MSAR Use

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Sampats

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Which MSAR Percentiles do I use for picking schools to apply to? The advice I was given was to apply to schools where I'm >25%. Is that true? I'm ORM btw. Also, how do you use MSAR for upward trends? For example, mine was 3.57 - 3.93 - 3.92

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Which MSAR Percentiles do I use for picking schools to apply to? The advice I was given was to apply to schools where I'm >25%. Is that true? I'm ORM btw. Also, how do you use MSAR for upward trends? For example, mine was 3.57 - 3.93 - 3.92
For Harvard/Stanford class school, use 25-100th %iles.

For all others, use 10-90th.

Pay very careful attention to the IS/OOS ratios of state schools. They typically favor the home team.
 
@Goro so you think as long as I'm at the 25% for both GPA and MCAT, I am academically/statistically competitive for that school as an ORM?
 
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Not an AdCom but here is some experience, mine and others. As not URM, I'd recommend not applying anywhere that your MCAT is below that 25%-tile number. And this assumes your GPA is above the median for that school. If GPA is low or mid-range, you might set a cutoff applying at 1-2 points above that 25%-tile MCAT number. Of course, select "Accepted Applicants IS or OOS" as applicable to your situation when looking at median MCAT in MSAR.

For IS / OSS, I used two factors. The % of seats that go to OOS and the % of OOS applicants the school interviews. The latter turned out to be a more relevant factor as Wake Forest, for example, is OOS friendly in terms of seats but interviews a very small number of a large volume of OOS applicants. Some of the SUNY's on the other hand, don't admit many OOS applicants but because of that they don't get many OOS applicants --- yet they interview a fairly high percentage of those that apply.

One other factor I found relevant was to look at the class make up in terms of age and % graduate degrees. This can tell you whether they lean toward older non-traditional students or ones recently out of school with no graduate work. Good luck!
 
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