MSAR 2019 is out

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premedalt said:
I think it initially shows medians for accepted students. MCAT Median for matriculating students is probably a bit lower for most schools.
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Gotcha, so the same students with multiple acceptances may skew the initial MSAR numbers.
 
premedalt said:
I think it initially shows medians for accepted students. MCAT Median for matriculating students is probably a bit lower for most schools.
Click to expand...
I’m pretty sure it’s for matriculated students, isn’t that why its a cycle behind? Since 2018-19 applicants haven’t matriculated yet, but 2017-18 students have.
 
Irvine, Riverside, Davis, especially Northstate all had very surprising shifts

CalMed doesn't mess around.
 
samualjhatfield said:
How do so many schools even have 520+ medians? With 80,000 MCAT takers, only 800 applicants should even have >520s...
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That’s 80000 per year I’m assuming, but there are students from around 3 different MCAT testing years applying each cycle.
 
StanleyYelnats said:
I’m pretty sure it’s for matriculated students, isn’t that why its a cycle behind? Since 2018-19 applicants haven’t matriculated yet, but 2017-18 students have.
Click to expand...

I think premedalt is correct. You can toggle between accepted, matriculated, accepted in state and accepted out of state and the figures do change.
 
StanleyYelnats said:
I’m pretty sure it’s for matriculated students, isn’t that why its a cycle behind? Since 2018-19 applicants haven’t matriculated yet, but 2017-18 students have.
Click to expand...
The shown MCAT median for Stony Brook is 516. This matches the median for "all accepted applicants - this school" from the drop down menu. The median for "all matriculated students -this school" for Stony Brook is 514.
 
premedalt said:
The shown MCAT median for Stony Brook is 516. This matches the median for "all accepted applicants - this school" from the drop down menu. The median for "all matriculated students -this school" for Stony Brook is 514.
Click to expand...
Gotcha, you are definitely correct. I just checked Yale NYU and WashU. Yale and WashU’s average matriculant has a 521, NYU is still 522.
 
manofsteel9 said:
A lot of people take the MCAT early and then apply a year or two later (me).
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True, but again the portion that would be waiting a year or two after this year's MCAT would likely reflect the same proportion that waited a year or two in year's past. Thus, there should still be very few >520 applicants.
 
Just went through all of the schools with a median >519 matriculated. about 550 of the 10000 or so applicants with a 519 or higher end up matriculating to one of 10 schools.
 
522 - NYU, Yale, WashU
521 - Chicago, Hopkins, Penn, Vandy
520 - Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Stanford, Mayo
519 - Sinai, UVA, Cornell
518 - Case, Michigan, Boston, UCSF, UCLA, Duke

There are 12 schools where a 520 puts you in the bottom 50% of the class last year. Also GPA creep is real. I wonder when the first school with a median 4.0 will show up.
 
Could anyone post the GPA/MCAT for McGovern by chance? I'd greatly appreciate it!
 
wontonsoup said:
522 - NYU, Yale, WashU
521 - Chicago, Hopkins, Penn, Vandy
520 - Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Stanford, Mayo
519 - Sinai, UVA, Cornell
518 - Case, Michigan, Boston, UCSF, UCLA, Duke

There are 12 schools where a 520 puts you in the bottom 50% of the class last year. Also GPA creep is real. I wonder when the first school with a median 4.0 will show up.
Click to expand...

My lawd --> DO lyfe. 🤣
 
Pediction: Medians are going to start hitting a ceiling soon at a lot of these schools. Hell, WashU for example has had a top 1% median for about a decade. The real thing to watch is creep on the 10th/25th percentiles. Currently the top schools are enrolling a majority of top 1-2% scores. Give things 5-10 more years, and I think highly competitive schools will be enrolling only students with those scores. This same phenomenon happened a little while back with admissions to the top undergrads. Ivy league schools used to have mostly high SAT scores, but also a left side to the distribution that dipped surprisingly low to scoop up the people who were remarkable in other areas. Now, they've all got interquartile ranges that are entirely in the top 1-2%.

Schools jumping headfirst into this trend in just the last couple years (e.g. UCLA, Mayo) are going to have M1 classes that look VERY different from the M4s above them. UCLA is an especially interesting example, since they just set a new hard cutoff that would have denied more than a quarter of their current students from ever being considered for admission.

Holistic is on the way out. "HoLiStIc" is on the way in. You want to get those top school interviews? Your list of priorities should now be:

#1 - MCAT
#2 - MCAT
#3 - MCAT
#4 - GPA
#5 - App narrative/holistic appeal
 
efle said:
Pediction: Medians are going to start hitting a ceiling soon at a lot of these schools. Hell, WashU for example has had a top 1% median for about a decade. The real thing to watch is creep on the 10th/25th percentiles. Currently the top schools are enrolling a majority of top 1-2% scores. Give things 5-10 more years, and I think highly competitive schools will be enrolling only students with those scores. This same phenomenon happened a little while back with admissions to the top undergrads. Ivy league schools used to have mostly high SAT scores, but also a left side to the distribution that dipped surprisingly low to scoop up the people who were remarkable in other areas. Now, they've all got interquartile ranges that are entirely in the top 1-2%.

Schools jumping headfirst into this trend in just the last couple years (e.g. UCLA, Mayo) are going to have M1 classes that look VERY different from the M4s above them. UCLA is an especially interesting example, since they just set a new hard cutoff that would have denied more than a quarter of their current students from ever being considered for admission.

Holistic is on the way out. "HoLiStIc" is on the way in. You want to get those top school interviews? Your list of priorities should now be:

#1 - MCAT
#2 - MCAT
#3 - MCAT
#4 - GPA
#5 - App narrative/holistic appeal
Click to expand...

What bothers me the most about this is that top MCAT scores are slippery. Someone scoring a 524 can score a 517 one week later. You only have to miss one or two questions to slip down 2-3 points. So if you get lucky and the test ends up working in your favor with regard to the content that you are strong in then you've got a huge, inherent advantage. Yet it now seems that these schools are differentiating between a 518, 520, 523, 525....
 
ClamShell said:
What bothers me the most about this is that top MCAT scores are slippery. Someone scoring a 518 can score a 524 one week later. You only have to miss one or two questions to slip down 2-3 points. So if you get lucky and the test ends up working in your favor with regard to the content that you are strong in then you've got a huge, inherent advantage.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's pretty crazy that a 95th percentile score (517) is treated very different than a 99th (~522), when there's really no chance you could tell them apart in a classroom. Same thing happened with college admissions, where some places now have average ACT scores of 34 (top 1%) and will skip over you for having only a 30 (top 5%).

Anybody with half a brain has to realize this behavior makes no sense, but I believe admissions committees do have at least half a brain, and yet they still do it. It's got to be external pressures that have created this situation. Rankings algorithms and/or comparison tools, like US News and MSAR, lead applicants to compare schools by stats first and foremost. Schools have to respond to how they're being assessed. If you're an admissions committee and you want your school to stay ahead in the current admissions metagame, you have to max out your stats, regardless of whether it gives you the ideal classroom of students.
 
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