total vs individual mcat scores in admit decisions?

[paco]

I'm a postin' fool tonight...

Just wondering if anyone has any bona fide evidence that some schools look at verbal scores apart from others or that some mainly evaluate your total score or that any school gives a flip about your writing score....

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[Medikit]

No one really cares about the hw score. They say keep it out of the JKL range to be safe, but it's really not a big deal. There are very few people with JKL and I've never once seen someone say they thought it hindered them from getting into medical school. In other words, there are a lot of reasons for schools not to accept you, we don't really understand how the crapshoot works at any particular school, but they will probably find something far before they ever get to the writing score. Even if you have two nearly identical individuals, they will probably choose on subtleties from the interview rather than the hw score.

I don't know the answer to the verbal one. What I usually say is the score they will look at most is whichever one is lowest. For you that must be Verbal, for other people it's BS, for others it's PS.

 

[VCMM414]

I'm a postin' fool tonight...

Just wondering if anyone has any bona fide evidence that some schools look at verbal scores apart from others or that some mainly evaluate your total score or that any school gives a flip about your writing score....

Writing scores don't matter.

School look at mcat scores by individual sections, not together.

 

[1viking]

So, I had this same question as I undertook a project for my econometrics class this last semester. I decided to run a heteroskedastic robust ordinary least squares estimator (I also ran a LOGIT model since binary dependent variable) to find the solution to this question. Not to give too much info--if you want more, I'll give it--but I acquired the data from the Health Pro advisement center that they acquired since 1994 for all students from my school applying to med schools (osteo and allo). The dependent variable was a binary variable of acceptance or not (who cares if you got accepted to 10 schools; you can only go to one). Variables included all of the MCAT scores by section (WS given a numerical value), Science GPA, All other, Total GPA, # of schools applied to, and whether you took MCAT in August or April.

Results:

If you divide the OLS estimators by their standard deviations, you get a "standardized coefficient" which is what we want since GPA has a range of 0 to 4 and the MCAT has a range from 1 to 15. So the results are the standardized coefficients. Since our dependent has a range of zero or one, you can assume these coefficients are percentages (i.e. Increase your verbal MCAT score by 1 point and you will increase your probability of being accepted by x amount--be aware that I divided by the standard deviation, so this intuition doesn't necessarily work out; just a help).

**Verbal MCAT=.137
**Physical MCAT=.080
Bio MCAT=.0449
Writing Sample=.0276
*Science GPA=.1943
All other GPA=.0527
Total GPA=.0285
**# Schools applied to=.1333 (duh)
*MCAT April=.0672
MCAT August=.0000

sample N=1564 R squared=.21 (awesome for a binary model!)

** denotes the coefficient is significantly different from 0 at the 1% level
* denotes the coefficient is significantly different from 0 at the 5% level

Interpretation:
Ace your science classes, since it accounts for almost 20% of your admittance according to this model. Study your verbal section of the MCAT. Forget the bio section; it wasn't even significant at the 15% level. The writing sample is even worse, not even at the 25% level. Don't apply to just three schools; you'll regret it. And don't even think about missing the april MCAT.

I hope this puts the debate about WS to rest. Adds a new debate, though, the bio score.
By the way, I got an A.

 

[Medikit]

So, I had this same question as I undertook a project for my econometrics class this last semester. I decided to run a heteroskedastic robust ordinary least squares estimator (I also ran a LOGIT model since binary dependent variable) to find the solution to this question. Not to give too much info--if you want more, I'll give it--but I acquired the data from the Health Pro advisement center that they acquired since 1994 for all students from my school applying to med schools (osteo and allo). The dependent variable was a binary variable of acceptance or not (who cares if you got accepted to 10 schools; you can only go to one). Variables included all of the MCAT scores by section (WS given a numerical value), Science GPA, All other, Total GPA, # of schools applied to, and whether you took MCAT in August or April.

Results:

If you divide the OLS estimators by their standard deviations, you get a "standardized coefficient" which is what we want since GPA has a range of 0 to 4 and the MCAT has a range from 1 to 15. So the results are the standardized coefficients. Since our dependent has a range of zero or one, you can assume these coefficients are percentages (i.e. Increase your verbal MCAT score by 1 point and you will increase your probability of being accepted by x amount--be aware that I divided by the standard deviation, so this intuition doesn't necessarily work out; just a help).

**Verbal MCAT=.137
**Physical MCAT=.080
Bio MCAT=.0449
Writing Sample=.0276
*Science GPA=.1943
All other GPA=.0527
Total GPA=.0285
**# Schools applied to=.1333 (duh)
*MCAT April=.0672
MCAT August=.0000

sample N=1564 R squared=.21 (awesome for a binary model!)

** denotes the coefficient is significantly different from 0 at the 1% level
* denotes the coefficient is significantly different from 0 at the 5% level

Interpretation:
Ace your science classes, since it accounts for almost 20% of your admittance according to this model. Study your verbal section of the MCAT. Forget the bio section; it wasn't even significant at the 15% level. The writing sample is even worse, not even at the 25% level. Don't apply to just three schools; you'll regret it. And don't even think about missing the april MCAT.

I hope this puts the debate about WS to rest. Adds a new debate, though, the bio score.
By the way, I got an A.

Did you make a thread about this? Because you could. Especially if you remove some of the stats lingo.

 

[KNightInBlue]

So, I had this same question as I undertook a project for my econometrics class this last semester. I decided to run a heteroskedastic robust ordinary least squares estimator (I also ran a LOGIT model since binary dependent variable) to find the solution to this question. Not to give too much info--if you want more, I'll give it--but I acquired the data from the Health Pro advisement center that they acquired since 1994 for all students from my school applying to med schools (osteo and allo). The dependent variable was a binary variable of acceptance or not (who cares if you got accepted to 10 schools; you can only go to one). Variables included all of the MCAT scores by section (WS given a numerical value), Science GPA, All other, Total GPA, # of schools applied to, and whether you took MCAT in August or April.

Results:

If you divide the OLS estimators by their standard deviations, you get a "standardized coefficient" which is what we want since GPA has a range of 0 to 4 and the MCAT has a range from 1 to 15. So the results are the standardized coefficients. Since our dependent has a range of zero or one, you can assume these coefficients are percentages (i.e. Increase your verbal MCAT score by 1 point and you will increase your probability of being accepted by x amount--be aware that I divided by the standard deviation, so this intuition doesn't necessarily work out; just a help).

**Verbal MCAT=.137
**Physical MCAT=.080
Bio MCAT=.0449
Writing Sample=.0276
*Science GPA=.1943
All other GPA=.0527
Total GPA=.0285
**# Schools applied to=.1333 (duh)
*MCAT April=.0672
MCAT August=.0000

sample N=1564 R squared=.21 (awesome for a binary model!)

** denotes the coefficient is significantly different from 0 at the 1% level
* denotes the coefficient is significantly different from 0 at the 5% level

Interpretation:
Ace your science classes, since it accounts for almost 20% of your admittance according to this model. Study your verbal section of the MCAT. Forget the bio section; it wasn't even significant at the 15% level. The writing sample is even worse, not even at the 25% level. Don't apply to just three schools; you'll regret it. And don't even think about missing the april MCAT.

I hope this puts the debate about WS to rest. Adds a new debate, though, the bio score.
By the way, I got an A.

Wow! This sounds like a pretty cool project. You should post this is a whole new thread by itself, so others can look at it and offer opinions/criticism/praise....just get an overall look at it.

I am curious about the bio score though. Whenever ppl talk about which section is least important, it fluctuates b/w PS and VR, but I have never heard BS. It seems counterintuitive.

 

[adamj61]

I am curious about the bio score though. Whenever ppl talk about which section is least important, it fluctuates b/w PS and VR, but I have never heard BS. It seems counterintuitive.

Not really, since most people who apply have a higher BS...at least all of the bio majors. I think if you stand out either way on VR or PS it can obviously work for or against you according to that.