Using MSAR to craft a school list - questions about process

[curiouschemist]

I used MSAR to create a spreadsheet listing all accepted students' GPA/MCAT percentile data, as well as IS/OOS interview data for each school to do a first round pass of schools that might be good targets based on my own residence/stats, and I have a couple of questions about this process:

1) Is there a general rule of thumb for what stats wise makes a school a good "target" school? Is it where your stats fall between the 25% - 90% percentiles for GPA/MCAT? Or 10-90% or some other metric? Is there a rule of thumb for what makes a school a "reach" or "safety" as well? (I did some searching in the forums and found some conflicting answers, hoping for some clarification)

2) To look at favorability for OOS applicants at each school, I calculated the percentage of OOS applicants that received interviews based on the total number of interviews (both IS/OOS) extended. Using this, what would be a good cutoff to determine whether the school is not OOS friendly? Like <10%, <25% ,or <50% OOS interviews offered? Is there a general rule of thumb suggested?

I know these aren't the only metrics to consider - I'm hoping to use this as a first pass screen to eliminate schools that would be donations based on my stats/residence, then narrow down the list further based on remaining metrics.

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[Isomerase]

I used MSAR to create a spreadsheet listing all accepted students' GPA/MCAT percentile data, as well as IS/OOS interview data for each school to do a first round pass of schools that might be good targets based on my own residence/stats, and I have a couple of questions about this process:

1) Is there a general rule of thumb for what stats wise makes a school a good "target" school? Is it where your stats fall between the 25% - 90% percentiles for GPA/MCAT? Or 10-90% or some other metric? Is there a rule of thumb for what makes a school a "reach" or "safety" as well? (I did some searching in the forums and found some conflicting answers, hoping for some clarification)

2) To look at favorability for OOS applicants at each school, I calculated the percentage of OOS applicants that received interviews based on the total number of interviews (both IS/OOS) extended. Using this, what would be a good cutoff to determine whether the school is not OOS friendly? Like <10%, <25% ,or <50% OOS interviews offered? Is there a general rule of thumb suggested?

I know these aren't the only metrics to consider - I'm hoping to use this as a first pass screen to eliminate schools that would be donations based on my stats/residence, then narrow down the list further based on remaining metrics.

1. 25-90 for GPA/MCAT is a decent guidelines reasonable assuming you aren't URM or have other major hooks. That's basically what I did and it worked out well for me,

2. Not really, but I wouldn't apply to anywhere where the OSS acceptance rate is lower than like 3%. You can use this spreadsheet with acceptance numbers as a guideline. .

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

My experience says some of this depends. On item #1, if not URM, I'd recommend not applying anywhere that your MCAT is below that 25%-tile number. And this assumes your GPA is well above the median for that school. If GPA is low or mid-range, you might set a cutoff applying at 1-2 points above that 25%-tile MCAT number. Of course, select "Accepted Applicants IS or OOS" as applicable to your situation when looking at median MCAT in MSAR.

On item #2, I used two factors. The % of seats that go to OOS and the % of OOS applicants the school interviews. The latter turned out to be a more relevant factor as Wake Forest, for example, is OOS friendly in terms of seats but interviews a very small number of a large volume of OOS applicants. Some of the SUNY's on the other hand, don't admit many OOS applicants but because of that they don't get many OOS applicants --- yet they interview a fairly high percentage of those that apply.

One other factor I found relevant was to look at the class make up in terms of age and % graduate degrees. This can tell you whether they lean toward older non-traditional students or ones recently out of school with no graduate work. Good luck!

 

[armaragon]

Ryan gray fuming at this post right now lol

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

You mean OP's post or our responses ? Who's Ryan Gray ?

 

[armaragon]

You mean OP's post or our responses ? Who's Ryan Gray ?

Probably both

 

[DokterMom]

Take an objective look at your application. Do you bring anything unusual to the table? Are you an exceptionally strong applicant? A non-traditional student? Unusual levels of community involvement? Bi-lingual? Military service?

If your application is rather typical, then your approach makes sense. It's a good baseline in any case. But if you do bring something unusual to the table, find out which schools would value what it is you bring and add them to your list.

 

[bluepeony]

1. 25-90 for GPA/MCAT is a decent guidelines reasonable assuming you aren't URM or have other major hooks. That's basically what I did and it worked out well for me,

2. Not really, but I wouldn't apply to anywhere where the OSS acceptance rate is lower than like 3%. You can use this spreadsheet with acceptance numbers as a guideline. .

Do you have a link of this spreadsheet?

 

[Goro]

1. 25-90 for GPA/MCAT is a decent guidelines reasonable assuming you aren't URM or have other major hooks. That's basically what I did and it worked out well for me,

2. Not really, but I wouldn't apply to anywhere where the OSS acceptance rate is lower than like 3%.

I agree with the above, especially when dealing with schools where the median MCAT score is 515+. The higher up the pole you want to climb, the more slippery it gets

For many other schools, like Drexel/Albany or Miami/Wake class, going down to 10th %ile is OK.

Most private schools are OK with OOS applicants. The reason their stats may be skewed toward IS is a surplus of really good IS candidates, such as in CA or IL.

U VM, EVMS and VCU are the most OOS-friendly of state schools for OOS.

 

[KnightDoc]

I used MSAR to create a spreadsheet listing all accepted students' GPA/MCAT percentile data, as well as IS/OOS interview data for each school to do a first round pass of schools that might be good targets based on my own residence/stats, and I have a couple of questions about this process:

1) Is there a general rule of thumb for what stats wise makes a school a good "target" school? Is it where your stats fall between the 25% - 90% percentiles for GPA/MCAT? Or 10-90% or some other metric? Is there a rule of thumb for what makes a school a "reach" or "safety" as well? (I did some searching in the forums and found some conflicting answers, hoping for some clarification)

2) To look at favorability for OOS applicants at each school, I calculated the percentage of OOS applicants that received interviews based on the total number of interviews (both IS/OOS) extended. Using this, what would be a good cutoff to determine whether the school is not OOS friendly? Like <10%, <25% ,or <50% OOS interviews offered? Is there a general rule of thumb suggested?

I know these aren't the only metrics to consider - I'm hoping to use this as a first pass screen to eliminate schools that would be donations based on my stats/residence, then narrow down the list further based on remaining metrics.

In general, you're on the right track. Just keep in mind that med school is insanely competitive, period, so there is no such thing as a safety school. Given that most schools interview less than 20% of their applicants, it's hard to develop a rule of thumb for what is good, but IMHO OOS/IS is not a relevant metric to use to determine OOS friendliness.

Take the University of Maryland as an example. Their IS/OOS interview ratio is 266/275. Sounds pretty good, right? What if I told you that they had 908 IS applications and 3770 OOS? Still sound OOS friendly? I'd stick to the percent of OOS applicants interviewed, which is really the only thing that is relevant to your odds of receiving an II, rather than the ratio of IS to OOS IIs, which could be meaningless if they have relatively few IS applications.

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

In general, you're on the right track. Just keep in mind that med school is insanely competitive, period, so there is no such thing as a safety school. Given that most schools interview less than 20% of their applicants, it's hard to develop a rule of thumb for what is good, but IMHO OOS/IS is not a relevant metric to use to determine OOS friendliness.

Take the University of Maryland as an example. Their IS/OOS interview ratio is 266/275. Sounds pretty good, right? What if I told you that they had 908 IS applications and 3770 OOS? Still sound OOS friendly? I'd stick to the percent of OOS applicants interviewed, which is really the only thing that is relevant to your odds of receiving an II, rather than the ratio of IS to OOS IIs, which could be meaningless if they have relatively few IS applications.

Maryland is hardly an extreme example. Take Wake Forest, 381 OOS II vs 8400+ OOS applicants. In fact if you look at some of the OOS publics, there aren't a whole lot of seats for OOS students but that also reduces the number of OOS applicants. If you look U Mass, Iowa, Rochester, and Stony Brook, the % of OOS students interviewed is halfway decent. Beats Loyola and Drexel where they are more OOS friendly in terms of % of seats reserved for OOS, but each with some 13,000+ applicants.

 

[KnightDoc]

Maryland is hardly an extreme example. Take Wake Forest, 381 OOS II vs 8400+ OOS Peeps. In fact if you look at some of the OOS publics, there aren't a whole lot of seats for OOS students but that also reduces the number of OOS Peeps. If you look U Mass, Iowa, Rochester, and Stony Brook, the % of OOS students interviewed is halfway decent. Beats Loyola and Drexel where they are more OOS friendly in terms of % of seats reserved for OOS, but each with some 13,000+ Peeps.

Yup! I wasn't looking for an extreme example. It was just the first one I saw to make the point that IS/OOS is irrelevant to OOS candidates. What's relevant is the percent of OOS candidates who are interviewed.

 

[curiouschemist]

One other factor I found relevant was to look at the class make up in terms of age and % graduate degrees. This can tell you whether they lean toward older non-traditional students or ones recently out of school with no graduate work. Good luck!

This is something I didn't think about looking into, but as a non-trad definitely should. Thank you for this!

 

[curiouschemist]

For many other schools, like Drexel/Albany or Miami/Wake class, going down to 10th %ile is OK.

This might be an ignorant question (and maybe not easy to answer) and if so I apologize, but how do we know what "class" a med school is? Is it based on GPA/MCAT stats, research funding, rankings? I feel like users on SDN are very knowledgeable about each school and where it stands/who should apply, and I am not well versed in this! Besides utilizing MSAR and reading school websites and lurking on SDN, is there more research I should be doing to understand schools? I imagine years of experience in the med school admissions field plays a part as well...

 

[curiouschemist]

I'd stick to the percent of OOS applicants interviewed, which is really the only thing that is relevant to your odds of receiving an II, rather than the ratio of IS to OOS IIs, which could be meaningless if they have relatively few IS applications.

Okay excellent, this is what I've been doing. Thanks for your input!

 

[KnightDoc]

This might be an ignorant question (and maybe not easy to answer) and if so I apologize, but how do we know what "class" a med school is? Is it based on GPA/MCAT stats, research funding, rankings? I feel like users on SDN are very knowledgeable about each school and where it stands/who should apply, and I am not well versed in this! Besides utilizing MSAR and reading school websites and lurking on SDN, is there more research I should be doing to understand schools? I imagine years of experience in the med school admissions field plays a part as well...

Nope -- you're good! I'm pretty sure he's talking about all of the above, including USNWR rankings. Even adcoms who hate the rankings can't help but refer to them, since they are pretty universally used to place schools into tiers, or "classes." If you look at a school's ranking, it's going to correspond to its stats, funding, etc. They are all interconnected.

There are five different ways to get to the same place, and they all going to tell you that Penn is better than Drexel, and NYU is better than Albany.

There are around 150 MD schools in the US. Depending on who you talk to, the "top" tier might be T5, T10, T20 or even T30. The lower tier is probably somewhere south of T80 or so, and everything else is mid tier. At least that's how I look at it, but, honestly, it really doesn't matter. You do you, based on location, stats, finances, curriculum, age distribution of class, etc. And, most importantly, where you can get in!!