What GPA is a competitive GPA in 2020?

[sashkodamjo]

I feel like >3.8 just ain't accurate anymore. So what would you say a competitive GPA is (where your GPA isn't the reason you get rejected)?

On a more personal note, I plan on ending my second year with a 3.94 (3.935, but that gets rounded up right?), and hope to apply to med school in the upcoming cycle. I will be applying to UofT, Mac, Queens and Ottawa. 
Is my cGPA (Ottawa wGPA = 3.94) competitive for all the med schools I'm applying to?

I promise this isn't a troll, I know my GPA isn't bad/low by any means but I just want to know how good it is relative to people getting accepted. 

Thanks!

[rice]

Have you looked at admission statistics for those schools? 

Mac and Queen's - You're above average of the accepted applicant

U of T and Ottawa - You're slightly below average of the accepted applicant, but still "competitive" as in many people are accepted with that GPA

[Trujillo]

1 hour ago, rice said:

Mac and Queen's - You're above average of the accepted applicant

U of T and Ottawa - You're slightly below average of the accepted applicant, but still "competitive" as in many people are accepted with that GPA

Are there any stats on the GPAs of applicants (either OMSAS-wide or school-specific)? Looking at accepted GPAs seems pointless without knowing what the applicant pool looks like for context.

[rice]

6 hours ago, Trujillo said:

Are there any stats on the GPAs of applicants (either OMSAS-wide or school-specific)? Looking at accepted GPAs seems pointless without knowing what the applicant pool looks like for context.

What? Applicant GPAs are completely irrelevant, tons of people will apply with very low GPAs, sometimes applying despite not even making posted hard cutoffs. Accepted applicant GPAs are much more informative because it tells you what range of GPA you need to actually get accepted.

[Trujillo]

4 hours ago, rice said:

What? Applicant GPAs are completely irrelevant, tons of people will apply with very low GPAs, sometimes applying despite not even making posted hard cutoffs. Accepted applicant GPAs are much more informative because it tells you what range of GPA you need to actually get accepted.

They can only accept the top x applicants so it's very much relevant. Knowing the applicant GPAs gives insight into how much emphasis is put on GPA versus other components.

[Meridian]

3 hours ago, Trujillo said:

They can only accept the top x applicants so it's very much relevant. Knowing the applicant GPAs gives insight into how much emphasis is put on GPA versus other components.

Applicant Pool GPA is not relevant.  Interviewed vs accepted GPA might be interesting.

 

AFMC does a summary of each school - applicants/interviewed/accepted - no GPA data

    https://afmc.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/2020_admission-requirements_EN.pdf

 

Most schools provide some data. Example below of Mac which does a accepted histogram for each year.

    https://mdprogram.mcmaster.ca/docs/default-source/admissions/class-statistics/class-of-2022-stats.pdf?sfvrsn=2

[rice]

10 hours ago, Trujillo said:

They can only accept the top x applicants so it's very much relevant. Knowing the applicant GPAs gives insight into how much emphasis is put on GPA versus other components.

The bolded statement is incorrect. Consider the following scenario:

Let's say 1000 applicants apply to med school in Ontario. In Ontario, most applicants apply to multiple schools at least (if not every school) to increase their chances. Accounting for some regional preferences, let's say 800 of those applicants apply to both University of Toronto and McMaster University. If all you looked at was applicant GPA, the values for the two schools would be very similar because for the most part, it's the same group of people applying to both schools. However, when you look at the average GPA of applicants who are interviewed or accepted at the two schools, these values will be entirely different because the two schools evaluate GPA differently.

Think about it: applicant GPA does not take into consideration how much weight a school actually puts in the GPA versus other components of the application. Whether a school considers GPA as 1% of the applicant's score vs. 80%, the applicant GPA is the same, whereas the accepted applicant GPA would be wildly different. This is why no one publishes the average applicant GPA.

Hopefully that clears it up. Let me know if things are still not making sense.

[Trujillo]

11 hours ago, rice said:

The bolded statement is incorrect. Consider the following scenario:

Let's say 1000 applicants apply to med school in Ontario. In Ontario, most applicants apply to multiple schools at least (if not every school) to increase their chances. Accounting for some regional preferences, let's say 800 of those applicants apply to both University of Toronto and McMaster University. If all you looked at was applicant GPA, the values for the two schools would be very similar because for the most part, it's the same group of people applying to both schools. However, when you look at the average GPA of applicants who are interviewed or accepted at the two schools, these values will be entirely different because the two schools evaluate GPA differently.

Think about it: applicant GPA does not take into consideration how much weight a school actually puts in the GPA versus other components of the application. Whether a school considers GPA as 1% of the applicant's score vs. 80%, the applicant GPA is the same, whereas the accepted applicant GPA would be wildly different. This is why no one publishes the average applicant GPA.

Hopefully that clears it up. Let me know if things are still not making sense.

That's exactly what I said - to use applicant GPAs as context for accepted GPAs. What I was curious to see was published numbers on this, rather than the "Let's say..." assumption you're making. Seeing as how some schools get more than double the applicants of others, I can't see how one can make a confident conclusion such as yours.

You can see how the competitiveness of a 3.95 at uoft varies if their applicants averaged a 3.9 versus a 3.5. Though this may seem an extreme example, I'm just wanting to resolve this with numbers instead of the "common sense" you seem to be employing.

[rice]

6 hours ago, Trujillo said:

That's exactly what I said - to use applicant GPAs as context for accepted GPAs. What I was curious to see was published numbers on this, rather than the "Let's say..." assumption you're making. Seeing as how some schools get more than double the applicants of others, I can't see how one can make a confident conclusion such as yours.

You can see how the competitiveness of a 3.95 at uoft varies if their applicants averaged a 3.9 versus a 3.5. Though this may seem an extreme example, I'm just wanting to resolve this with numbers instead of the "common sense" you seem to be employing.

My point is that this "context" you are seeking provides zero benefit in any applicant decision making capacity, and that's why no medical school bothers to publish those stats. If 3.95 was the competitive GPA and your GPA was close to that, you would strongly consider applying. If 3.95 was the competitive GPA, and you had a 3.3 you would not consider applying, regardless of if the applicant pool GPA "context" was 3.5 or 2.5. Again, keep in mind that this "context" score is also very similar at many schools because most people apply to multiple schools, so it doesn't give you any useful information on the individual school's selection process. I think you're correct in that further information beyond just the mean accepted applicant GPA would be useful, but in this case the standard deviation of the accepted applicant's GPAs would be far more useful (which is also why some schools like McMaster breakdown how many people were admitted in each GPA 0.1 range).

[Trujillo]

4 hours ago, rice said:

My point is that this "context" you are seeking provides zero benefit in any applicant decision making capacity

Yes it does. Again with the previous example, if applicants averaged a 3.5 and you had a 3.95, we can confidently say that you're competitive since GPA seemingly plays a large role (barring statistical analysis), but if the applicants had a 3.9, just having a 3.95 wouldn't be enough to call someone "competitive", as per the original question, urging the consideration of other application components to conclude whether someone is "competitive".

[rice]

7 hours ago, Trujillo said:

Yes it does. Again with the previous example, if applicants averaged a 3.5 and you had a 3.95, we can confidently say that you're competitive since GPA seemingly plays a large role (barring statistical analysis)

No we cannot confidently say that is my point. At U of T a 3.95 may make you "competitive" because, yes there, GPA does play a large role. Whereas at Queen's, a 3.95 is the same as say a 3.80 or whatever their GPA cutoff is because anything above their cutoff is treated the same and the file review score completely depends on other factors.

At these two schools, GPA is given completely different levels of importance and an individual's chances will be very different at the two schools, and yet their average applicant GPAs will be nearly the same, because mostly the same people are applying to both.

[Trujillo]

7 minutes ago, rice said:

No we cannot confidently say that is my point. At U of T a 3.95 may make you "competitive" because, yes there, GPA does play a large role. Whereas at Queen's, a 3.95 is the same as say a 3.80 or whatever their GPA cutoff is because anything above their cutoff is treated the same and the file review score completely depends on other factors.

At these two schools, GPA is given completely different levels of importance and an individual's chances will be very different at the two schools, and yet their average applicant GPAs will be nearly the same, because mostly the same people are applying to both.

And such info would be evident in Queen's accepted GPA not being as high as uoft's, if it were publicly available. This doesn't contradict my point in anyway. As you say, "Let me know if things are still not making sense."

[rice]

22 minutes ago, Trujillo said:

And such info would be evident in Queen's accepted GPA not being as high as uoft's, if it were publicly available.

Right, the accepted GPA would be different, so it's actually useful in a comparison. The applicant GPA would be same, so it's useless.

[Matty66]

I'm gonna have to say that a 3.8 GPA is still competitive. That being said, it depends on the school and their admissions criteria/evaluation method. Also lots of schools use a weighted GPA so make sure to do your research before you apply.

[Trujillo]

11 hours ago, rice said:

The applicant GPA would be same

I'm just saying that this seemingly common sense assumption should be confirmed with numbers; it's not a hard concept.

[Mel96b]

On 3/6/2020 at 6:22 PM, Trujillo said:

Are there any stats on the GPAs of applicants (either OMSAS-wide or school-specific)? Looking at accepted GPAs seems pointless without knowing what the applicant pool looks like for context.

Not in Ontario, but Mcgill publishes the average and mode GPA of applicants & people who got an interview & people who got accepted for each category. It should at least give you an indication, it's probably similar in your area

https://www.mcgill.ca/medadmissions/after-youve-applied/currentapplicantstats

https://mcgill.ca/medadmissions/prospective/our-statistics

Psstt! I have 3.80 and still got interviewed! >3.8 for the competitive range is still accurate. But I have a Master's degree so it probably helped