Why are gender ratios equal at med schools when female applicants are more qualified?

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kesher said:
Then why are med schools always emphasizing "well-rounded applicants" if ECs are on the backburner?
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Honestly I would argue that schools don't actually want "well-rounded applicants." They are trying to build a well rounded class. Having a small number of hours in a ton of different things is actually a negative, it's better to have good numbers, and then a few unique ECs with lots of hours. Also schools can say wherever they want when they are after your application money, don't let anyone kid you that ECs (maybe if you win the nobel prize) can make up for low numbers, GPA/MCAT is a huge part of the app process.

Also your thread as a whole is asinine, because it is based on an extremely skewed sample and only from your observations. There is no real data involved that is useful.
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Nommonnom said:
http://www.nber.org/digest/jan07/w12139.html
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2...-nationwide/YROqwfCPSlKPtSMAzpWloK/story.html

There are definitely more women than men in colleges and schools generally aim for 50-50 so it will obviously be harder for women to get in statistically.
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No.

It is not "harder" for women to get in statistically. @Goro pointed out another useful factor to consider-- that there are more male applicants vying for med school spots.

When you break it down-- this percentage/number of male medical school graduates exceeeds female graduates and I'm betting that the larger applicant volume for males might factor into this.

(Source: http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-graduates-by-gender/?currentTimeframe=0)

This trend has been evident this past decade and presumably beyond.


Hopefully someone will put this thread out of its misery.
 
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kesher said:
Every time a medical school comes to talk to us, they're like "the MCAT isn't everything, we look at the whole person, we want a diverse class." They go on and on about how important community involvement and leadership positions are while they gloss over the MCAT. So I assumed that you need a high MCAT score to even be considered, and then the only people who get in also have good ECs. I never imagined that people with high MCAT scores and weak ECs would get in because of how much med schools stress their desire for well-rounded applicants.
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They say these things bc it sounds a lot better than saying "We need high MCAT students so our USNWR rank / MSAR profile makes us look elite"
 
Nommonnom said:
http://www.nber.org/digest/jan07/w12139.html
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2...-nationwide/YROqwfCPSlKPtSMAzpWloK/story.html

There are definitely more women than men in colleges and schools generally aim for 50-50 so it will obviously be harder for women to get in statistically.
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Just because there are more women in undergrad programs doesn't mean those women are applying to med school.

For 2016-2017:
47.6% of applicants were women
49.8% of matriculants were women

Statistically, women had *slightly* better odds than men.

https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/factstablea1.pdf


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james11 said:
They say these things bc it sounds a lot better than saying "We need high MCAT students so our USNWR rank / MSAR profile makes us look elite"
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You know, I always have trouble buying this as a reason. MCAT is weighted only 0.13 in US News and just looking at the numbers in the MSAR would lead you to believe UCSF = Boston U. I really think it is "we like high MCAT students because it helps our step scores" more than because it impresses applicants
 
The whole admitting process is skewed because we are "required" to have as close to 50-50 percentage of women and men... but, as I've said many times: MCAT is the first stat that we look at...
 
Danbo1957 said:
The whole admitting process is skewed because we are "required" to have as close to 50-50 percentage of women and men... but, as I've said many times: MCAT is the first stat that we look at...
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And yet there are schools like Northwestern that are 60 - 40 male heavy, or Emory at 60 - 40 female heavy. So at least some wiggle room similar to most typical college campuses ?
 
Northwestern and Emory are private schools, maybe something there? Both schools receive federal funding in several ways, so I'd just be guessing as to why the 60-40 splits there. Every decision that we make on class structure follows the mantra of a 50-50 male and female percentage, it's complicated how we get there. But there is no real "discrimination" as we have many more qualified applicants of each gender than total slots available, which is the same for every school. As I've said elsewhere though, I don't care about class cultural diversity make-up when looking at candidates, but others on our staff do, so there's that...
 
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Dr. Jan Itor said:
Just because there are more women in undergrad programs doesn't mean those women are applying to med school.

For 2016-2017:
47.6% of applicants were women
49.8% of matriculants were women

Statistically, women had *slightly* better odds than men.

https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/factstablea1.pdf


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Your statistics are that there are more male *applications* NOT there are more male applicants. This table says there are slightly more female *first-time applicants*. But as everyone knows men are more likely to take a long-shot, Id bet there are far more numerically in range women than numerically in range men applying.

https://www.aamc.org/download/321470/data/factstablea7.pdf

This is why Canadian schools look at CARS first. Well, this and keeping out foreigners 😉
 
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Nommonnom said:
Your statistics are that there are more male *applications* NOT there are more male applicants. This table says there are slightly more female *first-time applicants*. But as everyone knows men are more likely to take a long-shot, Id bet there are far more numerically in range women than numerically in range men applying.

https://www.aamc.org/download/321470/data/factstablea7.pdf

This is why Canadian schools look at CARS first. Well, this and keeping out foreigners 😉
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Gotcha, my mistake.

But the difference is something around 1%, not the 10% that there is in undergraduate programs. Doesn't seem to be the issue that you and OP are making it out to be. /shrug


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Dr. Jan Itor said:
Gotcha, my mistake.

But the difference is something around 1%, not the 10% that there is in undergraduate programs. Doesn't seem to be the issue that you and OP are making it out to be. /shrug


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Well I didnt say its a huge issue, its just a fact. Would I set sex or race quotas as an adcom, though? Probably not. I havent seen the AAMC studies regarding people preferring providers of their own race, but Im guessing if the question was would you prefer a (insert sex/race/ethnicity/othercategory) A- student as your physician or a (insert sex/race/ethnicity/othercategory) A student as your physician, the results of the study would be different.
 
Unless you go to HYPS / the Techs, you aren't controlling for a lot of factors.

For example, maybe men get into better colleges or they are more ambitious. Maybe women are less ambitious and settle for lower tier schools. Maybe women get into worse schools. Just because male students are less academically proficient at your school doesn't mean it holds true.

The men at X state U might be lower academic quality than the women there but overall in the nation's population, this may not hold true. Your post is attempting to claim that it is
 
kesher said:
There's no need to be this hostile. If this is how you talk to people, then I highly advise against going into medicine. As I said in my "steaming garbage heap of a post," I can only speak to premed EC involvement and leadership positions at my school. People are open about what clubs they're in, their positions in clubs, where they volunteer, where they do research, but they don't advertise their GPAs or MCAT scores. I never said that pre-med girls have higher GPAs. I simply said that the female overall GPA at my school is slightly higher than the male GPA and this could be due to a variety of factors.

(2) I'm not exclusively talking about pre-med clubs. I'm talking about all organizations on campus. Pre-meds have varied interests, so there are some in almost every organization. The officers of all organizations on campus are predominantly female. Many of whom are pre-med because pre-meds tend to aim for leadership positions.
(3) My school is in a college town. There are only a handful of places that boast student volunteers. After working at several of them and talking to other students, I've learned that most of the volunteers are female. Especially the hospital/clinic volunteers, which are highly premed.
(4) My school doesn't publish our average MCAT scores.
(5) We have an annual research conference where all of the undergrads present their projects. At the conference, every undergrad who conducts wet lab research is there. It's heavily female.
(6) Considering that I'm not in the room during my peers' interviews nor do I read my peers' LORs, I can't speak to that. Never said I could.
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I'm just here to point out that Godwin's Law of SDN was met^
 
efle said:
You know, I always have trouble buying this as a reason. MCAT is weighted only 0.13 in US News and just looking at the numbers in the MSAR would lead you to believe UCSF = Boston U. I really think it is "we like high MCAT students because it helps our step scores" more than because it impresses applicants
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Good point, it probably is more so due to step scores, point remains that med schools like high MCATs despite their "ECs are everything" lip service
 
james11 said:
Good point, it probably is more so due to step scores, point remains that med schools like high MCATs despite their "ECs are everything" lip service
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I have never heard a med school say ECS are everything. They perpetually say things like diverse, well rounded, holistic etc when referring to desired candidates or selection process.


The mcat is also the best predictor of being able to complete and handle the rigors of medical school and graduate in under 5years. So who on earth would blame medical schools to prefer a metric that actually shows them that
Candidate will be able to pass. No one wants to deal with that mess.
 
libertyyne said:
The mcat is also the best predictor of being able to complete and handle the rigors of medical school and graduate in under 5years. So who on earth would blame medical schools to prefer a metric that actually shows them that
Candidate will be able to pass. No one wants to deal with that mess.
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Well, the AAMC has been protesting the current admissions system for years for not simply treating everyone at 25+/500+ as equals because after that they are all "likely to succeed". I guess you could blame medical schools for giving up maximally holistic review in favor of a bunch of outliers with decent ECs, but with a ~0.6 correlation to step scores it makes a lot of sense on their end.
 
efle said:
Well, the AAMC has been protesting the current admissions system for years for not simply treating everyone at 25+/500+ as equals because after that they are all "likely to succeed". I guess you could blame medical schools for giving up maximally holistic review in favor of a bunch of outliers with decent ECs, but with a ~0.6 correlation to step scores it makes a lot of sense on their end.
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Well the correlation iirc is above 30 has something like >90 percent chance of completing medical school on time and passing all the required tests on first attempt. So 508 doesn't seem unreasonable a threshold. Schools still take candidates with lower scores because some schools have medians around 508 . But would you really blame them for opting for an objective measure? How do you discern quality of EC? Or quality for UG? Or difficulty of UG classes. What is fascinating is that schools on average select the top 40% of mcat scores and the 30/ 508 just happens to be in the median of the top 40% of applicants.

The correlation between mcat and step is something like .36 the correlation between passing medical school and mcat is greater.
 
libertyyne said:
Well the correlation iirc is above 30 has something like >90 percent chance of completing medical school on time and passing all the required tests on first attempt. So 508 doesn't seem unreasonable a threshold. Schools still take candidates with lower scores because some schools have medians around 508 . But would you really blame them for opting for an objective measure? How do you discern quality of EC? Or quality for UG? Or difficulty of UG classes. What is fascinating is that schools on average select the top 40% of mcat scores and the 30/ 508 just happens to be in the median of the top 40% of applicants.

The correlation between mcat and step is something like .36 the correlation between passing medical school and mcat is greater.
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The ~90% success rates without extra years starts in the mid 20s, in fact 25s with good grades are comparable to 37+:

ZSUtwHF.png

The correlation is well above 0.3x, more like 0.6xs in the most comprehensive review I've ever found:
VQ16ciH.png


The AAMC isn't really wrong about pushing the readiness of people clearing the median. Med schools just aren't motivated to behave like they want.
 
efle said:
The ~90% success rates without extra years starts in the mid 20s, in fact 25s with good grades are comparable to 37+:

ZSUtwHF.png

The correlation is well above 0.3x, more like 0.6xs in the most comprehensive review I've ever found:
VQ16ciH.png


The AAMC isn't really wrong about pushing the readiness of people clearing the median. Med schools just aren't motivated to behave like they want.
Click to expand...
That is an R value not an R - squared value. The R squared value is .36 .

You are correct for the table but there is a difference between the 24-26 and 27 < groups
500 = 25~. so why take the extra risk ? Also the percentage of students who are dismissed due to academic reasons almost quadruples from .9% to 3.4 % going from >30 to <27 in the same same paper you cite.
 
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libertyyne said:
That is an R value not an R - squared value. The R squared value is .36 .

You are correct for the table but there is a difference between the 24-26 and 27 < groups
500 = 25~. so why take the extra risk ? Also the percentage of students who are dismissed due to academic reasons almost quadruples from .9% to 3.4 % going from >30 to <27 in the same same paper you cite.
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libertyyne said:
The correlation between mcat and step is something like .36
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But you said the correlation was 0.36...the correlation is r at ~0.60! If you want to talk about the variance value instead, a ~40% RoI of sorts is damn good. Schools change up their entire curriculums and see a fraction of the boost you'd see by hiking your class median from top 20% to top 2%. The most commonly cited PBL paper about Missouri only showed a few points increase and is some of the best evidence for that system!

It's tough to read the tables sans CI info, but the statement the AAMC repeatedly makes seems plenty accurate to me, agree to disagree about whether an MCAT in the upper 20s should warrant a lot of caution I suppose. We can at least agree that schools keeping their entire ranges within the top decile of scores can't be justified just by risk-aversion.
 
efle said:
But you said the correlation was 0.36...the correlation is r at ~0.60! If you want to talk about the variance value instead, a ~40% RoI of sorts is damn good. Schools change up their entire curriculums and see a fraction of the boost you'd see by hiking your class median from top 20% to top 2%. The most commonly cited PBL paper about Missouri only showed a few points increase and is some of the best evidence for that system!

It's tough to read the tables sans CI info, but the statement the AAMC repeatedly makes seems plenty accurate to me, agree to disagree about whether an MCAT in the upper 20s should warrant a lot of caution I suppose. We can at least agree that schools keeping their entire ranges within the top decile of scores can't be justified just by risk-aversion.
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Most of the people taking more than 4 years at the high end are dual-degree, some sort of elective fifth year.
 
sliceofbread136 said:
OP please take a statistics class. Your post is borderline non-sense
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libertyyne said:
I would also suggest a class on study design, and psychological biases.
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It's almost as if someone trying to get into medicine should have certain valuable skills demonstrated by completion of specific coursework and a standardized exam which determines competency. I think I'm onto something boys and girls! 🙄
 
freak7 said:
It's almost as if someone trying to get into medicine should have certain valuable skills demonstrated by completion of specific coursework and a standardized exam which determines competency. I think I'm onto something boys and girls! 🙄
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I agree. The mcat is the great equalizer. This kind of weak thinking gets weeded out pretty quickly . The road to medicine is littered with 4.0, 24s.
 
libertyyne said:
Nope, unless the mph is done during summers.
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Oh it's moot anyways

"3. Students entering medical school with advanced standing from medical, graduate, or other programs; enrolled in joint programs (e.g., MD-PhD) at the time of matriculation or graduation; participating in special research/nonresearch studies; or deceased are not included in this table"
 
kesher said:
Now that I have your attention, I'd like to clarify that I can only speak for my school. I understand that what is true for my school certainly isn't true at all other universities.

I attend a large state school which is 60% female and 40% male. It's common knowledge that it's harder for girls to get in, so we're on average more qualified than the boys. The average female GPA is a 3.4 and the average male GPA is a 3.2. I'm not sure if this is because of work ethic (girls work harder?), major choice (girls choose easier majors?), or both.

The vast majority of campus organizations are overrun by girls! Most of the members and almost all of the leaders are girls. This is also true for off campus volunteer positions. The female:male ratio is always higher than the expected 60:40. I have yet to find an exception. To demonstrate this insane ratio, I'm in a committee with about 100 people-- and there are only 3 boys. 3/100! And the organization's mission isn't even "feminine" in nature.

I've also noticed that girl pre-meds are usually much more involved than boy pre-meds here. The girls partake in more ECs, volunteer more, and are more likely to have multiple leadership positions as well as do lab research. I would say that the average female applicant from my school is significantly more qualified than the average male applicant, so the 50/50 gender ratio at most medical schools confuses me.

Of course, there are still boys that are extremely involved and girls who don't make use of their free time. I'm only speaking to the general trend.

Does this hold true for your university as well? Or is mine just an anomaly?
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Is there any evidence behind these statements or are they really just useless subjective generalities?
 
BehindBlueEyes said:
Is there any evidence behind these statements or are they really just useless subjective generalities?
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Nope. The data looks like it is easier for women to get into med school. 47.6% applicants vs 49.8 % matriculantsfor 2016-17. And Furthermore the average female applicant mcat is 500.4 vs 503.4 for men. And the average female matriculant has an mcat of 507.9 and gpa of 3.71 vs 509.5 and gpa of 3.69 for men. So some would say it is easier provided they have median MCATs.
 
Very hard to say much of anything without knowing if applicant populations are pretty balanced between genders all over the country though. Is it possible that there is a higher proportion male in the more competitive areas like the coasts? I don't think we have any AAMC data on the gender split per state. It may be more about unlucky location than stiffer competition.
 
efle said:
I think it is pretty universally the case that what the admissions representative actually means is: "we want well-rounded applicants with unique experiences [and As and very high test scores]"

The MSAR makes this pretty apparent at the most selective schools now that you can see MCAT data for both admitted and applied. Some of the worst offenders give 90% of admits to the top 10-25% of applicants by MCAT alone.
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The admissions process is taxing. Well, it's fairly horrible when you're waiting to see if everything you've worked for will be recognized by the school of your choice, or maybe the second choice...

It ALL matters. Every piece of your app that isn't bull**** matters. Yes the bull**** is easy to see. OF COURSE the MCAT and GPA matters. My GPA stank, 3.4, had a good MCAT and my EC's were in the right place because I was actually involved in medicine at the time.

Everything matters. Absolutely everything. To hear people cackle about this and that! Hah! Wait until residency!

Do your best for your GPA, get the highest MCAT you can. Be truthful and honest. Experience something. Get out there. Then let it ride. There is NO POINT in perseverating on past accomplishments. And there is NO ROOM for crap thinking about man/women politics. These are not boys and girls. These are men and women applying to graduate school for a great honor and entrance into a profession which you have absolutely no clue about. This isn't a horse race. AdComs use a decent method of determining adequate medical school matriculants. Whether you have a penis or a vagina doesn't matter.

Medical school is tough. You can whine about being marginalized and bitch about unfair treatment, but being a doctor means you will be marginalized, treated unfairly, yelled at, hated on, hit, assaulted. Patients don't care who you think you are or what you MCAT was or your GPA. They don't give a ****.

This is a tough field. Get used to it. We're professional, we're smart, but we can't perpetuate this weak thought process from future docs and be ok with it.
 
LabMonster said:
The admissions process is taxing. Well, it's fairly horrible when you're waiting to see if everything you've worked for will be recognized by the school of your choice, or maybe the second choice...

It ALL matters. Every piece of your app that isn't bull**** matters. Yes the bull**** is easy to see. OF COURSE the MCAT and GPA matters. My GPA stank, 3.4, had a good MCAT and my EC's were in the right place because I was actually involved in medicine at the time.

Everything matters. Absolutely everything. To hear people cackle about this and that! Hah! Wait until residency!

Do your best for your GPA, get the highest MCAT you can. Be truthful and honest. Experience something. Get out there. Then let it ride. There is NO POINT in perseverating on past accomplishments. And there is NO ROOM for crap thinking about man/women politics. These are not boys and girls. These are men and women applying to graduate school for a great honor and entrance into a profession which you have absolutely no clue about. This isn't a horse race. AdComs use a decent method of determining adequate medical school matriculants. Whether you have a penis or a vagina doesn't matter.

Medical school is tough. You can whine about being marginalized and bitch about unfair treatment, but being a doctor means you will be marginalized, treated unfairly, yelled at, hated on, hit, assaulted. Patients don't care who you think you are or what you MCAT was or your GPA. They don't give a ****.

This is a tough field. Get used to it. We're professional, we're smart, but we can't perpetuate this weak thought process from future docs and be ok with it.
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Is this responding to what you quoted, or to the thread discussion in general...?
 
LabMonster said:
The admissions process is taxing. Well, it's fairly horrible when you're waiting to see if everything you've worked for will be recognized by the school of your choice, or maybe the second choice...

It ALL matters. Every piece of your app that isn't bull**** matters. Yes the bull**** is easy to see. OF COURSE the MCAT and GPA matters. My GPA stank, 3.4, had a good MCAT and my EC's were in the right place because I was actually involved in medicine at the time.

Everything matters. Absolutely everything. To hear people cackle about this and that! Hah! Wait until residency!

Do your best for your GPA, get the highest MCAT you can. Be truthful and honest. Experience something. Get out there. Then let it ride. There is NO POINT in perseverating on past accomplishments. And there is NO ROOM for crap thinking about man/women politics. These are not boys and girls. These are men and women applying to graduate school for a great honor and entrance into a profession which you have absolutely no clue about. This isn't a horse race. AdComs use a decent method of determining adequate medical school matriculants. Whether you have a penis or a vagina doesn't matter.

Medical school is tough. You can whine about being marginalized and bitch about unfair treatment, but being a doctor means you will be marginalized, treated unfairly, yelled at, hated on, hit, assaulted. Patients don't care who you think you are or what you MCAT was or your GPA. They don't give a ****.

This is a tough field. Get used to it. We're professional, we're smart, but we can't perpetuate this weak thought process from future docs and be ok with it.
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/thread
 
Part of me is tempted to troll OP with a little "boys rule...." or a little "boys go to college to get more knowledge..." stuff.

For real, everyone should focus on personal qualities that will help them to better serve patients. So much time/energy is wasted on comparing people.
 
LabMonster said:
You can whine about being marginalized and bitch about unfair treatment, but being a doctor means you will be marginalized, treated unfairly, yelled at, hated on, hit, assaulted.
Click to expand...
😱
 
efle said:
Oh it's moot anyways

"3. Students entering medical school with advanced standing from medical, graduate, or other programs; enrolled in joint programs (e.g., MD-PhD) at the time of matriculation or graduation; participating in special research/nonresearch studies; or deceased are not included in this table"
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I have a hard time believing 10% of every category that gets into med school can't graduate in 4 years.
 
keemobad said:
So you're making this post with some sort of an agenda?
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I honestly have no idea. This thread has spiraled out of control. I guess I'm just frustrated by the apathy toward community involvement that many pre-med males at my school possess. I was trying to gauge if this trend also exists at other schools... but I didn't do it well.
 
freak7 said:
Our hospital has about 2-3 code greys (combative patient/visitor) per week, and that's just during my shift.
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If the goal is neonatology, how concerned should I be about this? :pacifier::pacifier1:
 
efle said:
Very hard to say much of anything without knowing if applicant populations are pretty balanced between genders all over the country though. Is it possible that there is a higher proportion male in the more competitive areas like the coasts? I don't think we have any AAMC data on the gender split per state. It may be more about unlucky location than stiffer competition.
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On average men do better on the mcat compared to women. It is possible that the average is shifted up due to a higher proportion of men that are outliers on the right of the distribution(larry summers got fired from harvard for saying this). Also just looking at this data it doesnt seem like women are underrepresented in any state where the average MCAT is higher then the National Matriculant median mcat skewing their average lower as you implied. https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/factstablea1.pdf
 
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