Should We Worry About Changing OOS Interview Percentages?

[HybridEarth]

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Hello,

Long story short, I have a spreadsheet containing the percent chance to get an interview as an out of state applicant for schools I was numerically competitive in; I did this to narrow down my schools from about 50 to 20 or so after taking into account mission statements. I collected a lot of the data via the MSAR which I purchased in December which contained the 2013-2014 cycle data. However, I see that the data has been updated for the 2014-2015 cycle in March, and I am worried as to whether or not I should pick the schools I apply to based on the percentage of interviews they send to out of state applicants because the numbers for many schools have changed considerably since the previous 2013-2014 cycle.

Examples:
Quinnipiac went from a nearly 20% interview rate for OOS to about 6%.
Loyola went from about a 4.6% as an instate to approximately 13%.
Toledo went from 13% to about 4.5%.
Chapel Hill dropped considerably as well, but I do not have the original number for some reason.

It looks like the percentage of interviews matriculating has remained constant. I'm sure more schools have different numbers this past cycle as well, but I haven't really looked any further at this time.

What do you think would be wise to do in this situation? @LizzyM @Goro @gyngyn @Catalystik @mimelim and anyone else with any sort of insight regarding this situation. Money is relatively tight and my gut instinct is to not apply to schools that recently interviewed less than 5% of OOS applicants. I have been told I have a competitive application so that is not my concern at this time.

Thank you kindly.

 

[TheLionheart]

Knowing more about your applications competitiveness will help those whose advice you're soliciting actually give you advice.

If you're a run of the mill competitive applicant (i.e. 3.7/32), then that's different advice than for a 4.0/38 in terms of how bold you can be. And that's not even including the rest of your app.

Edit:

I will say that, in general, I think it's a poor choice to apply to OOS state schools with which you have no significant ties. If you're applying to a private school, then its a different story since they're not beholden to their state legislature.

 

[potatochip1]

I essentially did the same as far as a spreadsheet to determine where i was going to apply. I did my math a little differently.

I think it was 'Probability of OOS sucess' = 'Percent of OOS Applicants' / 'Percent of OOS Matriculants'. Where 'Probability of OOS sucess' = 1.0 was OOS equally as likely to matriculate as IS. and 0.0 is OSS has no chance of matriculation. I think I sorted by GPA and MCAT then set my cutoff to 0.40 unless I had strong ties to the state. I ended up applying to alot of schools. If you are on a certain budget I'd suggest doing the same thing and keep bumping up that probability number till the schools remaining in your spreadsheet meets your budget.

Good for you for looking up that data, I've been shocked by how many people dont look at those number when strategizing OOS apps. Some state schools are very receptive to OOS applicants ( mostly as a means to reducing the IS tuition by having you subsidize it with your OOS tuition) Best of luck!

 

[HybridEarth]

Edited to remove stats.

 

[potatochip1]

my bad i missed that. idk how much they change year to year, as you noted the adcoms here likely know better. but my guess would be they dont change that much year to year. as noted above OOS students are used a means to bring in more dollars to help reduce IS costs. Schools need to balance their budget each year and likely keep a constant mix to keep the same amount of money coming through the door. I know in California undergrad bringing in more OOS students as a means to keeping IS tution costs is always a go to for state legislature.

 

[HybridEarth]

I essentially did the same as far as a spreadsheet to determine where i was going to apply. I did my math a little differently.

I think it was 'Probability of OOS sucess' = 'Percent of OOS Applicants' / 'Percent of OOS Matriculants'. Where 'Probability of OOS sucess' = 1.0 was OOS equally as likely to matriculate as IS. and 0.0 is OSS has no chance of matriculation. I think I sorted by GPA and MCAT then set my cutoff to 0.40 unless I had strong ties to the state. I ended up applying to alot of schools. If you are on a certain budget I'd suggest doing the same thing and keep bumping up that probability number till the schools remaining in your spreadsheet meets your budget.

Good for you for looking up that data, I've been shocked by how many people dont look at those number when strategizing OOS apps. Some state schools are very receptive to OOS applicants ( mostly as a means to reducing the IS tuition by having you subsidize it with your OOS tuition) Best of luck!

I'm REALLY happy I'm not the only one doing this... everyone is calling me neurotic and I simply reply that I just want to make my chances as best as they can be. Best of luck to you as well my friend 🙂

 

[linsanity17]

Crazy that I came upon this thread just now when all I've been doing all day is making a similar spreadsheet to determine OOS favorability haha

My strategy was to calculate (('% OOS Applicants' * '% of OOS interviewed') / ('% IS Applicants' * '% of IS interviewed')) for each school. My general cutoff was 0.5, but focused mainly on schools above 1.0 and maybe as low as 0.7 to narrow down my list.


I definitely noticed that UNC trend (I think it was 2% of OOS applicants get an interview) which is absurd, but no complaints here (UNC is my undergrad and my home state so hopefully that 55% IS interview statistic works in my favor!).

Glad to know that I'm not the only one crunching numbers to try to make sense of this process!

 

[potatochip1]

I'm REALLY happy I'm not the only one doing this... everyone is calling me neurotic and I simply reply that I just want to make my chances as best as they can be. Best of luck to you as well my friend 🙂

lol it is a little neurotic, but it worked great for me for this year. I know a fair number of otherwise qualified applicants who wasted money applying to schools who essentially accept no OOS at all (example: University of Nevada, I think like 1% OOS). Better to be informed than applying again next cycle. Best of luck!

 

[LizzyM]

Two thoughts:
Quinnipiac and Loyola are private schools and as far as I know, neither has an in-state preference.
Toledo's class is 22% OOS which tells me that they are open to the possibility of an OOS matriculant.

I would suggest looking at the ratio of instate applicants interviewed to OOS applicants interviewed. Also read the MSAR and determine if OOS applicants who are considered are limited to those admitted through the MD/PhD program or some other special program.

The problem with percentage of OOS applicants who interview and/or matriculate is that if the number of applicants grows, the proportion of applicants who can be interviewed and admitted will shrink. The other problem with matriculant data is that once offers are made, many applicants have multiple offers and then the choice of an OOS school (often further from home and with high OOS tuition costs) may be less desirable than other options and few admitted candidates will choose it. So a school may be interviewing and admitting applicants but OOS students are choosing not to matriculate there. Look at OOS tuition. If it were the only school that offered you admission, would you choose to attend? If so, and the numbers are right, you might want to take a chance.

OP: many schools take the average MCAT as it has been shown to be the best predictor of success in students who took multiple MCATs. Consider that when you look at schools in your range as taking the average drops your MCAT by 3.5 points compared with your most recent score.

 

[Goro]

You can't tell anything with an n = 2. Unless private schools specifically state their mission is to train doctors for their own state, I'd ignore the numbers for Loyola, for one.

State schools are always hard to get into for OOSers, with a few exceptions like VCU.

Hello,

Long story short, I have a spreadsheet containing the percent chance to get an interview as an out of state applicant for schools I was numerically competitive in; I did this to narrow down my schools from about 50 to 20 or so after taking into account mission statements. I collected a lot of the data via the MSAR which I purchased in December which contained the 2013-2014 cycle data. However, I see that the data has been updated for the 2014-2015 cycle in March, and I am worried as to whether or not I should pick the schools I apply to based on the percentage of interviews they send to out of state applicants because the numbers for many schools have changed considerably since the previous 2013-2014 cycle.

Examples:
Quinnipiac went from a nearly 20% interview rate for OOS to about 6%.
Loyola went from about a 4.6% as an instate to approximately 13%.
Toledo went from 13% to about 4.5%.
Chapel Hill dropped considerably as well, but I do not have the original number for some reason.

It looks like the percentage of interviews matriculating has remained constant. I'm sure more schools have different numbers this past cycle as well, but I haven't really looked any further at this time.

What do you think would be wise to do in this situation? @LizzyM @Goro @gyngyn @Catalystik @mimelim and anyone else with any sort of insight regarding this situation. Money is relatively tight and my gut instinct is to not apply to schools that recently interviewed less than 5% of OOS applicants. I have been told I have a competitive application so that is not my concern at this time.

Thank you kindly.

 

[HybridEarth]

Two thoughts:
Quinnipiac and Loyola are private schools and as far as I know, neither has an in-state preference.
Toledo's class is 22% OOS which tells me that they are open to the possibility of an OOS matriculant.

I would suggest looking at the ratio of instate applicants interviewed to OOS applicants interviewed. Also read the MSAR and determine if OOS applicants who are considered are limited to those admitted through the MD/PhD program or some other special program.

The problem with percentage of OOS applicants who interview and/or matriculate is that if the number of applicants grows, the proportion of applicants who can be interviewed and admitted will shrink. The other problem with matriculant data is that once offers are made, many applicants have multiple offers and then the choice of an OOS school (often further from home and with high OOS tuition costs) may be less desirable than other options and few admitted candidates will choose it. So a school may be interviewing and admitting applicants but OOS students are choosing not to matriculate there. Look at OOS tuition. If it were the only school that offered you admission, would you choose to attend? If so, and the numbers are right, you might want to take a chance.

OP: many schools take the average MCAT as it has been shown to be the best predictor of success in students who took multiple MCATs. Consider that when you look at schools in your range as taking the average drops your MCAT by 3.5 points compared with your most recent score.

Thank you kindly for the insight! I will definitely refine my list a little more during the coming weeks taking into consideration what you just told me. I contacted every school I was applying to (low tier to reach) and I am only applying to schools that look at the highest composite score or the most recent score.

 

[gyngyn]

Thank you kindly for the insight! I will definitely refine my list a little more during the coming weeks taking into consideration what you just told me. I contacted every school I was applying to (low tier to reach) and I am only applying to schools that look at the highest composite score or the most recent score.

When the person responding says they only look at the "best or most recent" he may be referring to the score reported to USNWR for accepted students.
Screeners may be looking for something somewhat different and all evaluators have a personal interpretation which, if evidence-based, would be the average. Since many committee members are scientists, the odds that they will use evidence may be higher (and I'll bet they are not answering the phone!).

 

[medic86]

I'm still trying to figure out what interview percentage I should make as a cutoff for OOS schools. Bleh.

 

[mimelim]

As others have pointed out, for OOS private schools, I would ignore the in vs. out of state component entirely. For public schools, in my very limited experience, the people that get in from out of state are NOT the people with 3.8/40 scores. Yes, it certainly helps to have very strong stats, no matter what, but that is not the unifying factor. The unifying factor is that they have some tie to the state or some other reason to be applying there than, "It is ranked high on USNWR."

 

[HybridEarth]

When the person responding says they only look at the "best or most recent" he may be referring to the score reported to USNWR for accepted students.
Screeners may be looking for something somewhat different and all evaluators have a personal interpretation which, if evidence-based, would be the average. Since many committee members are scientists, the odds that they will use evidence may be higher (and I'll bet they are not answering the phone!).

Thank you so much, I'll definitely be careful! What's actually surprising is that 90% of the schools picked up the phone almost immediately, and approximately half of those that did spoke to me about how the admissions committee felt regarding MCAT retakes, whether or not the first score will be held against me, etc. for a good 3-5 minutes. I felt very encouraged by them because of the big jump in score, but I'm probably going to take off a few of my reach schools just in case. I absolutely understand 2 scores is not an ideal situation to be in, and I hope it doesn't hurt me too much... a 28.5 average is really scary to think about because I know that is way below my potential. Talk is cheap though 🙂

I'm still trying to figure out what interview percentage I should make as a cutoff for OOS schools. Bleh.

Don't worry, I had the same problem and felt overwhelmed when I first started. After I made a list of about 50 schools that had mission statements that resonated well with who I am as a person and my application as a whole, I listed them from highest to lowest interview percentages for OOS or in state if I was a resident. I also had a column for the percentage of those that had interviews that actually matriculated. I think my range ended up being about 22% interview rate (for my state school) and the lowest being around 4%, which were many of the California schools. I think the sweet spot is around 10% and up, and throw in a few under the 10% if you really like the school from what you've seen/read.

As others have pointed out, for OOS private schools, I would ignore the in vs. out of state component entirely. For public schools, in my very limited experience, the people that get in from out of state are NOT the people with 3.8/40 scores. Yes, it certainly helps to have very strong stats, no matter what, but that is not the unifying factor. The unifying factor is that they have some tie to the state or some other reason to be applying there than, "It is ranked high on USNWR."

Thank you! This eases some of the tension I felt regarding many OOS private institutions. It's also interesting that from what you've seen, the high performers are not typically the ones accepted into OOS public institutions. I always hypothesized it would have been the other way around 🙄 thank you for the insight, what you said makes complete sense.