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What is a lucky state?

Started by tifflove13
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tifflove13

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I've been searching on SDN for a while and I keep hearing the term "lucky state". What does that mean? Which states are lucky states?


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gonnif said:
National AMCAS acceptance rate is about 40%
California in state acceptance is about 15%
Texas in state acceptance is about 36%
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Those bloody stats...
Don't know how should feel when being a majority in this stat
 
Is there any reason why Arizona has such horrible matriculation rates? As an applicant from there, is there anything I can do to overcome any stigma or bias against Az applicants?
 
upload_2016-10-30_21-38-24-png.210349
 
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gyngyn said:
AZ strongly prefers applicants from IS.
They back fill from OOS as needed.
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Isn't that the case for most in state public schools? According to the MSAR UofA Phoenix and Tucson had 83% and 73% in state matriculants respectively, which from what I've seen from the MSAR isn't abnormally high for a state school.

Assuming those rates are indeed quite high, how does that affect our low overall acceptance rates?
 
Sixsuit said:
Isn't that the case for most in state public schools? According to the MSAR UofA Phoenix and Tucson had 83% and 73% in state matriculants respectively, which from what I've seen from the MSAR isn't abnormally high for a state school.

Assuming those rates are indeed quite high, how does that affect our low overall acceptance rates?
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more applicants. However those applicants arent very competitive.
 
Sixsuit said:
Isn't that the case for most in state public schools? According to the MSAR UofA Phoenix and Tucson had 83% and 73% in state matriculants respectively, which from what I've seen from the MSAR isn't abnormally high for a state school.

Assuming those rates are indeed quite high, how does that affect our low overall acceptance rates?
Click to expand...
The pool is the other factor.
 
There are many ways to look at it, some already mentioned others not mentioned. You really have to consider multiple things at once.

What % of instate applicants does your state school interview? Compare U of Mass which interviews 45%, to U of Iowa which interviews 85%
How high do your numbers need to be in order to be average for your state school? Compare U of Mississippi at 27 / 3.8 with U of Colorado at 34 / 3.8
How many seats do instate residents get in your public school(s) compared to the numbers of instate people applying? Compare U of New Mexico at 100/290 with Georgia (Augusta) at 220/1300

In a very general sense, the unluckiest states tend not to have any state school (for example many places in the Northeast like New Hampshire, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island) while the luckiest states tend to have state schools with very accessible numbers (much of the South and Midwest fits this).
 
efle said:
There are many ways to look at it, some already mentioned others not mentioned. You really have to consider multiple things at once.

What % of instate applicants does your state school interview? Compare U of Mass which interviews 45%, to U of Iowa which interviews 85%
How high do your numbers need to be in order to be average for your state school? Compare U of Mississippi at 27 / 3.8 with U of Colorado at 34 / 3.8
How many seats do instate residents get in your public school(s) compared to the numbers of instate people applying? Compare U of New Mexico at 100/290 with Georgia (Augusta) at 220/1300

In a very general sense, the unluckiest states tend not to have any state school (for example many places in the Northeast like New Hampshire, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island) while the luckiest states tend to have state schools with very accessible numbers (much of the South and Midwest fits this).
Click to expand...
Connecticut has a state school: University of Connecticut School of Medicine. It has a significant in state bias as well.
 
Goro said:
Throw in the rest of the WWAMI states and the numbers go up. You also have to look at the % of IS who get interviews, vs OOS.

IA is extremely friendly to IS, in this regard.
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Which shows that the advantage is to the non-WA WWAMI states.

U WA has a really high post II reject rate too, I believe, but I don't have the data in front of me at the moment since I'm at the grocery store.
 
Out of curiosity, why are CT and NJ considered lucky states when they had 18 and 19 percent of in-state applicants matriculate in-state, respectively, while NY is not considered lucky even though 29 percent of in-state residents matriculated in-state?
 
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THRILLHO said:
Out of curiosity, why are CT and NJ considered lucky states when they had 18 and 19 percent of in-state applicants matriculate in-state, respectively, while NY is not considered lucky even though 29 percent of in-state residents matriculated in-state?
Click to expand...

NY has a ton of private schools within the state that have no preference for NY residents. So a lot matriculate in-state but not to state schools that give them preference.
 
freak7 said:
Which shows that the advantage is to the non-WA WWAMI states.

U WA has a really high post II reject rate too, I believe, but I don't have the data in front of me at the moment since I'm at the grocery store.
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Yes, unfortunately @Goro you are wrong on this. WA state residents are second only to MA residents as being unlikely to get into medical school. WWAMI gets a lot of people in from other states but seriously disadvantages WA residents. WSU may help but it's been a problem for a while. I wrote a long post about this before with statistics to back it up and I'll have to dig it up.
 
I'm interested to see the statistics, because their interview rate is a generous 55%, post-II admit rate is 40% pretty standard, and the overall WA avg matriculant GPA and MCAT are 3.7/509 same as the nation. Seems pretty neutral not particularly lucky or unlucky overall.

And of course that's not considering the caliber of school UW is. Factor into the mix it's fairly typical by the numbers and one of the best regarded schools in the country, it starts looking pretty lucky for competitive applicants. It's hard for me to even imagine UCLA being as accessible for CA apps as UW is for WA apps for example.
 
efle said:
I'm interested to see the statistics, because their interview rate is a generous 55%, post-II admit rate is 40% pretty standard, and the overall WA avg matriculant GPA and MCAT are 3.7/509 same as the nation. Seems pretty neutral not particularly lucky or unlucky overall.

And of course that's not considering the caliber of school UW is. Factor into the mix it's fairly typical by the numbers and one of the best regarded schools in the country, it starts looking pretty lucky for competitive applicants. It's hard for me to even imagine UCLA being as accessible for CA apps as UW is for WA apps for example.
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Please remember that UW medical school has a HUGE bias towards their own undergraduates. Those pre-meds who attended a different university in Washington struggle to get so much as a sneeze their direction from UW.
 
blackroses said:
Please remember that UW medical school has a HUGE bias towards their own undergraduates. Those pre-meds who attended a different university in Washington struggle to get so much as a sneeze their direction from UW.
Click to expand...
MSAR says they are only 20% populated by their own undergrad. Comparing to a couple other very good public schools with attached good public undergrads - UCSD also 20%, UVA 17%, Michigan 26%. Pretty standard here as well.
 
U WA

IS:
apps: 902
IIs: 491 (54%)
meatriculants: 123 (13.6%)

OOS:
apps: 7141
IIs: 333 (4.7%)
matriculants: 122 (1.7%)

Source: MSAR

I'd say if you're from WWAMI, WA is a very lucky state. It's easier to get into Harvard than for an OOSer to get into U WA.





precisiongraphic said:
Yes, unfortunately @Goro you are wrong on this. WA state residents are second only to MA residents as being unlikely to get into medical school. WWAMI gets a lot of people in from other states but seriously disadvantages WA residents. WSU may help but it's been a problem for a while. I wrote a long post about this before with statistics to back it up and I'll have to dig it up.
Click to expand...
 
Goro said:
U WA

IS:
apps: 902
IIs: 491 (54%)
meatriculants: 123 (13.6%)

OOS:
apps: 7141
IIs: 333 (4.7%)
matriculants: 122 (1.7%)

Source: MSAR

I'd say if you're from WWAMI, WA is a very lucky state. It's easier to get into Harvard than for an OOSer to get into U WA.
Click to expand...
The MSAR also counts "instate" as literally instate/WA only. Most of those 333 "OOS" are the other members from WAMI which MSAR does not count as instate.

Plus the handful that are truly OOS and get interviews are overwhelmingly URM iirc.
 
efle said:
MSAR says they are only 20% populated by their own undergrad. Comparing to a couple other very good public schools with attached good public undergrads - UCSD also 20%, UVA 17%, Michigan 26%. Pretty standard here as well.
Click to expand...
Yes but once you add in the "WAMI" states, it becomes more obvious that they populate their "Washington" seats primarily from their own undergrad.
 
blackroses said:
Yes but once you add in the "WAMI" states, it becomes more obvious that they populate their "Washington" seats primarily from their own undergrad.
Click to expand...
Still not that obvious to me that it's disproportionate favoritism. There were collectively 902 WA apps to U WA Med, and U WA undergrad produced 471 MD applicants. They should be taking up a majority of the interviews looking at those numbers.

Taking it further, in total the other members of WAMI produced 441 medical applicants last cycle. Even if every single one of them applied to U WA med, they'd be outnumbered just by the premeds from the U WA undergrad.

471 / (902 + 441) = approx 35% of applications to U WA med were from their own undergrad. Only 20% of U WA med matriculated class came from their own undergrad.

If anything it looks like they keep the level of inbreeding lower than would be appropriate!
 
Goro said:
KS is a lucky state, as are MS, NM, OR, ND, SD, TN, GA, MO, MA, CT, NJ, AR, WA (for WWAMI), SC and a few others.
Click to expand...


While I normally agree with Goro I have to debate that NJ and CT aren't lucky states stats wise. Yes they prefer their own, but the competition in those states is intense (NY and NJ almost rival CA in some instances) compared to the competition in MS or WA. I remember when I was applying and I was looking at NJ schools, they had an average MCAT of like a 33 whereas the MS schools needed a minimum of a 24 and a lot of the accepted students had a lower MCAT than the previously mentioned states. Not saying NJ is smarter or anything I think its just the sheer population and the likelihood of someone staying in their home state to practice (Someone who wants to be near NY would be quicker to stay in NJ than MS)
 
Goro said:
U WA

IS:
apps: 902
IIs: 491 (54%)
meatriculants: 123 (13.6%)

OOS:
apps: 7141
IIs: 333 (4.7%)
matriculants: 122 (1.7%)

Source: MSAR

I'd say if you're from WWAMI, WA is a very lucky state. It's easier to get into Harvard than for an OOSer to get into U WA.
Click to expand...

But realistically, whoever has a Harvard-type app that is gunning for UW is making a mistake. Yeah UW is a great school with great funding, but you will inevitably end up doing rotations somewhere in "WAMI", and if you don't like rural medicine this is not the place for you.

If you are saying we're fortunate as Washingtonians to have UW becuase it is a good school, it's actually a large disadvantage to have this incredibly well funded and respected institution be your only option for an IS school. This year there's a little more favor for average applicants with WSU opening, but not much considering how their cycle was composed this year.

https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf

According to this table, Washington is the second worst only to Maryland for % of people who end up matriculating IS.

It's in no way a "lucky" state unless your a very solid applicant, in which case you don't need to be in a "lucky" state anyway.

Now for the "WAMI" people, they get very lucky. Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho end up with acceptance numbers that are similar to the rest of the country. Washingtonians get screwed.
 
Hospitalized said:
But realistically, whoever has a Harvard-type app that is gunning for UW is making a mistake. Yeah UW is a great school with great funding, but you will inevitably end up doing rotations somewhere in "WAMI", and if you don't like rural medicine this is not the place for you.

If you are saying we're fortunate as Washingtonians to have UW becuase it is a good school, it's actually a large disadvantage to have this incredibly well funded and respected institution be your only option for an IS school. This year there's a little more favor for average applicants with WSU opening, but not much considering how their cycle was composed this year.

https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf

According to this table, Washington is the second worst only to Maryland for % of people who end up matriculating IS.

It's in no way a "lucky" state unless your a very solid applicant, in which case you don't need to be in a "lucky" state anyway.

Now for the "WAMI" people, they get very lucky. Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho end up with acceptance numbers that are similar to the rest of the country. Washingtonians get screwed.
Click to expand...
That's a pretty odd way to approach lucky vs unlucky, though. The typical successful WA resident has identical stats to the typical successful applicant in the USA overall. Picking numbers to put WA second from the bottom as far as luck is a hard sell.
 
*sigh* I think we're beginning to talk past each other here. Plus I don't know where you're getting your stats from but I'm getting mine from MSAR.

Let's define "lucky state". Psicorps did this in the 2nd post of this thread. My definition of a lucky stats is one that highly favors IS vs OOS. The odds of someone from CT getting into a seat at U Conn is > 15%. the odds of someone from OOS getting in is < 1%. And Rutgers accepts OOsers in the single digits.

I don't care how many Nutmeggers or Garden Staters have to go OOS to med school. CT, NJ and WA are NOT CA. Hence, to me, they are lucky states. CA is not. VA (for VCU) or VT aren't either,
They are states where residents have a higher chance of getting accepted to medical school. They typically have a larger number of seats available for in-state students compared to the number of applicants they get. You can look at this table for data on each state.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf

And c'mon, PossibleDOC I was discussing odds, period. Not the caliber of applicants, or applicant pools.

PossibleDOC? said:
While I normally agree with Goro I have to debate that NJ and CT aren't lucky states stats wise. Yes they prefer their own, but the competition in those states is intense (NY and NJ almost rival CA in some instances) compared to the competition in MS or WA. I remember when I was applying and I was looking at NJ schools, they had an average MCAT of like a 33 whereas the MS schools needed a minimum of a 24 and a lot of the accepted students had a lower MCAT than the previously mentioned states. Not saying NJ is smarter or anything I think its just the sheer population and the likelihood of someone staying in their home state to practice (Someone who wants to be near NY would be quicker to stay in NJ than MS)
Click to expand...

Hospitalized said:
But realistically, whoever has a Harvard-type app that is gunning for UW is making a mistake. Yeah UW is a great school with great funding, but you will inevitably end up doing rotations somewhere in "WAMI", and if you don't like rural medicine this is not the place for you.

If you are saying we're fortunate as Washingtonians to have UW becuase it is a good school, it's actually a large disadvantage to have this incredibly well funded and respected institution be your only option for an IS school. This year there's a little more favor for average applicants with WSU opening, but not much considering how their cycle was composed this year.

https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf

According to this table, Washington is the second worst only to Maryland for % of people who end up matriculating IS.

It's in no way a "lucky" state unless your a very solid applicant, in which case you don't need to be in a "lucky" state anyway.

Now for the "WAMI" people, they get very lucky. Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho end up with acceptance numbers that are similar to the rest of the country. Washingtonians get screwed.
Click to expand...
 
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tifflove13 said:
I've been searching on SDN for a while and I keep hearing the term "lucky state". What does that mean? Which states are lucky states?


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
Click to expand...
libertyyne said:
upload_2016-10-30_21-38-24-png.210349
Click to expand...

I did something similar here: if lucky states = green states common to both Yield Rate and Matriculant LizzyM score maps, I get the following:

North Dakota, West Virginia, Kansas, South Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee
 
I'd be interested in seeing the differences between % of students who stay in-state for medical school in each state vs % matriculation of students from each state. I know that MA for example, has a generally strong matriculation rate, but low in-state retention because UMass is the only public we have. Are there other states like this? I'd imagine that Texas would have high percentages for both metrics.
 
blackroses said:
Please remember that UW medical school has a HUGE bias towards their own undergraduates. Those pre-meds who attended a different university in Washington struggle to get so much as a sneeze their direction from UW.
Click to expand...
blackroses said:
Yes but once you add in the "WAMI" states, it becomes more obvious that they populate their "Washington" seats primarily from their own undergrad.
Click to expand...
Nope.
 
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