What's up with UVa?

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morganlefay

hanging in there
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So I call them today, right, to see which of my two lowly MCAT scores they're gonna consider. They tell me the higher of the two, which is a 26. Then I get transferred to the director of admissions, who says my file is complete, and they do review the app as a whole, but "unfortunately", my 26 is not very competitive due to the fact that at UVa the MCAT score is a high predictor of how well students do with their curriculum. Ok, reasonable explanation....then I go recheck the averages for the student profile last year, and they're definitely 10.7, 10.4, 10.6, or something for each section! These are averages! Which means my 11, 7, 8, is right around there. So I don't get it. If the MCAT is so predictive of success, and my score isn't competitive, then UVa's averages ought to be a lot higher. Am I completely off track here? Does anyone have any comments?

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their 31.7 average is much higher than your 26. sorry.
 
Yea I know that, but an average is an average. Meaning that they must have matriculants with 32, 34, 28, 26, etc, and by no means am I trying to do statistics here, but common sense says that there are standard deviations from the average. I mean, unless everyone there has 30, 31, 32 and that's why the average is as such. Make any sense?
 
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It is possible that they admit people with a 26, but those people are most certainly Virginia state residents or URMs. The out-of-state people UVA accepts usually have an average MCAT of 34-35, meaning they don't deviate too far from that number. It's like this at every school except top-tier private ones -- out-of-state people who are accepted have a higher GPA/MCAT than in-state people. That's just the way this crazy process works.
 
bigbassinbob said:
It is possible that they admit people with a 26, but those people are most certainly Virginia state residents or URMs. The out-of-state people UVA accepts usually have an average MCAT of 34-35, meaning they don't deviate too far from that number. It's like this at every school except top-tier private ones -- out-of-state people who are accepted have a higher GPA/MCAT than in-state people. That's just the way this crazy process works.

Right on the money.
 
he's right, a 26 is close to six points below their average. The 7 on verbal hurts especially. It's reasonable to believe that very, very few people get in to a school like UVA with scores like that.
 
skhichi said:
he's right, a 26 is close to six points below their average. The 7 on verbal hurts especially. It's reasonable to believe that very, very few people get in to a school like UVA with scores like that.

A 26 isn't really all that competitive for any out-of-state school let alone UVA.
 
The 7 was actually in PS; the 11 is verbal and the 8 obviously BS. It might be that my FL residency doesnt help me here. However, a large portion of the class is out of state, which is why I applied to begin with. Perhaps my strong grades in the sciences (ehh, besides O Chem) may balence the whole thing out?
 
morganlefay said:
The 7 was actually in PS; the 11 is verbal and the 8 obviously BS. It might be that my FL residency doesnt help me here. However, a large portion of the class is out of state, which is why I applied to begin with. Perhaps my strong grades in the sciences (ehh, besides O Chem) may balence the whole thing out?

Who knows? It might help.

It's just that the general rule of thumb is that if you are out-of-state then you need stats above the school average to be competitive.
 
Fermata said:
Who knows? It might help.

It's just that the general rule of thumb is that if you are out-of-state then you need stats above the school average to be competitive.


You mean this for applying to state schools as an out-of-stater right? So this wouldn't necessarily apply to schools like Loyola or Boston or St. Louis U.....?
 
most private schools (especially the upper tier ones) will consider candidates from a national pool of applicants. So as long as your medical school is not state supported you should have about the same chance as a state kid of getting in. However, some private schools still show preference to state candidates (emory for example). Also, many private schools will have a large percentage of their own undergrad kids in their med schools class. This is dependant on a number of factors however.
 
skhichi,
thanks for the info. :)
 
I guess I won't know for sure until I get the email/letter from UVa saying...We regret to inform you.....:(

We'll see!
 
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