The Great SDN Survey of 2015: No II by Turkey = No MD or nah?

[NotaCop]

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[LizzyM]

3) Is this in fact going to be a record year in terms of total apps and median GPAs and MCATs?

The number of applications and the median stats won't be reported until late in 2016 around the time of the AAMC annual meeting.

That said, I suspect that many people who did not want to face the new MCAT are applying with about-to-expire old MCAT scores.

 

[Lucca]

The number of applications and the median stats won't be reported until late in 2016 around the time of the AAMC annual meeting.

That said, I suspect that many people who did not want to face the new MCAT are applying with about-to-expire old MCAT scores.

It seems that every year is a record year these days.

 

[ImmunoLove]

No i didn't!!!! It can be misinterpreted that way but i was referring to large as in grand, epic and of significant importance, as opposed to being small, insignificant etc.

....

..... i'm getting punished now aren't i? 🙁

small should never be confused with insignificant....
We have a saying in Farsi, which roughly translates to "look not at the (chile) pepper's size, but break it open and taste its sting". OK so I butchered that. Point being: think spicy chili pepper.

 

[Lawpy]

small should never be confused with insignificant....
We have a saying in Farsi, which roughly translates to "look not at the (chile) pepper's size, but break it open and taste its sting". OK so I butchered that. Point being: think spicy chili pepper.

😕 so smaller, the spicier? Oh my 😳

 

[BluMist]

that's not what she said...

😕 so smaller, the spicier? Oh my 😳

 

[Lawpy]

@Lucca when will the results come out?

that's not what she said...

😕😕😕

 

[ImmunoLove]

@Lucca when will the results come out?



😕😕😕

LOLOL.

 

[Lucca]

@Lucca when will the results come out?



😕😕😕

When responses slow down and I have time to make a longer post. So probably this weekend, after Christmas and stuff.

 

[Goro]

We're definitely seeing this at my school.

3) Is this in fact going to be a record year in terms of total apps and median GPAs and MCATs?

 

[LuluLovesMe]

We're definitely seeing this at my school.

Have your standards for granting a II increased compared to earlier in the cycle? And by how much?

 

[Goro]

Our floor hasn't officially increased, but are are getting more picky with borderline candidates. But the quality of people we're interviewing has also risen to such an extent that we're seeing less borderline people.

So while, say, two years ago, I'd say we waitlisted or rejected maybe 25% of interviewees, now we're doing that for maybe 10% of interviewees.

I don't think that this is merely due to the new MCAT. The quality and number of applicants to our school has been steadily rising over the past years years. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I've noticed a great respect for Osteopathy in the pre-allo forum over this same time period, and my notion is that the pool of MD caliber candidates from the western side of the US (and many from CA) are now more willing to go for a DO degree and stay closer to home than try for Gtown, Wake, Rush etc....even if this means a higher probability of ending up in Primary Care.

Have your standards for granting a II increased compared to earlier in the cycle? And by how much?

 

[LizzyM]

I have no data but I would hope that there has been a decline in borderline applicants even with an increase in the number of applicants to a given school thanks to a certain "score" that is well known around here. Of course, with a larger pool and an increase in the quality of the applicants, the competition for an interview is stiffer.

 

[NotaCop]

I have no data but I would hope that there has been a decline in borderline applicants even with an increase in the number of applicants to a given school thanks to a certain "score" that is well known around here. Of course, with a larger pool and an increase in the quality of the applicants, the competition for an interview is stiffer.

You're talking about my XBOX Live Gamerscore, right?

 

[LizzyM]

You're talking about my XBOX Live Gamerscore, right?

That is certainly the score you have to thank for the 3 interview invites you've received, isn't it?

 

[Doodledreams]

GPA ~3.8, MCAT 39, great letters of reference, publications, etc. etc. ... no invites...

but then again, I did confirm in mid-october and completed my secondaries between October-December. Expecting the worst, hoping for the best, and singing Edith Piaf all day long to comfort myself.

 

[Doodledreams]

Spoke too soon above... received an invite at last!

 

[Lost in Translation]

I scoff at your Edith Piaf and raise you a Ruth Etting.

 

[Nietzschelover]

In a large stack of very similar 3.7-3.75ish/33-34ish applications what is most likely to stand out as a reason for an adcom to pull a file for an interview? The quality/sincerity of a PS? A particular EC? Undergrad school? Committee letter/letters of reference? Something else or more intangible?

 

[LuluLovesMe]

@Lucca can we see the results please ;-;

 

[Lucca]

@Lucca can we see the results please ;-;

Yes, I will post them later today. Sorry for the delay, I'm studying for the MCAT so my free time is mostly at night.

 

[feather421]

Wouldn't it be better to keep this survey open until the end of the cycle so that you have information for interviews given out in January/Feb/March?

 

[whatsupdr]

Wouldn't it be better to keep this survey open until the end of the cycle so that you have information for interviews given out in January/Feb/March?

I agree I am still mid cycle!

 

[Lucca]

Wouldn't it be better to keep this survey open until the end of the cycle so that you have information for interviews given out in January/Feb/March?

It would but since I'm not subscribed to survey monkey I can only see up to 100 results. The survey reached that and is currently at 148 but I am only able to look at the first 100 responses. I'm going to make a longer post with the results now.

 

[Lucca]

Ok here are the results. Sorry for the long delay, but I've been busy what with the holidays and MCAT studying.

I. General results and comments.
II. Graphs, Graphs, Graphs!
III. Anything interesting?

I. General Results and Comments

The big question: "no II by Turkey = no MD"?

Essentially, yes; my survey shows that "no II by Turkey = no MD" proves to be a fairly robust heuristic as we all expected it might be. With n=100, only 3 individuals received an acceptance after exclusively receiving IIs after Thanksgiving.

Respondent info; Yes / No questions:

Of the 100 sample respondents:
Where you accepted to medical school?
Yes: 90
No: 10
Did you receive an II before Thanksgiving?
Yes: 93
No: 7
Did you receive an acceptance at a school for which you received the II after Thanksgiving?
Yes: 23
No: 71
6 respondents chose to skip this question
Did you receive an acceptance after exclusively receiving IIs after Thanksgiving?
Yes: 3
No: 89
8 skipped

II. Graphs, Graphs, Graphs!

A. Respondent LizzyM distribution

B. Respondent GPA distribution

C. MCAT Disttribution

It was brought to my attention earlier that the answer choices for the MCAT question did not accurately capture the differences between MCAT scores. This is a valid critique and one I wish I had thought of myself when cooking up the survey but by the time it was brought up the survey already had 70+ respondents and I was loathe to change it. However, I was less concerned about pinning down a median or mean number for all three of these questions ( LizzyM, GPA, MCAT ) and more concerned with broadly sampling applicants or identifying any unexpected trends in the data. From these graphs, it looks like the distributions mirror what one would expect from a sample of MS applicants given the available AAMC information (with a slight skew to the right on MCAT and GPA).

D. Verification Date Distribution

I've reached my file attachment limit....so To Be Continued

 

[Lucca]

E. Completion Date Distribution

You will notice for all of the graphs the numbers may not add up to 100. This is because some respondents chose to skip some questions, as they did above. This completion date distribution had 78 respondents and 22 skippers. I imagine a lot of these skips are because this question was added about 30 minutes after the survey was opened.

F. How many schools were you accepted to?

You'll notice that above I said 10 respondents claimed to not have been accepted to medical school, however only 9 responded 0 lol. I imagine someone misclicked or lied, either or it's only 1 person.


Obviously, this is not the most scientific survey out there. I understand that and I hope y'all do as well. For one, look at the "Were you accepted to medical school?" question. 90 and 10. That is not representative of the general population lol, I'm confident there's a selection bias here in that 1) I'm posting on SDN and 2) people who were accepted are more likely to want to answer a survey about being accepted to medical school. Some of these responses could be totally fabricated! You run that risk with every survey, but I literally did 0 quality control on these responses so there you have it. What does give me confidence is that we sampled the GPA and MCAT broadly so it looks like were getting respondents of different "applicant tiers".

So who the hell are those 3 people who got in after only getting IIs after Turkey?

No idea, like I said, this was a totally anonymous survey. However, I can tell you some things about them, respondents A, B, C, respectively:

Respondent A:

@familyaerospace already declared to be this individual with the 51-55 LizzyM score.

Respondent B:

LizzyM: 66-70
GPA. 3.6-3.9
MCAT: 31-33
Verification Date: 08/01-08/15
Completion Date: 09/01-09/15
Acceptance #: 1

Respondent C:

LizzyM: 66-70
GPA: 3.6-3.9
MCAT: 31-33
Acceptance #: 3
Decided to skip Verification and Completion date questions.
Notably, this person received three acceptances after receiving IIs all after Thanksgiving.

III. Anything interesting?

I am currently in the process of analyzing the correlation between Verification / Completion date and number of acceptances and also sorting this correlation by LizzyM score. This isn't done so I'll post the complete results later. However, I do have some things to offer as a teaser:

The people who applied in the month of June (and, importantly, were accepted) had an average number of 2.84 acceptances. The people who applied in the month of August had an average number of 1.6 acceptances. LizzyM distributions for both months appear mostly identical. Notably, the number for the month of June could be a little higher since some of the 7+ acceptance individuals were in that cohort and I put them down as 7 for accounting purposes but they very well could have had many more acceptances than that. There were no 7+ acceptance individuals in the month of August cohort. Definitive? No. Suggestive that we should take a closer look at the data? Sure, and I'm doing my best to try to sort out how the variables might be interacting. Again, nothing conclusive can be drawn from this survey and as always everyone encourages applicants, of all strengths, to apply as early as possible.

 

[differentiating]

Essentially, yes; my survey shows that "no II by Turkey = no MD" proves to be a fairly robust heuristic as we all expected it might be. With n=100, only 3 individuals received an acceptance after exclusively receiving IIs after Thanksgiving.

3/7 is still a pretty decent number, all things considered - that's 43.9% of applicants being accepted, which is pretty close to the 40% number sometimes cited for applicants as a whole. Of course, the small sample size and response bias likely skew that percentage, but it would be interesting to see how it would shake out if one could collect a larger sample of people who didn't receive IIs until after Thanksgiving (if at all).

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

I know people who had their first interview in January or Febury and received acceptance to some high caliber schools. Just throwin it out here

 

[Lucca]

I know people who had their first interview in January or Febury and received acceptance to some high caliber schools. Just throwin it out here

Of course, I don't doubt many, many people fit this bill. That's why I described it as a heuristic and not a rule

 

[familyaerospace]

My undergraduate GPA on acceptance : 3.53

My MCAT on acceptance : Hahahahahaha!!! Hahaha! *wipes tears from eyes*

My LizzyM calculations were from a few years ago when I actually got it calculated but I don't think my GPA changed that much enough to move it to the next level. I stopped calculating it on updates because it was too stressing. My mentor was like "Will you PLEASE stay away from SDN? You hearing about your LizzyM score is going to make you more neurotic than usual. That is what is going to cause you to not get in! Your anxiety! Plus this is not how we choose who to interview anyway!"

From Amcas, I just pulled it : SUBMISSION DATE: 06/11/2014 05:28 PM PROCESSED DATE: 07/02/2014 04:10 PM All my letters and such were already in Interfolio with one exception so it pretty much got transferred immediately.

 

[Womb Raider]

My undergraduate GPA on acceptance : 3.53

My MCAT on acceptance : Hahahahahaha!!! Hahaha! *wipes tears from eyes*

I'm confused, LizzyM score is just GPA*10 + MCAT, right? With a 3.5GPA you're saying your MCAT was between a 16-20? And you got accepted with that? Or did you retake the MCAT?

 

[familyaerospace]

I'm confused, LizzyM score is just GPA*10 + MCAT, right? With a 3.5GPA you're saying your MCAT was between a 16-20? And you got accepted with that? Or did you retake the MCAT?

My LizzyM was calculated I believe right before my first application cycle when I was trying to get into a post-bacc linkage which ultimately rejected me (not for any other reason than I was trans). I stopped doing GPA improvement in 2012 after working on it for 5 years I think because mentally I was in the "And not a single f*ck was given that day" stage. Hard to move like 300 credits worth of a GPA.

The old spreadsheet you could put your GPA and MCAT break down in, it would calculate your LizzyM score as well as giving you a colour code as to what schools you were likely to get invites too. Assuming the spreadsheet had the formula correct, it was a 54 point something at the time. I swear to heavens above, almost all the schools were red as in don't apply. I actually plugged those numbers in the first time in my mentor's office on the Emory SOM campus, I had a panic attack and the look in his eye made me wonder if he was about to slap me like how men do to hysterical women in the movies. I updated it a few more semesters since then. If I recall, I calculated LizzyM based on the DO grading since I gained a few points and was upper 50s and then it was much nicer so I actually used that to boost my confidence enough to apply to MD schools which were definitely still out of my league.

My MCAT was taken multiple times and it was a roller-coaster (much like my life, I was homeless I think every time I took the MCAT). I was accepted with a 26 which is significantly below the average of my school. There are a few members of my class who have MCATs significantly below mine according to my interviewer.

 

[bananafish94]

My hope just went from 100 to 0 real quick.

 

[Lucca]

My hope just went from 100 to 0 real quick.

There are always exceptions. If you are in the no II category it's best to be prudent and line up an actionable plan for the next year but there's no use in despairing until the cycle is completely over. A friend two years ago had all of his interviews in the Sprinf and was accepted off a wait list in the summer. Stressful, but he is no less an MD than anyone else.

 

[bananafish94]

There are always exceptions. If you are in the no II category it's best to be prudent and line up an actionable plan for the next year but there's no use in despairing until the cycle is completely over. A friend two years ago had all of his interviews in the Sprinf and was accepted off a wait list in the summer. Stressful, but he is no less an MD than anyone else.

I do have IIs, all of which I received in December. But this data seems to indicate that I'm interviewing for a waitlist spot at best.

 

[Lucca]

I do have IIs, all of which I received in December. But this data seems to indicate that I'm interviewing for a waitlist spot at best.

Well n=100, there is major selection bias (SDN only), and the data doesn't present any information about wait lists. These data are meant to be suggestive of trends and heuristics but we can't draw a conclusion as strong as that one without a better survey, a larger cohort, and institutional data; not to mention, a better statistician 😉.

 

[bananafish94]

Well n=100, there is major selection bias (SDN only), and the data doesn't present any information about wait lists. These data are meant to be suggestive of trends and heuristics but we can't draw a conclusion as strong as that one without a better survey, a larger cohort, and institutional data; not to mention, a better statistician 😉.

I'm sure you're a great statistician. Obviously I take anything like this with a grain of salt. I do know people who were accepted after receiving IIs after Thanksgiving and the school specific threads from last year are reasonably encouraging. But thank you for this information!

 

[bumblebee611]

I'm sure you're a great statistician. Obviously I take anything like this with a grain of salt. I do know people who were accepted after receiving IIs after Thanksgiving and the school specific threads from last year are reasonably encouraging. But thank you for this information!

FWIW, @bananafish94, it seems to me there is a difference between someone who is verified and complete nice and early but still gets no II till after Thanksgiving and someone who isn't verified/complete until late and then only gets II after Thanksgiving. I would think the people who were complete nice and early but don't get II till late are truly weaker in some way, whereas the people who were complete late but were strong candidates might well pick up some II/acceptances late in the game and can justifiably remain hopeful. I haven't examined @Lucca's results closely enough to know if we can answer this from the data.

 

[bananafish94]

FWIW, @bananafish94, it seems to me there is a difference between someone who is verified and complete nice and early but still gets no II till after Thanksgiving and someone who isn't verified/complete until late and then only gets II after Thanksgiving. I would think the people who were complete nice and early but don't get II till late are truly weaker in some way, whereas the people who were complete late but were strong candidates might well pick up some II/acceptances late in the game and can justifiably remain hopeful. I haven't examined @Lucca's results closely enough to know if we can answer this from the data.

I would consider myself more early than late, so that's a bad sign. The encouraging thing is that these schools have low interview rates (<5% for one) and have strong post interview acceptance rates (looks like >60% according to my back of the envelope calculations). The funny thing is that I had pretty much resigned myself to not getting in and set up a scribing job to prepare for next year. So to get some hope again and then get rejected from all of them would really blow. But I guess all I can do is prepare as much as possible and hope for the best.

 

[differentiating]

I do have IIs, all of which I received in December. But this data seems to indicate that I'm interviewing for a waitlist spot at best.

Individual C - my friend who I mentioned earlier - did get one acceptance up-front, though the others were post-waitlist. So at least at some schools, you do have a shot at an outright acceptance. Also, speaking as someone who also got a lot of waitlists, post-waitlist acceptances aren't something to discount, either - both said friend and I are at schools we were initially waitlisted at, rather than ones that accepted us initially.

Good luck at your interviews, either way.

 

[bananafish94]

Individual C - my friend who I mentioned earlier - did get one acceptance up-front, though the others were post-waitlist. So at least at some schools, you do have a shot at an outright acceptance. Also, speaking as someone who also got a lot of waitlists, post-waitlist acceptances aren't something to discount, either - both said friend and I are at schools we were initially waitlisted at, rather than ones that accepted us initially.

Good luck at your interviews, either way.

Thank you! They can accept me the day before classes start for all I care. As long as I get in somewhere.

 

[Lucca]

Here are the number of acceptances given a particular completion or verification date. The LizzyM distributions for all of the date cohorts are virtually identical so I didn't see the need to report them.

There are 3 main problems with the data here:

1) n is still really small. All t-tests between paired averages were unable to find a significant difference between any two adjacent data points (each data point representing a mean of varying n). There was a statistically significant difference between the average acceptance rate for the early June and the early/late August cohorts ( p<0.005 and p<10^-8, respectively) in the verification date data. The completion date data was not very notable. The graph doesn't really mean much and the steep decline at the end is explained by having only one or two respondents for the final two cohorts. I wish I had 1000 respondents and the ability to look at all of them but SurveyMonkey is expensive.

2) The 7+ acceptance respondents were not able to specify exactly how many medical schools they were accepted to (again, with the free version I had a limited number of questions to ask). So I'll just tell you where they landed:
Number of 7+ Respondents Per Verification Cohort
Verified 06/01-06/15: 2
Verified 07/15-07/31: 1
Verified 09/01-09/15: 1
All other cohorts had 0.

Depending on whether these applicants were accepted to 7 schools or 14, their response could have potentially shifted the mean by a significant amount.

3) As you can see from my previous posts, most respondents applied early so the earlier cohorts have a larger N within their mean. The means towards the "later" end of the spectrum were more easily shifted by single responses.

A Supplemental Graph from Washington University in St. Louis' MSTP Admissions portal:

Note that this is for MSTP admissions at Wash U and so the number of applications under consideration is not particularly large. Even then, you can see how limited the applicants being considered later in the cycle in terms of available interview slots. We all know this, but I think this graph shows just how steep the difference can be as the cycle moves forward. I wish I could find a graph like this for MD only since MD admissions deals in much larger numbers and MSTP admissions tend to do things a little later than MD admissions.

Quoted from the webpage: "As the chart [above] documents, candidates whose application is not completed significantly before the October 15 MSTP application deadline limit their chances of being offered an interview. Individuals who apply at October 1st and 15th will compete for 20 available interview slots, as opposed to the 99 that were available to early applicants. These data are for the 2014 applicant pool, but is consistent with previous years."

 

[Lost in Translation]

Well n=100, there is major selection bias (SDN only), and the data doesn't present any information about wait lists. These data are meant to be suggestive of trends and heuristics but we can't draw a conclusion as strong as that one without a better survey, a larger cohort, and institutional data; not to mention, a better statistician 😉.

Should have used Google Forms w/ restriction to one submission per account. The only ones without a @gmail.com or Google account for that matter are luddites.

 

[Lucca]

Should have used Google Forms w/ restriction to one submission per account. The only ones without a @gmail.com or Google account for that matter are luddites.

It would have been a better way, if I do any of these again in the future I'll do it that way. I wasn't aware of surveymonkey's limitations until I reached them.

 

[familyaerospace]

You calculated your Lizzy M Score incorrectly. You posted earlier you had a 3.53 and you posted that you got a 26 MCAT above. That's a 61 Lizzy M not a 51. Still a challenge to get in, but it truly seems unfathomable that anyone with a Lizzy M of 51 would be accepted to any MD. As someone posted earlier that would be the equivalent of a 16 MCAT, which I feel takes serious skill to get (intentionally try to answer question wrong lol).

It may be incorrect, but the old spreadsheet (the illegal one) which calculated it for me. You never want me to calculate anything by hand or I will get truly the oddest of numbers. There is a reason that while my background allows me to go into human factors engineering to continue my research, I would be too frightened of a math error causing someone to blow up. I will kill fewer people in medicine.

It asked for gpa. I gave it my undergrad GPA from my transcript.

It asked for last MCAT score and breakdown. I gave it the MCAT as soon as it was released.

It told me I was 54 and change and basically told me I was screwed after I already applied. Technically the person who did the spreadsheet could have entered in the formula incorrectly which is why I have repeatedly stated I got it off the spreadsheet based on my initial numbers which I inputted when I was in Dr S's office in 2010 (after I already earned my BS and MS, but did not finish my never ending post-bacc) which he can verify.

I do know some of my early MCAT practices were in the "Oh crap" stage. I did at least get one practice that was 20, but that was not the MCAT used in the calculation. There is at least one person who has a 20 MCAT in my school according to one of my interviewers so apparently nothing is impossible.

 

[deleted630732]

It may be incorrect, but the old spreadsheet (the illegal one) which calculated it for me. You never want me to calculate anything by hand or I will get truly the oddest of numbers. There is a reason that while my background allows me to go into human factors engineering to continue my research, I would be too frightened of a math error causing someone to blow up. I will kill fewer people in medicine.

It asked for gpa. I gave it my undergrad GPA from my transcript.

It asked for last MCAT score and breakdown. I gave it the MCAT as soon as it was released.

It told me I was 54 and change and basically told me I was screwed after I already applied. Technically the person who did the spreadsheet could have entered in the formula incorrectly which is why I have repeatedly stated I got it off the spreadsheet based on my initial numbers which I inputted when I was in Dr S's office in 2010 (after I already earned my BS and MS, but did not finish my never ending post-bacc) which he can verify.

I do know some of my early MCAT practices were in the "Oh crap" stage. I did at least get one practice that was 20, but that was not the MCAT used in the calculation. There is at least one person who has a 20 MCAT in my school according to one of my interviewers so apparently nothing is impossible.

Haha, maybe that person's parent made a sizable donation to the school :/

 

[ImmunoLove]

Study not powered to answer that question (you've answered whether there's a sig in "acceptance if one receives II pre-turkey", and not "no acceptance if II post-Turkey only").

Edit: way too lazy to show mathematical stats proof.