different from volunteering (I hadn't heard about shadowing before coming to SDN either). Nor do they know about MSAR, TBR, and EK. And finally, you learn here that even if you have a 4.0 and 40 MCAT you might not get in anywhere. This scares the crap out of people and makes them work extra hard to achieve that goal. Is it any wonder then that SDNers have a definite edge in medschool admissions? Not really. However, I don't think that the SDN edge is going to last that long (at least not to the same degree). As more and more people join SDN and learn all the secrets to medschool admissions the competition will increase significantly. Right now SDN represents only about 10-15% of the entire applicant pool. This is one of the reasons why those on SDN have a significant edge. It's like a secret cult here, except that the secrecy is as a result of lack of motivation on most applicants' part to discover this great resource.

By the way, an applicant who joins SDN the same year that he/she is applying is not going to benefit much. The mistakes will have been made already. This is why the dedication is important. How many people are going to spend two or more years on SDN preparing to apply? Not that many!

This is so true. I was going on and on about stats in the MSAR to a fellow applicant the other day only to have them ask me what it is at the end of the conversation. It's crazy how much some people are in the dark about these things, and I forget that often. I'm so happy to have found SDN my sophomore year..although I didn't officially join until later...I think if you've been searching online somehow for a professional forum on your career, that you must be dedicated, at least to some degree, to that career. And your dedication shows in other areas too, and you end up with a strong application. So probably some of it is that the people who would be on mdapp are self-selected, but people can post anything they want on an anonymous applicant site.

 

[pathophys17]

Oh, and.... uh oh. I've told almost every premed I've become friends with about SDN. Should we stop letting the secret out??😉

 

[Narmerguy]

Here's all you can conclude:
(1) most of the people who post on MDApplicants are happy with their stats, and as a result have better success than the applicant pool at large. I mean, it's not mandatory for anything, so why would you create a profile if your stats weren't good, or you were embarrassed by something. So it's far from a random distribution, it's a very small self selecting group.
(2) the rest of the people who post on MDApplicants are fakers, trolls, etc. There are many many many fake applicants on there. People who think it's a hoot to create a fake applicant who has a 25 MCAT and gets into Harvard. Or some people feel it funny to create someone who got a 45 -- that may be the closest they will ever get to such a score. SDNers used to out a lot of the obviously fake profiles a while back, and MDApplicants deleted those identified, but many many many fakes exist on there, or at least some degree of exaggeration. The fakes may actually outnumber the real ones. So there's a ton of bad data in there. Enough bad data to make any conclusion drawn from the results garbage.

It would be interesting to at least see the correlation between MDapplicants that are linked to a SDN profile...but that may be too much self selection. The scores would be astronomical

Is there any future in getting a MD applicants site that forces applicants to post truthfully? I actually advocate a "1-profile per IP address" policy. Of course this doesn't cut down the potential for creating bogus websites and there are ways around it, but there are definitely less people who would be willing to cheat the site that earnestly.

 

[jackson1]

It's so true about most people not understanding this whole process at all!! I just got off the phone with one of my best friends and she thinks I'm absolutely crazy to be applying to at least 20 schools. She was trying to convince me that I'm going to get in to every school I apply to-yea right!!! They don't understand that even though I have about the average MCAT and GPA of people that get accepted to most of these schools, it's about so much more than that and I'll be thankful if i even get 1 acceptance.

 

[johncalvin]

You know I always wondered how MDapps verified information. It seemed all official to me, that you would have to send in a copy of your verified primary to a moderator or something.

This was especially true because there's always that "This profile will remain anonymous for 3 years." Sounds so official...

 

[HrryUpNwait]

.

 

[mvenus929]

You know I always wondered how MDapps verified information. It seemed all official to me, that you would have to send in a copy of your verified primary to a moderator or something.

This was especially true because there's always that "This profile will remain anonymous for 3 years." Sounds so official...

No, it shows which school you went to and what your degree was in. You don't have a username, just a number on the site.

Of course, there are ways around the anonymous profile thing. I have one of the more ambiguous ones, as it took someone a good 3 guesses to get my actual school.

 

[imer]

...

 

[xaelia]

Of course, there are ways around the anonymous profile thing. I have one of the more ambiguous ones, as it took someone a good 3 guesses to get my actual school.

That will be fixed by the end of the month with...the...new site!

There is no "approval" system for new profiles. When the site was so small it only picked up a few profiles a week, I used to review them all. Now I rely on mob intelligence - sometimes I pick up on threads on SDN, and that "flag for administrator review" tag really does work!

What I see as the problem on the site is not so much that there are huge number of fake profiles, but that there are a lot of abandoned profiles - and folks adding profiles 2 or 3 years ahead of their application with 3T MCATs and 0.00 GPAs. The new site will help with that.