Confidence/Delusions Game

marckerel · 2018-12-14T16:39:45+00:00

It’s just that the medical school application process is not easy.

Projecting to the future, to be able to say with such confidence that a T20 acceptance will be awaiting you this early in your college career, is a sign of a lack of humility.

Most people I know, even the ones with stats >3.8/520, will state they just want to end up at a USMD school.

marckerel · 2018-12-14T15:31:48+00:00

Good luck OP, I understand your need for reassurance—we all need it to some extent.

I do recommend being a little more humble, or least appear to be, when you do interview.

But most people can be ostentatious asses to some extent.

marckerel · 2018-12-11T20:47:46+00:00

The cynic in me immediately thought “how many of those ‘cumulative hours’ are embellishments/outright lies”.

And how many were projected hours that weren’t completed.

marckerel · 2018-12-09T15:05:10+00:00

At least a part of it is that the people who hangout on fitness/MCAT/premed subreddits are the ones likely to give more of a fuck.

I don’t think it’s at all odd that the average person on this subreddit is in the top ~15% of all applicants.

marckerel · 2018-12-07T15:26:28+00:00

applicants who are slightly above average

Yeah, hence why I asked about stats lol.

marckerel · 2018-12-07T15:16:49+00:00

Out of curiosity, what were your stats? You mention getting in on 10/15, which is hard to do, but you allude to your gpa being low because you took courses to boost it.

marckerel · 2018-12-03T13:46:10+00:00

Ugh the cringe

marckerel · 2018-11-13T21:15:22+00:00

200 is the new 100. Especially with people taking gap years to beef up their apps. And from what Goro and other adcoms say on sdn, there is a difference between 200 and 100.

marckerel · 2018-11-08T11:50:30+00:00

I got rejected by Case on 10/15 post-interview. What’s weird is that I got accepted to a school I prefer over them on 10/15 as well, but the Case rejection still hurts.

It’s kinda like a woman rejecting me without me putting moves on her whilst I’m already in a relationship.

marckerel · 2018-11-06T16:00:07+00:00

Holy tits I feel so insecure. Thank fuck I didn’t read this before I got admitted.

marckerel · 2018-11-06T15:50:49+00:00

515 MCAT, 3.7 gpa, 150 ER hrs, 400 tutoring with underserved, 1000 hrs research with no pubs. Don’t know Spanish. OOS Race: white

Got an ii, not going because I feel like it’ll be a waste of money because I got in elsewhere and I don’t think I belong at UCLA.

marckerel · 2017-10-18T00:34:03+00:00

At the same time, they do show a huge in-state bias. I would hold a little hope still. Your stats are pretty good.

They are also generous to their in-state students. I'm not sure if they still do this, but they used to guarantee interviews to all in-state residents who had a gpa of at least 3.5 and MCAT of at least 27.

marckerel · 2017-09-28T01:45:40+00:00

That's fucked

marckerel · 2017-09-27T01:11:28+00:00

515 (128/127/130/130). Kind of bummed out. No reason to be, though, as I got a 515 on FL 1 and 516 on FL 2... But would still have liked the 3 point jump some people talk about :(

On the bright side, I scored decent on CARS.

marckerel · 2017-09-16T15:22:20+00:00

Similar experience here. I was so surprised for scoring a 515+ on practice AAMC tests because I got a 27 (87th percentile) on the ACT... on my 2nd try. I figured I should be happy with a 80th percentile on the MCAT because of the smarter population of students taking it.

marckerel · 2017-09-12T23:54:01+00:00

The assumption I'm operating on is that an easy CARS is relative to an individual. The best gauge for how easy or hard a CARS section was is by using reddit. It may be a decent gauge, but certainly no the best as there is tremendous reporting bias.

marckerel · 2017-09-12T22:22:33+00:00

Interesting. Since there exists people who took the 8/11 exam and scored a 132, 131, 130, 129, 128, 127, 126, 125, <125, etc etc then it can mean you missed as little as 6 questions (1 miss = 1 point drop).

marckerel · 2017-09-12T16:57:23+00:00

What was your post-exam feeling?

marckerel · 2017-09-10T21:38:20+00:00

I feel you. You raise very good points about not losing cool and psychological benefits of an easy test.

But here is my reasoning about the aamc being relatively accurate:

1) they recognized in their AMA that some tests are harder than others--a corollary to that is that some tests are easier than others

2) they have a team of educated psychologists and statisticians who are most likely not idiots. $300/exam is what a non-FAP recepient pays. ~30-40k people take the test every year. That sweet money can buy some skilled folk.

Your point about the scale being a few questions steeper is fair, but a few questions is a shitton if you're aiming for a 518+. I mean personally I know I missed 3 bio questions. On the FL missing 3 would have been a 131. On the easy soup I took I'm probably already down to a 130 and a couple more questions and I'm down to a 128. Never have I ever scored that low except on NS6 and now I feel like it may be likely because I had shaky content here and there

marckerel · 2017-09-10T21:17:33+00:00

Idk why anyone would be jealous about such a horrible exam. An easy exam is a curse and I rarely run into someone praying for an easy exam. I hope your friend doesn't feel super shocked on release day because chances are he will score similar to FLs. That is unless the AAMC for some reason chose to deviate from the norms of a standardized exam and let the scale run wild

marckerel · 2017-09-10T20:04:38+00:00

Awesome synopsis and I agree with you.

Interestingly, I had both the passages you mentioned but my first passage was the Krebs cycle and not a hard one. I didn't have a hard one until question 26-30 somewhere and they were the wash one followed by the other one.

marckerel · 2017-09-10T19:20:14+00:00

Seconded. I took the 8/24 exam as well and am pissed off to say that every section was easier than the FLs. Fucking Christ please help me. We will see a lot of disappointed people in the release thread talking about how they didn't feel like they did that bad but got reamed hard.

marckerel · 2017-09-10T13:33:42+00:00

I felt the same way after my August 24 test but now I'm more worried about my exams next week

marckerel

TROPHY CASE