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Official "What are my chances for McMaster" Thread


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Was wondering what everyone's thoughts are on my chances for McMaster this year. Would really appreciate any insight!

CARS: 128

GPA: 3.93

I applied last year with these same stats and unfortunately did not receive an interview invite. Is it possible to do well enough on CASPer this year to get an interview? This is also considering the fact that there are now hypothetically less spots for interviews this cycle, since everyone who received an interview invite but was not admitted this year via the lottery is to automatically receive an invite next year. 

I'm not totally sure how to improve on CASPer. I think my moral compass is good enough to have gotten into McMaster Nursing lol, which also uses CASPer, but I understand that medicine is a totally different game. 

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17 minutes ago, queenofdragons said:

Was wondering what everyone's thoughts are on my chances for McMaster this year. Would really appreciate any insight!

CARS: 128

GPA: 3.93

I applied last year with these same stats and unfortunately did not receive an interview invite. Is it possible to do well enough on CASPer this year to get an interview? This is also considering the fact that there are now hypothetically less spots for interviews this cycle, since everyone who received an interview invite but was not admitted this year via the lottery is to automatically receive an invite next year. 

I'm not totally sure how to improve on CASPer. I think my moral compass is good enough to have gotten into McMaster Nursing lol, which also uses CASPer, but I understand that medicine is a totally different game. 

I think McMaster mentioned something about increasing the number of interview invites by however many guaranteed invites there are. There was a thread about it on here recently. 

@MedicineLCS described how to calculate GPA/CARS percentiles given recently published admissions data. If I'm calculating this correctly, you're GPA puts you in the 80th percentile, and CARS in the 78th percentile of all applicants. A few people have reported getting interviews with similar and even lower percentiles last cycle, so CASPer performance is huge. An Interview invite is definitely possible. Good luck :lol:

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On 8/23/2020 at 1:11 PM, anonymouspanda said:

Yeah, 2 years of undergrad would be the best way to become competitive for the most number of schools. 

Full course load requirements do kind of vary by university however what is full course load for a uni is not always a full course for a med school. So, it would be best if you research the med school websites to find out what they consider to be a full course load. That being said, full course load for most med schools is 5 courses per semester for the fall and winter semester so 10 courses in total. Every med school also has slightly different rules for how they weigh summer courses so you would also have to decide if you want to do school in the summers or not. 

Interesting.  I note that Calgary and Queen's consider 8 and 6 courses to be full course loads respectively.  Guess the rest are 10 courses.

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On 8/25/2020 at 5:32 AM, Teddyboi said:

Interesting.  I note that Calgary and Queen's consider 8 and 6 courses to be full course loads respectively.  Guess the rest are 10 courses.

I'm not sure where you got the stats for Queen's but a full course load for them is 100% 5 courses a semester (10 total), not 6

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1 hour ago, Psych said:

I'm not sure where you got the stats for Queen's but a full course load for them is 100% 5 courses a semester (10 total), not 6

Nope it’s 6. 3 per semester minimum for full time as per their website https://meds.queensu.ca/academics/undergraduate/prospective-students/applying/application-process

just need to have the 30 half/15 full credits by June 30th if you get accepted. 

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5 hours ago, IMislove said:

Nope it’s 6. 3 per semester minimum for full time as per their website https://meds.queensu.ca/academics/undergraduate/prospective-students/applying/application-process

just need to have the 30 half/15 full credits by June 30th if you get accepted. 

True, I thought they were saying 6 courses a semester! Not total aha. I was also mainly referring to Queen's itself considering 5 a semester full-time (as in, if you go to Queen's for undergrad 5 courses a semester is full time) but their med requirements are clearly different. I just knew that they definitely don't consider 6 courses a semester full time (which is what I thought OP meant)

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Hey!! Any insight as an OOP applicant would be appreciated. My GPA is about a 3.95 but I also have a completed Master's degree but I'm not entirely sure where the extra points are added for that. My CARS score was 128 and I got two interviews to Ottawa with CASPer when my GPA was a 3.94 at the time so I think it should be okay? I feel like a goof because I only just realized McMaster separates IP and OOP.

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47 minutes ago, offmychestplease said:

3.95, 128, OOP - you will get an invite with a 70th+ percentile casper. (The master's boost is probably equivalent to a +1 CARS boost). 

I feel like that's a gross overestimation of their chances as an OOP, since Mac has never released any forms of statistics for specifically OOP admission (other than how many interview spots are offered - we don't even know how many OOP applicants there are). Just for reference, I applied last cycle as an OOP with a 3.96 GPA and 130 CARS and did not get an invite to Mac but got into Ottawa, so Mac's OOP competition is very tough. So I'll just say to try your best on CASPer but be prepared for rejection. With that said, CASPer incorporates Snapshot this year and with OP's knack for ethics, I think they do have a very good chance (I doubt a 70th percentile would be sufficient though).

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2 minutes ago, offmychestplease said:

Casper at Ottawa is worth way less than Casper at Mac. You likely got an interview at Ottawa due to your GPA and missed a Mac interview due to a not so great Casper.

I totally agree with you there. But I doubt that Ottawa would have interviewed me with an average CASPer. So just try your best and don't sleep on CASPer.

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19 hours ago, offmychestplease said:

why not? Your GPA is basically 4.0 and you could have gotten an Ottawa interview with an average Casper, since GPA which is worth more would offset it. This would also make sense as to why you didn't get a Mac interview.

Given the fact that uOttawa used WGPA, there were plenty of applicants with close to a 4.0. What more? If you have a look through the uO and Mac interview threads from last year, there were plenty of people with high GPA and CARS who got Mac and not uO - would you make the argument that their CASPer was so bad that it completely derailed their uO chances but somehow did not affect their Mac application (even though it counts for 30% of the pre-interview scores)?

All I'm saying is that med admission is a lot more opaque than it seems, even for an outstandingly transparent school like McMaster due to the fact that CASPer scores are not disclosed. So there should be an understanding of such reality so people don't get too discouraged when the result didn't go their way, as well as trying their absolute best and maintaining some reasoned optimism.

But I also do agree with you that uO didn't look at CASPer as much as Mac (they might simply use it as a cut-off for all we know), otherwise, I wouldn't have gotten interviewed.

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On 9/2/2020 at 1:27 PM, offmychestplease said:

3.95, 128, OOP - you will get an invite with a 70th+ percentile casper. (The master's boost is probably equivalent to a +1 CARS boost). 

Hey thank you! I'm pretty confident about CASPer just because it'll be my third time, but this Snapshot thing is new. Based on some other internet reviews, many are calling on people to NOT do the snapshot if it's not required by the program. I haven't seen anything about it being required yet as this was the first place I heard about it... Will have to email schools and ask if they're requiring it and if it will benefit participants

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/17/2020 at 11:58 AM, AB27 said:

I know I'm in a good place but I am a very slow typer (<40 wpm when transcribing) and I dont think I'm v good at SJTs. How likely is it that I dont get an interview? Mac is my best shot as my ECs are lacking in certain areas.

3.99, 132

Unless you screw up CASPer, your MCAT and GPA are stellar and will likely get an interview. To maximize your chances, do everything you can to try to increase your typing speed before the test!

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You're in a great spot. You need to be in about the top 2/3rds, so don't blow off CASPer entirely, but don't stress yourself out too much either. You're right around the interview average (which means about half below, about half above, although there is skew) so don't expect anything, but don't be surprised if you get a nice email in January/February. 

Also, since we have the study data now, I thought I'd share the charts I made for a friend a few months ago to figure out the minimum CASPer percentile needed for a given MCAT/GPA (they were wondering about the merits of rewriting/additional undergrad years and I was curious).

A quick word on methodology is that I used the study data means and SDs to assume a normal distribution of GPA/CARS/CASPer (which is not a fair assumption for GPA/CARS, but hey, it's the best we have) and then found the lowest aggregate "score" (defined as points out of 96 (32 CARS, 32 CASPer, 32 GPA) someone who got an interview had (who wasn't in a special stream) in the last couple of years, based on their relation to the pre-interview pool in the study. This turns out to be about a 64 (there are a bunch in the mid-high 60s, even if most of the interview pool are in the 70s+). Since people don't know their CASPer result I assumed the low stat interview invites maxed out CASPer (32/32), which is unlikely, so the actual cutoff is probably a bit lower than the 64. Note that the data will be less accurate at extremes (high/low CARS/GPA). 

As a final word of warning, the numbers on here seem very deterministic, but because I had to make a number of assumptions, they're really not that definitive. Add maybe 5-10% to the percentiles shown and you get a more realistic range of the minimum CASPer performance you should be aiming for. The data may also seem optomistic since it's talking about the lowest score ever seen in multiple cycles, most people interviewing are well into the green zone as a result. Don't underestimate CASPer based off this chart or ask why you didn't interview when you needed a 12th percentile result or something (answer, you scored below that range or red flagged it). 

Hopefully posting this allows everyone to figure out their own chances based off the. Percentiles above 100 are mathematically impossible, so if you add some flex room, anything above a 110-115 isn't going to be happening. And again, these should not be treated as definitive, down to the last digit, estimates, but as ball-park guesstimates based off 30 minutes of Excel work for a friend. The math used to this is inherent error prone in changing multiple percentile scores into straight scores and back to percentiles, but it's better than nothing. 

QxeSmh6.png

 

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On 9/19/2020 at 5:39 PM, MedicineLCS said:

You're in a great spot. You need to be in about the top 2/3rds, so don't blow off CASPer entirely, but don't stress yourself out too much either. You're right around the interview average (which means about half below, about half above, although there is skew) so don't expect anything, but don't be surprised if you get a nice email in January/February. 

Also, since we have the study data now, I thought I'd share the charts I made for a friend a few months ago to figure out the minimum CASPer percentile needed for a given MCAT/GPA (they were wondering about the merits of rewriting/additional undergrad years and I was curious).

A quick word on methodology is that I used the study data means and SDs to assume a normal distribution of GPA/CARS/CASPer (which is not a fair assumption for GPA/CARS, but hey, it's the best we have) and then found the lowest aggregate "score" (defined as points out of 96 (32 CARS, 32 CASPer, 32 GPA) someone who got an interview had (who wasn't in a special stream) in the last couple of years, based on their relation to the pre-interview pool in the study. This turns out to be about a 64 (there are a bunch in the mid-high 60s, even if most of the interview pool are in the 70s+). Since people don't know their CASPer result I assumed the low stat interview invites maxed out CASPer (32/32), which is unlikely, so the actual cutoff is probably a bit lower than the 64. Note that the data will be less accurate at extremes (high/low CARS/GPA). 

As a final word of warning, the numbers on here seem very deterministic, but because I had to make a number of assumptions, they're really not that definitive. Add maybe 5-10% to the percentiles shown and you get a more realistic range of the minimum CASPer performance you should be aiming for. The data may also seem optomistic since it's talking about the lowest score ever seen in multiple cycles, most people interviewing are well into the green zone as a result. Don't underestimate CASPer based off this chart or ask why you didn't interview when you needed a 12th percentile result or something (answer, you scored below that range or red flagged it). 

Hopefully posting this allows everyone to figure out their own chances based off the. Percentiles above 100 are mathematically impossible, so if you add some flex room, anything above a 110-115 isn't going to be happening. And again, these should not be treated as definitive, down to the last digit, estimates, but as ball-park guesstimates based off 30 minutes of Excel work for a friend. The math used to this is inherent error prone in changing multiple percentile scores into straight scores and back to percentiles, but it's better than nothing. 

QxeSmh6.png

 

Wow, is there an actual study for this published? If so, could you link it? Or is this just data collected from forum posts etc?

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