<p>Especially when you don’t have an MCAT score yet, there’s no sense cutting it that finely.</p>
<p>^^^^ lol, I was just trying to figure out what kind of mcat score I should strive for to at least make me competitive. I know that there are tons of applicants who have the stats that still don’t make it to particular medical school simply because medical schools have really small class sizes, and adcoms look at a lot of other things as well. I was just wondering what mcat score I might need to at least “be competitive” I understand getting an acceptance is a whole other ball game.</p>
<p>I’ll throw out something for discussion. The way my D and I approached this process is to know where she stood on the LizzyM score (73). Then we looked at what variables there could be. What follows is just unverifiable non-scientific personal opinion. </p>
<p>She had a balanced MCAT so she didn’t loose any points. (Unbalanced , subtract points).</p>
<p>She went to a good LAC, no lost points there but no elite bonus points, either. (Truly elite UG school of which there may be 10, add 1/2/3 bonus points. Crap directional U maybe lose a point or two. ) </p>
<p>Application strength- We felt all the soft factors, awards, recognition, rec’s, essays of a great app could add 3/4 points. We felt she got most of the available points. Maybe 3. </p>
<p>Female gets a point over male due to disparity at the upper reaches of the MCAT.</p>
<p>So we felt conservatively, realistically she had a plus 3 to the generic LizzyM. </p>
<p>So she applied as if she had a 76.</p>
<p>The LizzyM is helpful, but it’s just a starting point for further evaluation.</p>
<p>Yeah. But when you’re dealing with an imaginary hypothetical, whether +1 matters on the Index Score isn’t a useful discussion yet.</p>
<p>^^^ haha, so I guess its just pray for the best, and prepare for the worst on the mcats…</p>
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</p>
<p>^^^ Curm, are you taking about the same spreadsheet found on sdn? If not, could you somehow send it to me.</p>
<p>I’m talking about the one that was floating around on sdn before they pulled the plug on it.</p>
<p>^^^ K, thanks, I already have that spreadsheet.</p>
<p>I think DS will never analyze/discuss the issue about the LizzyM score and school selections with me in the way that curm discussed with his D. (He did appreciate it when I handed him the school list from curm’s D, probably because he figured he would have a much easier job when he could derive his list from this list. I suspect that if we said we wanted to come up with the list of schools for him, he would not mind at all – He just did not want to discuss such a potentially stressful issue at length with us.)</p>
<p>But if I am allowed to run a similar analysis for him (none of our family members, including DS, actually did anything like this though), it may go like this:</p>
<p>Starting LizzyM score: 78.</p>
<p>GPA and MCAT are similar in their contributions to LizzyM, so no deduction of points here.</p>
<p>MCAT subscores are not as balanced as curm’s D: -1.</p>
<p>Elite bonus point: +1.</p>
<p>Application strength- the only recognition he had: PBK. But this has been accounted for in his GPA already. So no extra point here. However, other premed related factors (too many non-premed-related ECs): -2.</p>
<p>So he should apply as if he had a 78-1+1-2=76.</p>
<p>I could quibble in your kid’s favor, mcat2…but that’s not far off what I’d have done with him. I’d have given a +3 on elite (can’t get more elite) but I’d have dinged his app by 3/4 for medical EC-lite (and other things we have discussed) making him a 77 or 78. IOW, his UG, GPA, and MCAT saved him. Take home point : A lesser stat’ed candidate from a lesser school would have been in trouble.</p>
<p>Contrast that with another CC applicant this year. Lacking the big MCAT and elite UG but apparently with everything else you could ask for in an applicant. 
Numbers would suggest no “top school” interviews, yet …there they are. Take home point: Past a threshold showing competence and ability, numbers ain’t everything at every school.</p>
<p>curm, I agree with you on your analysis. I guess DS knows his weakness, especially after he has gone through all these interviews. (Does he care he has this potential weakness? I think he might care only if he fails to get into any school. Otherwise not much.) For all the schools he has completed their applications, only two schools do not interview him. (But he declined many interviews.) So he must be a very experienced interviewee by now, and likely knows what most schools ask for.</p>
<p>He did have many EC activities (He regularly spent two full evenings a week for his ECs, several times even traveling to other state the whole weekend.) Most of them are just not typical premed ECs. He probably filled out all of his ECs in one shot on one of the applications (likely the tmdsas one) in 30 minutes or less while he was at a coffee shop near school. (I saw it as he called me there to ask me some financial or family-related question, but I did not read any of it and did not want to make any comment.)</p>
<p>I feel that he sometimes rebels against being a premed who would dutifully do the jobs a premed is supposed to do. Heck, he even rebelled against taking the MCAT at the last minute after a full summer of MCAT preparation – I think he was likely ready for the test after that summer, because his last few practice test scores hovered around 40.)</p>
<p>He finds his path in the end. And we are happy about this.</p>
<p>*do any of the regulars have a comment on using the ‘Lizzy Score’, i.e., gpa * 10 + mcat, for makin’ up your list? (And perhaps, checking it twice?) *</p>
<p>OK…dumb question from someone new to pre-med forum…</p>
<p>What are… the Lizzy Score, LizzyM, and the spreadsheet that y’all are talking about? Is LizzyM someone’s screenname? On CC? Somewhere else? Where can one find the spreadsheet? </p>
<p>Please enlighten a pre-med forum newbie. :)</p>
<p>thanks a bunch!</p>
<p>Also…</p>
<p>Application strength- the only recognition he had: PBK.</p>
<p>Is that Phi Beta Kappa? What other non-med related ECs/honors will med schools care about?</p>
<p>LizzyM is an adcom from some medical school that posts on SDN. im not sure what the spreadsheet they’re referring to? is it the really colorful school selector one?</p>
<p>Somehow I have the impression that although LizzyM works for an admission office, she herself may not be an adcom. (Please correct me if I am not right here.)</p>
<p>Some SDNer (student doctor network forum) posted that oftentimes LizzyM knows more about his college than himself. It is kind of spooky.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, PBK is Phi Beta Kappa.</p>
<p>I guess non-med related ECs are like those ECs high schoolers might do for their college applications, e.g., volunteering, hobby, leadership, editor-in-chief, etc. I guess any “helping the poor” activity is likely a popular one. I can think of a concrete example here: DS was regularly invited to perform at a very rich church (which is like 1.5 hour drive from his campus - very rich people do not live in a ghetto city :)), and somehow the church gave each individual musician $100 each time. He then donated the money to a homeless organization. Oh, boy, I heard he even did not put down this item on his medical school application, because “he did not do it every week.” But he needs to get up very early to get there (and he is not an early riser), even a couple of days before a midterm or final! He still did this from time to time even now, after the application cycle is essentially over for him. He also performed at some poor church for free. He just happens to hang out with a group of people who are enthusiastic about this kind of volunteering activity (most of them are not premeds.)</p>
<p>I have the LizzyM spreadsheet if anyone wants it. PM me. You can type in GPA, MCAT, state of res and see where you stand stats wise at least for med schools. Good starting point for making an app list I think,</p>
<p>Curm, I have to wonder if you were referring to me in your above post. Whether or not that’s the case, I still agree that it seems like once you’ve hit a certain threshold, who cares about the numbers anymore–from then on, it’s the soft stuff, so if you excel at the soft stuff, you might end up interviewing (attending?) schools you thought were out of reach numbers-wise.</p>
<p>To make a case for the “soft” stuff:</p>
<p>I’m applying this year with a 30/3.8, lots of ECs (both medical and nonmedical), a laundry list of high quality leadership experiences, lots of great shadowing, what some call a “hook” (started a nonprofit last year), and what I believe to be awesome letters (at least, from the excerpts I’ve heard, they’re quite the ego-stroke and very flattering). Results: 4 interviews, acceptance in hand </p>
<p>My buddy’s (from my school) applying with a 35/3.9, some run of the mill ECs, not much leadership, some pretty good service, average shadowing, good-but-not-great letters. Results: 2 interviews, “on hold” at one of them (one to go)</p>
<p>To echo those above me: use the numbers as a starting point. Maybe to choose the “ballpark” you want. Then adjust from there based on your “soft” stuff. From a purely numbers perspective, applying to elite schools should have been a waste of time and money for me. But thanks to some pretty great “soft” stuff, I think that since I passed the threshold, I scored some awesome interviews.</p>
<p>And for what it’s worth, I’ve heard from some elite programs that once you make it to the interview, don’t worry about your numbers. One even mentioned that once you get that far, your numbers are no longer associated with your file. If you’ve made it that far, then you’re definitely “good enough” to be there, and by that point–it’s all about finding the kids that fit the program best–and also, the program that fits you best.</p>
<p>
Really? Well, thank you. Subtlety is usually not in my cc repertoire but I thought I’d give it a try. ;)</p>
<p>Question regarding using the LizzyM spreadsheet. BDM mentioned GPA and MCAT boosts for URM’s. Should my D add in those figures and then use the index? She hasn’t taken her MCAT yet, but using various possible numbers then adding/subtracting curm’s soft factor index, it seems a bit high. Also, what percentage of reaches should you apply to?</p>
<p>^^what you’ll quickly come to find is that applying to medical school isn’t at all like applying to college. Unfortunately for the aspiring medical student out there, the numbers are just so ridiculously stacked against you that from an admissions percentage standpoint, almost all schools are reaches. My state school has the highest admissions percentage out of all the schools I applied to. And believe it or not, it’s barely 25%. I was thrilled when I found a school with overall admissions percentages in the double digits. Most were around 7%. It certainly feels daunting, but I imagine it’s daunting for everyone!</p>
<p>How did I deal with this? I treated virtually every school I applied to as a “reach,” so to answer your question–I guess I applied to 100% reaches (with some less reach-y than others). I made it a point to only apply to schools I’d LOVE to go to, so that in the end if I only picked up one acceptance, I’d be thrilled (as is the case now, but it’s still early!). Once I put together a list, I made a spreadsheet of all the numbers (would happily email it to you) associated with those schools–then (and this was clutch for me!) I never opened it. I just saved it on my computer so that it was there if I was curious, but once I decided where to apply…I focused on making my applications to those schools as strong as possible, and stopped paying such close attention to the numbers. I guess it seemed like my application was something I could control and take ownership of, and the numbers were neither–so why fret about them?</p>
<p>I did find some solace in the AAMC numbers though. There’s a table in the MSAR (I think it’s actually “table 24”) with MCAT scores along the top and GPA down the side. Find your MCAT score (or in your D’s case, projected MCAT score), match it up with your GPA, and you’ll find the percent of applicants with your number stats who were successful at picking up an acceptance. My stats were something like, 77%. Knowing that 3 out of 4 people with numbers like mine were accepted somewhere was pretty comforting to me. You can find this chart by googling MCAT GPA AAMC (haha, lots of acronyms!) Good luck!</p>
<p>URM Female - Worth a couple points. (AA males worth most.)
Elite UG- In her case, 3.
Female- She gets an MCAT point against the matriculant average. (It’s really .75 but hey. I rounded. ;)) . </p>
<p>+6. It is big. Now if she stays “even” on the rest of the application’s “softer” factors, she’s looking good. If she picks up even a couple more, she’s looking really good. But it’s no time to get over-confident or overly-optimistic. Do the work. </p>
<p>Remember, I’m not offering this as an immutable law, just a theory, and even more correctly - just as a posit for a discussion.</p>
<p>I would say being a URM is worth 5-7 points on the Lizzy scale.</p>