I actually had a question about “hard” cut-offs for GPA/MCAT, and recently saw this article. This article seems to suggest hard cut offs while at the same time stating “The school’s application review considers socioeconomic or educational disadvantages.” Not sure which it is…
http://dailybruin.com/2019/01/17/david-geffen-school-of-medicine-raises-admission-standards-incites-controversy/
It appears there will be a hard cut off at a minimum 3.4 GPA and 512 MCAT for all applicants unless their application is flagged for special review/consideration by the application management software (which can be set to screen for things like disadvantaged or UiM status–both of which are captured by AMCAS as part of the student demographic data).
This is being done in the name of reducing the burden on admission personnel who currently must manually review every one of the 14,000+ applications UCLA receives every year.
I’m sure that many med schools have similar cut offs–they just don’t admit it publicly.
14000 applications for 170 spots is pretty daunting.
Acceptance rates at many med schools are in the single digits. UCLA is far from being alone in getting 10,000+ applications for a class of 125-175 seats.
Will give UCLA credit, though, as they are no doubt foregoing a lot of money from applicants who did not have a chance of acceptance.
A current adcomm has said he personally doubts the new published cut-offs will discourage applicants from applying because they either don’t read the admission guidelines on the school’s website or they think they will be the one exception to the general rule. (Called magical thinking–and it’s common among some pre-meds.)
Plus a 3.4 GPA and 512 MCAT is a pretty low bar.
There is a website publishing averages for all med schools across the nation (google GPA and MCAT for med schools) and they are listing 3.85 and 517 as average. I suspect they probably have 2000-3000 applications that meet or beat those numbers and have to discard a large percentage before interviews.
I have no way of verifying that these websites are correct, but a quick scan shows your average numbers to be a bit high. But perhaps your data is more reliable-what is the source?
http://www.mcattestscores.com/usmedicalschoolsmcatscoresGPA.html
http://www.mcattestscores.com/
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/blog/average-gpa-and-mcat-score-for-every-medical-school
and Princeton Review has the average for med school matriculants at 510.4 and the GPA at 3.71. Both, of course, redoubtable numbers.
https://www.princetonreview.com/med-school-advice/gpa-for-medical-school
https://www.princetonreview.com/med-school-advice/what-is-a-good-mcat-score
And perhaps the UCLA announcement will filter down to applicants so they can save their time and money and not succumb to wishful thinking.
I think @texaspg was providing average numbers for UCLA specifically, not all med schools.
I was thinking it feels like the 3.4 GPA is a pretty low bar, but the 512 MCAT less so.
Here is the grid for GPA/MCAT :
https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf
About 1K more applicants this cycle compared with last year. The applicant pool is getting really crowded.
@crankyoldman My numbers are specific to UCLA and are listed in one of the links you list. Since it is a commercial site, I was not sure CC would accept the URL.
^^Anything good is difficult to get. Just finish a YouTube video where a straight A Ivy graduate sent out 300+ medical NIH research applications to gain one position for his gap year.
While several medical schools strongly advise against applying for admission more than twice(UCLA is one of those), are there other schools that publish “hard” GPA/MCAT cutoffs?
When I advise students, i give the following guidelines - Asians - dont bother if you meet the mean (need to be closer to 75% or more), under represented - apply even if below mean, others, apply if mean but not below.
Why bother applying if you don’t meet the mean at any school? what makes you competitive?
https://medschool.ucla.edu/apply-basis-of-selection
Academic Metrics: For the Incoming 2017 Class, the academic metric information is as follows:
Category
25th percentile
50 percentile (median) 75th percentile
Overall GPA 3.60 3.82 3.92
BCPM GPA 3.55 3.79 3.92
MCAT 2015 505 514 518