PreDents.com: Feature Input request

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PDizzle

PDizzle

PreDents.com
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OK, I have decided to add a bunch of ways to "rank" schools from the PreDents.com data. I'd like for you guys/gals to let me know what would be good things to rank by. They will all mosty be of the formula: # who "blank"/# who "blank" in a percentile. Example:

# people accepted/# people interviewed. Then rank the schools by this percentage.

I'll name some I'm gonna do for sure:

Rejected/Interviewed
Rejected/Applied
Interviewed/Applied
Accepted/Interviewd

Go ahead and mention something you would like to see. It can be just about anything as long as I have the data.

Also it could be averages, like average age of (applied, interviewd, accepted, rejected), average GPA of (applied, interviewd, accepted, rejected), etc.

Get creative...


Thanks
 
I think for state schools or even some such as Marquette (who have 40/40, In state to OOS acceptance) could show the average DAT scores, GPA, etc for instate, out of state and total applicants.
 
DrReo said:
I think for state schools or even some such as Marquette (who have 40/40, In state to OOS acceptance) could show the average DAT scores, GPA, etc for instate, out of state and total applicants.
Click to expand...

Yeah what he said. It would be great to see what the average GPA/DAT was for out of state students accepted to state schools like UCLA, UCSF, Colorado, etc.
 
Maybe you could also break it down by race too? GPA and DAT of different reported ethnic groups, interviewed and accepted.
 
DrDDSman said:
Maybe you could also break it down by race too? GPA and DAT of different reported ethnic groups, interviewed and accepted.
Click to expand...

I think that will be too much muble jumbo and american does segergate by race (nor give advantage) 👍
 
DrReo said:
I think that will be too much muble jumbo and american does segergate by race (nor give advantage) 👍
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I follow your statement, but I think its a perfectly legitimate and valid statistical measure. The purpose of a database is to have access to as much statistical information as possible.
 
I would like to see the average # of schools applied to/accepting each applicant, and maybe breaking this down based on things like GPA or DAT sections (i.e. stats for people that got a 24 AA, a 21 TS, or a 15 QR etc.)

That last bit would give us some data on which sections of the DAT actually help translate into acceptances.
 
perhaps you would have a better time getting more information for the database if people had the option of anonymity for certain fields. Many people have incomplete profiles because they don't want to put absolutely everything on display. maybe if there was a checkbox or something that allowed people to hide specific fields like their DAT or GPA or anything else, it would help with participation. you could even make it so at the end of a cycle the anonymity goes away if you want so all info would be displayed eventually. i know mdapplicants.com lets you do that ("This profile will remain anonymous for one year from the application year below.").
 
I would like to see the range (GPA/DAT) of students accepted. Possibly next the the mean (GPA/DAT), this way I wouldn't have to look it up on my ADEA book.
 
cobalt31 said:
perhaps you would have a better time getting more information for the database if people had the option of anonymity for certain fields. Many people have incomplete profiles because they don't want to put absolutely everything on display. maybe if there was a checkbox or something that allowed people to hide specific fields like their DAT or GPA or anything else, it would help with participation. you could even make it so at the end of a cycle the anonymity goes away if you want so all info would be displayed eventually. i know mdapplicants.com lets you do that ("This profile will remain anonymous for one year from the application year below.").
Click to expand...

Bolded is two opposing ideas in your post IMO 🙂

Well, my standpoint on this subject is:
First off, every user has complete anonymity already. I'm not asking for their social security number or anything.:laugh: You can make up any name you want? Same as SDN, no one knows who you are unless you tell them. There are people in my class that just found out that I am "PDizzle" (after 2 1/2 years of going to class all day together) and I told a bunch of people the first day of class.

Secondly, the critical fields (soon to be marked as such on the website) will be GPA, DAT, AADSAS dates and state res. Everything else is completly optional. Without this data, the user's account is useless and may as well not exist. I see your point about it being "opened" starting the next year, but most people follow the cycle in the current year.

Thanks for your input tho

Dizz
 
futuredentist09 said:
I would like to see the range (GPA/DAT) of students accepted. Possibly next the the mean (GPA/DAT), this way I wouldn't have to look it up on my ADEA book.
Click to expand...

First off, the ADEA book is much more accurate than my website.

Secondly, I like the idea if the dat/gpa range. I might put that on the school page along with the other data there
 
PDizzle said:
Bolded is two opposing ideas in your post IMO 🙂

Well, my standpoint on this subject is:
First off, every user has complete anonymity already. I'm not asking for their social security number or anything.:laugh: You can make up any name you want? Same as SDN, no one knows who you are unless you tell them. There are people in my class that just found out that I am "PDizzle" (after 2 1/2 years of going to class all day together) and I told a bunch of people the first day of class.

Secondly, the critical fields (soon to be marked as such on the website) will be GPA, DAT, AADSAS dates and state res. Everything else is completly optional. Without this data, the user's account is useless and may as well not exist. I see your point about it being "opened" starting the next year, but most people follow the cycle in the current year.

Thanks for your input tho

Dizz
Click to expand...

just to clarify the utility of such an option, i meant that while some fields could be anonymous on the profiles themselves, the data from their DAT/GPA could still be factored in to averages listed for avg GPA/DAT of interviewed, accepted, etc, so you could still get some use out of anonymous data that you otherwise may not have.
 
cobalt31 said:
just to clarify the utility of such an option, i meant that while some fields could be anonymous on the profiles themselves, the data from their DAT/GPA could still be factored in to averages listed for avg GPA/DAT of interviewed, accepted, etc, so you could still get some use out of anonymous data that you otherwise may not have.
Click to expand...

Hmm...I might consider something like that although I really don't see why people don't want to put up their numbers when no one will know who they are, unless they tell them.

Thanks for your suggestion
 
also, why not show on the school pages the "waitlist date" like the dates for other things.

and it would be kind of neat to see which of the acceptances for a particular school in a particular cycle were acceptances off the waitlist, if that were possible.
 
Perhaps one thing to do would be to make a PreDents percentile for GPA and DAT. Not only can applicants see where they stand amongst other PreDents users, they can compare their real DAT percentile to the PreDents DAT percentile, and see how different PreDents scores may be from actual nationwide data (since PreDents/SDN users usually have higher stats in general).
 
Someone should do regression analysis on the inverse relationship between amount of time spent trying to rank dental schools and success with women.
 
PDizzle,

It would be cool if users had the ability to search for profiles based on what school they attended for undergrad...
 
indpndntrd said:
PDizzle,

It would be cool if users had the ability to search for profiles based on what school they attended for undergrad...
Click to expand...

That would be really hard to do. For example, if you went to the University of Minnesota, you could put:

University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
University of Minnesota Minneapolis
U. Minnesota
U of Minnesota
Minnesota
The U
U MN
U of M
UM
[blank]
 
02ratatat12 said:
Someone should do regression analysis on the inverse relationship between amount of time spent trying to rank dental schools and success with women.
Click to expand...

lol PDizz is both married and the only one doing the ranking
 
When you're searching DAT and GPA, I'd like to see an option of:
=
<
>
<=
>=

Like if I wanted to do a search with someone with exactly 21AA, with 20 or higher TS, and with sGPA below 3.4, I could find the people that matched that.
 
I would like to see a feature that allows members to send private messages to one another.
 
somethinpositiv said:
That would be really hard to do. For example, if you went to the University of Minnesota, you could put:

University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
University of Minnesota Minneapolis
U. Minnesota
U of Minnesota
Minnesota
The U
U MN
U of M
UM
[blank]
Click to expand...

This is true. But you could maybe search by school code? Anyway, there aren't many people who enter their undergrads to begin with.
 
somethinpositiv said:
That would be really hard to do. For example, if you went to the University of Minnesota, you could put:

University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
University of Minnesota Minneapolis
U. Minnesota
U of Minnesota
Minnesota
The U
U MN
U of M
UM
[blank]
Click to expand...

Instead of typing in our undergrads, perhaps a drop-down menu that allows members to select which schools they're from would work better.
 
02ratatat12 said:
Someone should do regression analysis on the inverse relationship between amount of time spent trying to rank dental schools and success with women.
Click to expand...

Anyone that uses the words regression analysis (I have no idea WTH that means) should have one of them inverse relationship things about time spent studying and sucess with women. (not sure if that makes any sense but you get the drift)
 
Nauticus said:
I would like to see a feature that allows members to send private messages to one another.
Click to expand...

That's being done, except they are not private. It will be a mini-forum under each persons account page. Posts have to be approved by user and the user can respond to each post. More like a question/answer thing. Why not private? Because users will get repeat questions all the time. I get the same UCSF question PM's every four days!

Nauticus said:
Instead of typing in our undergrads, perhaps a drop-down menu that allows members to select which schools they're from would work better.
Click to expand...


This, out of all the choices, is what I would do. Someone find me a list of ALL the undergrad schools in the Nation, and I'll do it. If you choose to take on this feat, I will need it in Excel or CSV format with both the long and short names of the school, just like I did with D-Schools. If you want, I can change your Predents.com id into the top ten (spots 3-10 are left).


somethinpositiv said:
When you're searching DAT and GPA, I'd like to see an option of:
=
<
>
<=
>=

Like if I wanted to do a search with someone with exactly 21AA, with 20 or higher TS, and with sGPA below 3.4, I could find the people that matched that.
Click to expand...

This is easily doable but I'm wondering if it's overkill or not. Since it's easy to do, I'll prob do it.



cobalt31 said:
also, why not show on the school pages the "waitlist date" like the dates for other things.

and it would be kind of neat to see which of the acceptances for a particular school in a particular cycle were acceptances off the waitlist, if that were possible.
Click to expand...

Well, the waitlists are indeed on the school page. Where they are abscent is on the user profile page, which I will add.

The idea of Waitlist => Acceptance is interesting. Not sure how to display that but that is important info, especially for those who wind up on the waitlist. This I will do in one way or another
 
PDizzle said:
Wow, thats a lot of schools! There are many duplicates tho, which I can take out automatically.

Keep looking tho!🙂 Maybe try to find a shorter list. That drop down menu will go on forever!! hehe
Click to expand...

I could be wrong, but aren't the majority of predents from US News ranked colleges/universities? Maybe you could use that list, and classify the rest as 'others.' just a thought.
 
PDizzle,

I will try getting you that list as well.
 
PDizzle said:
Wow, thats a lot of schools! There are many duplicates tho, which I can take out automatically.

Keep looking tho!🙂 Maybe try to find a shorter list. That drop down menu will go on forever!! hehe
Click to expand...

Why not use the Tier 1 - Tier 4 of the US News Rankings? It is 262 American universities.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-search

Perhaps include the top 41 Canadian universities as well.
http://www.univforum.com/canadian-university-ranking.html

If a school is not one of those 300+ schools, then make it so you can write it in?
 
If you have the data, possibly from reapplicants, it would be great to see the statistics of the students that were rejected. GPA, DAT, EC,...
 
somethinpositiv said:
When you're searching DAT and GPA, I'd like to see an option of:
=
<
>
<=
>=

Like if I wanted to do a search with someone with exactly 21AA, with 20 or higher TS, and with sGPA below 3.4, I could find the people that matched that.
Click to expand...

It would be cool if we could pick a GPA range, like "sGPA between 3.40 and 3.55."

Also, this might be hard to do, but when the list of profiles that fit the search criteria come up, it would be really nice if we could click on the column type and sort the profiles. Like, say there are 80 people who have an sGPA between X and Y. It would be cool to be able to click on a column header and sort them by that column's criteria, from greatest to least or vice versa.
 
Spin said:
It would be cool if we could pick a GPA range, like "sGPA between 3.40 and 3.55."

Also, this might be hard to do, but when the list of profiles that fit the search criteria come up, it would be really nice if we could click on the column type and sort the profiles. Like, say there are 80 people who have an sGPA between X and Y. It would be cool to be able to click on a column header and sort them by that column's criteria, from greatest to least or vice versa.
Click to expand...

Sorting search results: Thats a great suggestion and I think there was a reason I didn't/couldn't do that. Thats something I for sure would have done. I'll look into that.

About the range, thats a good idea as well. I want to keep the ability to have just a > and < option, but maybe if I give two boxes, you could set a range as an option. for instance, the first box you would set to > 3.4 and the next one you would set as < 3.8. This doesnt seem hard to do. Consider it on my to-do list
 
somethinpositiv said:
Why not use the Tier 1 - Tier 4 of the US News Rankings? It is 262 American universities.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-search

Perhaps include the top 41 Canadian universities as well.
http://www.univforum.com/canadian-university-ranking.html

If a school is not one of those 300+ schools, then make it so you can write it in?
Click to expand...

If you could get an Excel list of all those schools, then great. Also, I can't have the option of writing them in. That defeats the reason why I'm making a drop down list: to accurately search for undergrad schools.
 
PDizzle said:
Well, the waitlists are indeed on the school page. Where they are abscent is on the user profile page, which I will add.

The idea of Waitlist => Acceptance is interesting. Not sure how to display that but that is important info, especially for those who wind up on the waitlist. This I will do in one way or another
Click to expand...

true, they are on the school page, but the dates are not posted. i was wondering if there was a reason for that?
 
Here is an idea. I believe there is bias in state schools for their in-state residents as compared to out-of-stater's. So you should compare applied/interviewed interview/acceptance for in-state residents and applied/interview interview/acceptance for out-of-state residents. Comparing if you are an in-state you have this % chance of getting in if interviewed and same for out-of-state.

i.e.
Marquetee ..............Instate........Out of state

app/interview............50%...............5%

Interview/accept.......27%...............27%


Minnesota................Instate........Out of state

app/interview...........60%................14%

Interview/accept......44%.................21%



Rough numbers just to get the idea across
 
Last edited:
Lindbergjb said:
Here is an idea. I believe there is bias in state schools for their in-state residents as compared to out-of-stater's. So you should compare applied/interviewed interview/acceptance for in-state residents and applied/interview interview/acceptance for out-of-state residents. Comparing if you are an in-state you have this % chance of getting in if interviewed and same for out-of-state.

i.e.
Marquetee ..............Instate........Out of state

app/interview............50%...............5%

Interview/accept.......27%...............27%


Minnesota................Instate........Out of state

app/interview...........60%................14%

Interview/accept......44%.................21%



Rough numbers just to get the idea across
Click to expand...

that looks like a good idea to me!
 
Lindbergjb said:
Here is an idea. I believe there is bias in state schools for their in-state residents as compared to out-of-stater's. So you should compare applied/interviewed interview/acceptance for in-state residents and applied/interview interview/acceptance for out-of-state residents. Comparing if you are an in-state you have this % chance of getting in if interviewed and same for out-of-state.

i.e.
Marquetee ..............Instate........Out of state

app/interview............50%...............5%

Interview/accept.......27%...............27%


Minnesota................Instate........Out of state

app/interview...........60%................14%

Interview/accept......44%.................21%



Rough numbers just to get the idea across
Click to expand...

It's on my very long "to do" list..... Thanks 😀
 
Two more things I hope are already on your to-do list:

Date application submitted to AADSAS so we can see admittance numbers based on how early people submitted

A separate field for post-bacc in the search. I would like the option to search for low GPA applicants that did not have to complete a post-bacc, for example.
 
SatanicMonkey said:
Two more things I hope are already on your to-do list:

Date application submitted to AADSAS so we can see admittance numbers based on how early people submitted

A separate field for post-bacc in the search. I would like the option to search for low GPA applicants that did not have to complete a post-bacc, for example.
Click to expand...



AADSAS date is already in there.

PostBac GPA search could be put in there pretty easy tho.

Dizz.....
 
Any way to implement search by AADSAS date? As in a check box for date submitted before Aug, Sep, Nov..
 
somethinpositiv said:
Why not use the Tier 1 - Tier 4 of the US News Rankings? It is 262 American universities.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-search

Perhaps include the top 41 Canadian universities as well.
http://www.univforum.com/canadian-university-ranking.html

If a school is not one of those 300+ schools, then make it so you can write it in?
Click to expand...

I dont think you can use this information from US News Rankings because its rankings of undergraduate schools not graduate dental schools. Yes, most of the schools that have a graduate dental program have an undergraduate affiliate, but, some schools do not have an undergraduate school such as UCSF and others...
 
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