Given the changes to the MCAT, I don't think there is a real role for a new
LizzyM score going forward. While the original purpose of the LizzyM score was to see if you were a numerically competitive applicant for any given school. Its brilliance was in its simplicity and applicability.
However, now, the LizzyM score is, from my observations, most commonly used in school specific discussion threads when people are applying / getting interviews / receiving acceptances. It isn't really used to gauge competitiveness for schools because more nuances in the application process have become more widely embraced, such as the 10th-90th percentile ranges, the breakdown in equivalency of MCAT and GPA in applicants with disparate numbers at opposite ends of the spectrum (or even in normal applicants), and the fact that individual school GPAs and MCATs are more readily available and known. Using these allows applicants to construct a highly individualized list that maximizes their chance of success without relying on a heuristic to gauge initial numerical competitiveness.
Especially given the fact that the old to new conversion is complicated and a percentile comparison may not be totally valid (let's see the new MSAR and compare old and new values), it's now much easier to know your stats (let's say 3.8 514) and compare them to the stats for any given school (for example, Princeton Medical School 3.85 518) and see if you're generally in range, rather than trying to compute your own LizzyM score, computing the school's LizzyM score, and then comparing them, which not only reduces the amount of information you're working with, but also requires unnecessary calculation.
I think as a community, we've evolved enough to not need to rely on the LizzyM score as much as we did 5 years ago. To help illustrate this point, let's say a school was 3.7/35 and JonnyDoctor2be had a 3.8/34. Well, both the LizzyM scores were 72s, so JonnyD2B is pretty happy because he's found out he's probably competitive from a statistical standpoint. However, what if Jonny instead had a 3.3/39 - his LizzyM score is still 72, but he's probably no longer a competitive applicant (or at least not an equivalently competitive applicant to a 3.7/35 or 3.8/34). However, most applicants on SDN can figure both of these things out themselves or gently be pointed in the right direction without using the LizzyM score as the explanation.
So now unfortunately, I think the time of the LizzyM score has passed, and there isn't an easy new way of constructing it. The original score required 2 extremely easy calculations: a multiplication by 10 and an addition. That's it and you're done. There is no equivalent with the same elegant simplicity for the new MCAT. And we don't need one. Creating a scoring system for the sole purpose of creating a scoring system isn't a worthwhile endeavor, and the ease of merely comparing an applicant's MCAT and GPA to a school's MCAT and GPA WITH the dimensionality of the data preserved trumps a one dimensional score that isn't easy to calculate and therefore serves no utility for an applicant.
Just my thoughts. The
@LizzyM score was quite possibly the greatest tool introduced into the SDN community, but it's utility is now tempered by changes in the system and now it may be time for it to be retired.
. I may have rushed this a bit (only to find out the same discussion had already started 15 minutes earlier).
