New (4.8.12) Osteopathic Matriculant Profile for the 2011 class

Getting into Med School is Hard? Not with BeMo.
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Best question in the whole packet:

If you were deciding on a medical specialty today, would you specialize in one of the primary care specialties: internal medicine, family medicine or pediatric medicine?

82% :eek:

I wonder if they thought if they answered no they would get rejected. :laugh:
 
Someone was accepted with a 14 MCAT??
 
Cool.

I'm surprised the avg gpa is only a 3.48. Figured it would be a little higher than that.

I see the number of matriculants is about 5,400. Does anyone know the approximate number of people who applied?
 
shaggybill said:
Cool.

I'm surprised the avg gpa is only a 3.48. Figured it would be a little higher than that.

I see the number of matriculants is about 5,400. Does anyone know the approximate number of people who applied?
Click to expand...

If you look at the average GPA with post-bac work included, it goes up to 3.50, and science to 3.41.
 
I liked the number of schools applicants applied to: decreasing slowly at 26, 27, and 28, and then drastically spikes up at 29 (aka all schools).
 
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Could that 14 be from before a retake? As in he took it, got a 14, then retook it and received a more reasonable score.
 
There was a girl in my class who had an MCAT of 17. She was later tested to have sever dyslexia and has trouble with written testing. They tested her orally on her knowledge and she was admitted based on the oral exam. I don't have the second number though.
 
Thanks for the info!

I did not realize that only 3 people over 50 were accepted in all of the DO schools, -TCOM.
 
This is a great find, thanks for sharing it! Hmm that 14 is interesting. An average 4.6 per section.
 
So confused by those 2's in each mcat section that got accepted. Am I misreading that? That sounds just too low.
 
dododr said:
So confused by those 2's in each mcat section that got accepted. Am I misreading that? That sounds just too low.
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Wow. I just noticed that too. I really can't image a 2 being accepted at any schools. Maybe all the new schools are diluting the MCAT scores and they're taking in these low scores.
 
I'm still surprised, even with the new schools, that the mcat average is going flat.
 
user3 said:
I'm still surprised, even with the new schools, that the mcat average is going flat.
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And it only remains logical that it'll stay flat as more schools open. Better schools bring the MCAT average up, new schools bring it down, so the flatness is expected.
 
TriagePreMed said:
No problem.

I think there's A LOT of interesting data here. Hispanic matriculants are roughly equal in scores to Asian. The top 20 feeder schools have 5 University of California campuses and Californians make 10% of all Osteopathic students. Is UC/California liked by DO schools or is it an effect of how hard it is for us to get into Med Schools in-state? And there are many other fun facts out there.
Click to expand...

35Million citizens and a high education level of parent pop = a lot more applicants than say my state, which has less than 7million applicants and generally only 2-3 counties ( 2million) with a high population of educated adults.
 
I honestly can't believe that someone with a 14 got into a medical school.
I don't know the story, but to me that seems irresponsible of the adcom. Good luck to that person.
 
ManBroDude said:
I liked the number of schools applicants applied to: decreasing slowly at 26, 27, and 28, and then drastically spikes up at 29 (aka all schools).
Click to expand...

I noticed that too. I was also surprised that a plurality of matriculants only applied to one school.
serenade said:
Mcat hasn't increased for nearly 2 years now.
Click to expand...

I bet the avg MCAT of certain schools is increasing, but that that increase is offset by the increase in newer schools.
 
NurWollen said:
I noticed that too. I was also surprised that a plurality of matriculants only applied to one school.


I bet the avg MCAT of certain schools is increasing, but that that increase is offset by the increase in newer schools.
Click to expand...

That's a given, the more established pre-walmart paradigm schools are all moving towards averages of 28-29.

crmellon said:
I honestly can't believe that someone with a 14 got into a medical school.
I don't know the story, but to me that seems irresponsible of the adcom. Good luck to that person.
Click to expand...

It's actually unfortunate, this applicant is pretty much wasting his/her time and is going to probably either fail her medical school exams or the comlex.
 
serenade said:
It's actually unfortunate, this applicant is pretty much wasting his/her time and is going to probably either fail her medical school exams or the comlex.
Click to expand...

There's a PD at one of the AOA Facial/Plastic surgery programs who mentioned he scored a 17 on the MCAT. Besides for being one of the nicest human beings out there, the guy is one of the most highly regarded surgeons in his field. just sayin. MCAT=/=Success as a Physician
 
donkeykong1 said:
There's a PD at one of the AOA Facial/Plastic surgery programs who mentioned he scored a 17 on the MCAT. Besides for being one of the nicest human beings out there, the guy is one of the most highly regarded surgeons in his field. just sayin. MCAT=/=Success as a Physician
Click to expand...

Well, success on the mcat = usually correlated with success on boards = success in getting a D.O = success in being allowed to practice medicine. So yah, generally your mcat score or even USMLE may not be predictive of how good a doctor you'll be, but a low mcat score will be a decent predictor of performance in medical school and the boards and statistically the drop out rate for lower mcat score is high.
 
serenade said:
Well, success on the mcat = usually correlated with success on boards = success in getting a D.O = success in being allowed to practice medicine. So yah, generally your mcat score or even USMLE may not be predictive of how good a doctor you'll be, but a low mcat score will be a decent predictor of performance in medical school and the boards and statistically the drop out rate for lower mcat score is high.
Click to expand...

success on the mcat is strongly correlated with success on usmle/comlex. that's all we can say.
 
donkeykong1 said:
success on the mcat is strongly correlated with success on usmle/comlex. that's all we can say.
Click to expand...

Strongly correlated?

It is one of the strongest individual predictors but I think it's pretty loosely correlated. Here's a meta analysis on the correlation:

http://www.educus.com/Journals/SrchDet.aspx?pmid=17198300&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

My n=1 experience is that the MCAT is a fairly poor predictor of success for a lot of people. My MCAT was a 25 and my USMLE was in the upper 220's.
 
serenade said:
It's also a lot closer to the magic 27 number, the score at which usmle pass rate plateaus.
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passing =/= doing well

There is no point for a DO student to 'pass' the USMLE. It does not count towards your licensing requirements and if you barely pass it will certainly not help your residency application. It will probably hurt it. The goal is to do well on it.
 
I love how all of the UC's pump kids into DO schools because there aren't enough Cali med schools
 
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Dissected said:
passing =/= doing well

There is no point for a DO student to 'pass' the USMLE. It does not count towards your licensing requirements and if you barely pass it will certainly not help your residency application. It will probably hurt it. The goal is to do well on it.
Click to expand...

And this is relevant how? The point of my post is that lower mcat scores generally do less well than higher mcat scores to the point that the lower mcat score usmle average includes higher percentiles in the fail catagory. And I'm also sure that this statistic can likely be generalized to the comlex. So this low mcat scorer with a 14 probably has a very high chance of failing the comlex and never receiving a license to practice medicine.
 
serenade said:
And this is relevant how?
Click to expand...

Because passing is irrelevant in a DO student's case. The correlation that we are looking at is performance on the exam related to MCAT scores, not passing ability. Passing scores range from 188 to ~280. A statistic telling you that people with 27 MCAT's and higher are most likely to pass the exam does not infer where on the continuum they fall -- only that they passed. You can make a guess that the lower MCAT scores would not perform as well on the USMLE, but you would only be guessing. The study I posted below is a better evaluation of performance with regard to MCAT scores.

Where does that magic # come from anyway? Merely curious.

serenade said:
The point of my post is that lower mcat scores generally do less well than higher mcat scores to the point that the lower mcat score usmle average includes higher percentiles in the fail catagory. And I'm also sure that this statistic can likely be generalized to the comlex. So this low mcat scorer with a 14 probably has a very high chance of failing the comlex and never receiving a license to practice medicine.
Click to expand...

I couldn't quite follow your first sentence... but I think I get what you meant.

Read that meta-analysis that I posted below. The predictive validity is really not that impressive. There may be a general trend but it is a loose correlation at best.


Clarification: I am not in any way arguing about the 14 MCAT......I think anyone in their right mind realizes that is a red flag. I'm just saying that you can't put a whole lot of stock in an MCAT score predicting performance on the USMLE in general. USMLE is more of a content based exam. Once you are able to catch on to the question style it is more about what you know, not how you think--which is what the MCAT's primary goal is.
 
The magic # is something mentioned in many studied before hand, and LizzyM likes to mention it's validity. I'm also talking about box plots, so for example at a mcat score of 15 the box plot for the failing line in the USMLE is probably above the 50th percentile or that more than 50% of people who get 15s will fail and that thus the 75 and 99th percentiles are likely going to be lower than lets say mcat scores of 25 or 30.
 
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For the 14 mcat
Its not u dont know wat the rest of his profile was like

Butt

U dont know how much cash his family had ahaha!!
 
Whether or not your mcat correlates to your success in medical school, scoring as low as 14 shows that you lack basic understanding of science and critical thinking. In this case, schools might as well start admitting people without academic requirements (good grades, mcat, or college degree), on first come first serve basis.
 
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