Interview Cancelled??

[icymeia 17]

3 minutes ago, premedontario said:

My speculation is that they will probably weigh your highest stat the most. For me for example, it would be 3X GPA, 2X CASPER, 1X CARS (in order of your strongest to weakest stat).

Or, if they wanted to simulate the post-interview scoring, it would be 70% CASPER and 15% GPA, 15% CARS. 

Who knowssss

I think strongest to weakest could be the fairest for everybody.

[1234561234 6]

Does anyone think they will consider references or ABS as part of the marking scheme? 

[aloeplant 22]

The more speculation we do, the more anxiety we'll feel for the next 2 months, because everyone is going to fervently support the weighting that is most beneficial to themselves.

 

I suggest we all fuck off from this site, block it, and go on with our lives. See y'all in August hopefully, and good luck!

[icymeia 17]

2 minutes ago, aloeplant said:

The more speculation we do, the more anxiety we'll feel for the next 2 months, because everyone is going to fervently support the weighting that is most beneficial to themselves.

 

I suggest we all fuck off from this site, block it, and go on with our lives. See y'all in August hopefully, and good luck!

I hope they're transparent about it though at least, whatever they decide to do

4 minutes ago, 1234561234 said:

Does anyone think they will consider references or ABS as part of the marking scheme? 

I doubt it but maybe

[SnowmanTheSWOMEN 156]

6 minutes ago, 1234561234 said:

Does anyone think they will consider references or ABS as part of the marking scheme? 

No because that would be unfair to the applicants who were banking on McMaster due to a weak ABS. But they could do anything lmfao

[JamesWhoKnows 6]

8 minutes ago, premedontario said:

Also don't worry guys, historically McMaster has accepted 330 of the ~550 applicants total so you have a fair shot!!

With all this COVID-19 complications, I imagine waitlist movement will be lower this year - but I could be wrong.

[1234561234 6]

That makes sense and I think that your weighting system is most fair for all applicants. I think that if any score is uniformly weighed too much more than the others , many people would be disadvantaged as there is no perfect substitute for an interview. At least this way doing poorly on one section won't disqualify you. 

[SnowmanTheSWOMEN 156]

Just now, 1234561234 said:

That makes sense and I think that your weighting system is most fair for all applicants. I think that if any score is uniformly weighed too much more than the others , many people would be disadvantaged as there is no perfect substitute for an interview. At least this way doing poorly on one section won't disqualify you. 

Exactly! Otherwise the Class of 2023 will have an average GPA of 3.95 and average CARS of 130 lmao

[icymeia 17]

3 minutes ago, premedontario said:

Exactly! Otherwise the Class of 2023 will have an average GPA of 3.95 and average CARS of 130 lmao

At the same time though, I think they could pull Casper and just use that as a voodoo tool and make that weigh a lot since we don't know how it gets marked, and it is most similar to the MMI.

[SnowmanTheSWOMEN 156]

Just now, icymeia said:

At the same time though, I think they could pull Casper and just use that as a voodoo tool and make that weigh a lot since we don't know how it gets marked, and it is most similar to the MMI.

Yeah that makes sense since they would want to keep the average entering stats similar to previous years. Predicting interview performance is definitely hard and I can only guess that CASPer comes closest to doing the job. They probably will weigh CASPer a lot along with a statistical test to account for drastically high/low CARS and GPA scores.

[JayKay 25]

34 minutes ago, JamesWhoKnows said:

With all this COVID-19 complications, I imagine waitlist movement will be lower this year - but I could be wrong.

I am curious, I don't see the link between the two?

[JamesWhoKnows 6]

1 minute ago, JayKay said:

I am curious, I don't see the link between the two?

I imagine that good interviewers would be the ones who gets multiple acceptances and create waitlist movement and now interviews are cancelled. That was my (hopefully wrong) logic.

[X Æ A-12 140]

They will perform all those different analysis of applicant parameters you all have mentioned (and possibly more we haven't considered) and compare the lists generated and will pick the list with the least variation (or a combination of everyone's ranking). 

Let's say with method A, Johnny is ranked first, with method B, he's ranked third etc. There's 550 applicants. In method A, he has 550 points, in method B, he has 547 points and they average the points out and create a list. That's the most statistically robust way I can imagine.

[JayKay 25]

Just now, JamesWhoKnows said:

I imagine that good interviewers would be the ones who gets multiple acceptances and create waitlist movement and now interviews are cancelled. That was my (hopefully wrong) logic.

Interesting take, personally my logical thought process was that those who have multiple interviews would most likely have interviewed. Ottawa, Toronto (predicting 3/4 of people have interviewed here), Western (1/2), Queens (1/2). Additionally, there are online interviews at the last 3 schools mentioned. There is a chance that people will still create movement. You might not see 330/552 again, but I would say 300 is a fair estimate. Many applicants with multiple offers might not choose McMaster as well. 

[987654 0]

If they are going to change their process of selection, then they should be fair with everyone who applied in the first place.  That means people who got rejected should also be considered in this new system of assessment. 

[SnowmanTheSWOMEN 156]

23 minutes ago, 987654 said:

If they are going to change their process of selection, then they should be fair with everyone who applied in the first place.  That means people who got rejected should also be considered in this new system of assessment. 

Hmm I don't think so. The pre-interview scoring system still holds true. Those that were rejected pre-interview would have been rejected regardless of the change in the post-interview metric. 

[MedicineLCS 354]

Let's look at the school's perspective. Fairness to applicants is good, but the system is inherently unfair (someone is one tiny letter grade difference in one course away from an interview every year, a couple CARs questions, etc...) In the end, Mac thinks that CARS+GPA+CASPer, capped by an MMI, is a good way to select physicians. Now that they lost their MMI, what's the closest thing they can do now?

I think the option is there, CASPer will be looked at post interview in some way. It was developed as a online MMI, now it gets to live up to it's full potential. 

I would also imagine there won't be a whole lot of waitlist movement changes from last year. In the end, schools have the same number of seats, and planned on interviewing the same number of people. COVID-19 won't affect that. What it may affect is people's willingness to spend the next 3/4+ years of their lives somewhere they've never been. My rank ordering in the middle of my interview list is going to be tougher without site visits, if it comes down to multiple offers. 

 

[ejvrei 42]

https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/6681924

This makes me believe that they likely won't use just the pre-interview score

[SnowmanTheSWOMEN 156]

21 minutes ago, MedicineLCS said:

Let's look at the school's perspective. Fairness to applicants is good, but the system is inherently unfair (someone is one tiny letter grade difference in one course away from an interview every year, a couple CARs questions, etc...) In the end, Mac thinks that CARS+GPA+CASPer, capped by an MMI, is a good way to select physicians. Now that they lost their MMI, what's the closest thing they can do now?

I think the option is there, CASPer will be looked at post interview in some way. It was developed as a online MMI, now it gets to live up to it's full potential. 

I would also imagine there won't be a whole lot of waitlist movement changes from last year. In the end, schools have the same number of seats, and planned on interviewing the same number of people. COVID-19 won't affect that. What it may affect is people's willingness to spend the next 3/4+ years of their lives somewhere they've never been. My rank ordering in the middle of my interview list is going to be tougher without site visits, if it comes down to multiple offers. 

 

I agree. But I also imagine they would be a lot more lenient this year and bring out everyone's strengths since you cannot fully predict one's interview performance based on their CASPer scores. WHY AM I NOT DOING MY ASSIGNMENTS RN UGH

[MCatt 5]

Depending on how they choose to give out offers will impact the overall class culture. Imagine spending the next four years with classmates who were offered solely based on GPA and CARS- no diversity to bring to bring to group learning, which is what they believe in. Hopefully they’re transparent with us and consider Casper and/or the ABS to a greater extent, because I think it would be something that would impact what school decisions.

[SnowmanTheSWOMEN 156]

5 minutes ago, ejvrei said:

https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/6681924

This makes me believe that they likely won't use just the pre-interview score

"This indicates that the pre-interview rank is not a strong predictor of whether or not an applicant receives an offer"

Makes sense, and hence the reason they weigh GPA and CARS low post-interview.

[icymeia 17]

There's no way it'll be just GPA and CARS. Either Casper or ABS or both will be added on. 

[SnowmanTheSWOMEN 156]

Just now, icymeia said:

There's no way it'll be just GPA and CARS. Either Casper or ABS or both will be added on. 

Don't think they will be adding ABS since that would be contradicting the pre-interview system and make it unfair for the rejected applicants.

[icymeia 17]

Just now, premedontario said:

Don't think they will be adding ABS since that would be contradicting the pre-interview system and make it unfair for the rejected applicants.

Yeah I hope they don't add ABS. 

[ejvrei 42]

Personally, I think 50% CASPer, 25% CARS and 25% GPA would make a good amount of sense. CASPer isn't necessarily a direct indicator of how someone may do on the MMI (knowing the right thing to do is very different than being able to effectively communicate that in person) but this still allows many MMI qualities to be looked at. It also allows CASPer to be weighted more than in pre-interview scoring while not weighing it crazily high!! (Also, I am saying this as someone who feels like a good [not amazing] applicant all around but believes CASPer was the weakest part of my pre-interview score just so you all are aware of any bias I may have)