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Has anyone received their ranking?

jisoo

By jisoo
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medium fundamental Newbie

medium fundamental

Posted
Posted

Got the rankings this week, well technically I only got one rank, because I couldn’t even get past the “File Review” part  and have the CV reviewed lol. The selection process slightly changed this year and I vaguely recall some forum posts earlier in the year discussing this modification but I didn’t think much of it at the time…oh boy I should have lol.

Here’s a screenshot of the important part of the document

https://imgur.com/a/oP0oTpH

And below that part, it gives my rank out of 1035 (I ranked poorly, 900ish out the 1035).

A couple of thoughts:

-Is the File Review part kinda nebulous/black-boxy to anyone else? It’s especially the “and/or” of the “based on Academic and/or CASPer scores” that is not very clear to me. So I’m guessing it’s essentially a way to not have Admissions review all the CVs (which is understandable but they’ve been doing it all these years anyway so why stop it now but I digress lol).

-At first, I thought it was maybe just simply cutting the worst scores in Academic and CASPer (something like bottom 5% in each can’t move on) but I don’t think that’s all there is to it, because then how is the rank out of 1035 generated? Are weights involved? And again why the “and/or”, how is that determined?

Some context:

-In the previous two cycles, I’ve ranked inside top 270 each time for the Academic part but I am dragged down by my CASPers (bottom 200-300) each time, CV was about average to below average (400s to 600s), ending up with overall ranks around 300-400ish (both years the denominator was about 800, weights were still as they are now 70-20-10).

-For this cycle, I am sure I underperformed on the CASPer again (ran out of time on too many questions) so I am not surprised at all that I didn’t get an invite. But the very low rank out of 1035 is kinda puzzling? Makes it seem like, in my personal case at least, either only the CASPer was considered in File Review or it was weighted rather heavily, given my relatively decent Academic scores in past cycles…

-Counterpoints: NTP candidates were merged into the Uni category this year so each section probably got more competitive and my Academic score probably dropped outside top 300, but it’s hard to imagine it dropped all the way to down to a horrible score…

 

tldr:

File Review part could be more clear: How are the ranks generated at that point? Why the “and/or” regarding basis of competitiveness with Academic and CASPer? Are weights involved?

Obviously Admissions doesn’t owe us any further explanations but FWIW I do think they are usually the most clear and transparent faculty regarding admissions selection among Canadian med schools, it’d be nice if they clarified this issue since it looks like they're keeping the same formula from now on.

tldr 2: CASPER ARRRGGGG!!

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verycaffeinated Apprentice

verycaffeinated

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, medium fundamental said:

Got the rankings this week, well technically I only got one rank, because I couldn’t even get past the “File Review” part  and have the CV reviewed lol. The selection process slightly changed this year and I vaguely recall some forum posts earlier in the year discussing this modification but I didn’t think much of it at the time…oh boy I should have lol.

Here’s a screenshot of the important part of the document

https://imgur.com/a/oP0oTpH

And below that part, it gives my rank out of 1035 (I ranked poorly, 900ish out the 1035).

A couple of thoughts:

-Is the File Review part kinda nebulous/black-boxy to anyone else? It’s especially the “and/or” of the “based on Academic and/or CASPer scores” that is not very clear to me. So I’m guessing it’s essentially a way to not have Admissions review all the CVs (which is understandable but they’ve been doing it all these years anyway so why stop it now but I digress lol).

-At first, I thought it was maybe just simply cutting the worst scores in Academic and CASPer (something like bottom 5% in each can’t move on) but I don’t think that’s all there is to it, because then how is the rank out of 1035 generated? Are weights involved? And again why the “and/or”, how is that determined?

Some context:

-In the previous two cycles, I’ve ranked inside top 270 each time for the Academic part but I am dragged down by my CASPers (bottom 200-300) each time, CV was about average to below average (400s to 600s), ending up with overall ranks around 300-400ish (both years the denominator was about 800, weights were still as they are now 70-20-10).

-For this cycle, I am sure I underperformed on the CASPer again (ran out of time on too many questions) so I am not surprised at all that I didn’t get an invite. But the very low rank out of 1035 is kinda puzzling? Makes it seem like, in my personal case at least, either only the CASPer was considered in File Review or it was weighted rather heavily, given my relatively decent Academic scores in past cycles…

-Counterpoints: NTP candidates were merged into the Uni category this year so each section probably got more competitive and my Academic score probably dropped outside top 300, but it’s hard to imagine it dropped all the way to down to a horrible score…

 

tldr:

File Review part could be more clear: How are the ranks generated at that point? Why the “and/or” regarding basis of competitiveness with Academic and CASPer? Are weights involved?

Obviously Admissions doesn’t owe us any further explanations but FWIW I do think they are usually the most clear and transparent faculty regarding admissions selection among Canadian med schools, it’d be nice if they clarified this issue since it looks like they're keeping the same formula from now on.

tldr 2: CASPER ARRRGGGG!!

Thanks so much for sharing this for future applicants to have as reference! Don't know why but somehow I thought they did full reviews on everyone (at least that was the case when I applied for MedP), it seems to me personally that maybe they use CASPer to eliminate some applicants now from the get-go, like you have to have a certain CASPer score to move forward? Because 76% kind of seems like an awkward number to cap the % of people getting full file reviews

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fluffybunnyyyyy Rookie

fluffybunnyyyyy

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, medium fundamental said:

Got the rankings this week, well technically I only got one rank, because I couldn’t even get past the “File Review” part  and have the CV reviewed lol. The selection process slightly changed this year and I vaguely recall some forum posts earlier in the year discussing this modification but I didn’t think much of it at the time…oh boy I should have lol.

Here’s a screenshot of the important part of the document

https://imgur.com/a/oP0oTpH

And below that part, it gives my rank out of 1035 (I ranked poorly, 900ish out the 1035).

A couple of thoughts:

-Is the File Review part kinda nebulous/black-boxy to anyone else? It’s especially the “and/or” of the “based on Academic and/or CASPer scores” that is not very clear to me. So I’m guessing it’s essentially a way to not have Admissions review all the CVs (which is understandable but they’ve been doing it all these years anyway so why stop it now but I digress lol).

-At first, I thought it was maybe just simply cutting the worst scores in Academic and CASPer (something like bottom 5% in each can’t move on) but I don’t think that’s all there is to it, because then how is the rank out of 1035 generated? Are weights involved? And again why the “and/or”, how is that determined?

Some context:

-In the previous two cycles, I’ve ranked inside top 270 each time for the Academic part but I am dragged down by my CASPers (bottom 200-300) each time, CV was about average to below average (400s to 600s), ending up with overall ranks around 300-400ish (both years the denominator was about 800, weights were still as they are now 70-20-10).

-For this cycle, I am sure I underperformed on the CASPer again (ran out of time on too many questions) so I am not surprised at all that I didn’t get an invite. But the very low rank out of 1035 is kinda puzzling? Makes it seem like, in my personal case at least, either only the CASPer was considered in File Review or it was weighted rather heavily, given my relatively decent Academic scores in past cycles…

-Counterpoints: NTP candidates were merged into the Uni category this year so each section probably got more competitive and my Academic score probably dropped outside top 300, but it’s hard to imagine it dropped all the way to down to a horrible score…

 

tldr:

File Review part could be more clear: How are the ranks generated at that point? Why the “and/or” regarding basis of competitiveness with Academic and CASPer? Are weights involved?

Obviously Admissions doesn’t owe us any further explanations but FWIW I do think they are usually the most clear and transparent faculty regarding admissions selection among Canadian med schools, it’d be nice if they clarified this issue since it looks like they're keeping the same formula from now on.

tldr 2: CASPER ARRRGGGG!!

wait, so you didn't get your casper ranking? just your overall??

Also i'm just guessing but maybe they assign points to how high your gpa is + casper + CV scores, and since your CV wasn't reviewed, you essentially got a score of 0 hence the low ranking overall? this would make the most sense to me

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medium fundamental Newbie

medium fundamental

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, verycaffeinated said:

Thanks so much for sharing this for future applicants to have as reference! Don't know why but somehow I thought they did full reviews on everyone (at least that was the case when I applied for MedP), it seems to me personally that maybe they use CASPer to eliminate some applicants now from the get-go, like you have to have a certain CASPer score to move forward? Because 76% kind of seems like an awkward number to cap the % of people getting full file reviews

No problem!

Well the wording about their selection process on their website in previous years used to be that academic evaluations were performed for all applicants, and then following that only those who had competitive scores for that had their CASPer and CV reviewed.

"Based on the academic evaluation, only competitive applications proceed to a review of the non-academic assessment (CASper Score and CV). The non-academic assessment is carried out for approximately 4 to 6 times the number of candidates we intend to interview. For example, if we intend to interview 50 people in a particular applicant category, the CVs of the top 200-300 files in that cohort are evaluated."

I used Internet Wayback Machine to view older versions of their website to confirm.

May 2018 version

https://web.archive.org/web/20180509080841/http://www.mcgill.ca/medadmissions/applying/selection-process

Sept 2017 version

https://web.archive.org/web/20170922174701/http://www.mcgill.ca/medadmissions/applying/selection-process

For this cycle, they changed it to what we see now.

I agree that some form of CASPer cutoff occurred, I'm just a bit curious about the issues I mentioned in my post.

10 hours ago, fluffybunnyyyyy said:

wait, so you didn't get your casper ranking? just your overall??

Also i'm just guessing but maybe they assign points to how high your gpa is + casper + CV scores, and since your CV wasn't reviewed, you essentially got a score of 0 hence the low ranking overall? this would make the most sense to me

Correct, I did not get a CASPer-specific ranking. Technically speaking, I got a ranking for the File Review stage (whatever that represents: "based on the Academic and/or CASPer scores"). I’ll paste a fuller screenshot of the letter:

https://imgur.com/a/EqI2GoD

Notice the specific wording for the ranking:

“Your file progressed to the File Review/Verification step, where you ranked XYZ (900ish) out the 1035 total applications in your cohort at that point.”

I think I get your theory but I’m not sure that’s how they did it exactly because of: the specific wording mentioned above (apparently my rank was 900ish already at that initial stage) + my Academic scores in previous years make me believe my overall rank wouldn't be that low + why the weird "and/or" wording, but who knows at this point you could be right and I'm just overthinking it lmao… need more data

Additionally, it would be nice when more rankings trickle in to see if component-specific rankings like in previous years (Academic, CASPer, CV) were provided to people who went past File Review.

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Vons Newbie

Vons

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, medium fundamental said:

Correct, I did not get a CASPer-specific ranking. Technically speaking, I got a ranking for the File Review stage (whatever that represents: "based on the Academic and/or CASPer scores").

On one hand I understand that their methodology sort of limits what they can provide, but on the other hand this seriously limits the utility of the ranking for people (like me) who expected to rank really poorly on academics, but decently well on the CV/CASPer and were hoping to gain some insight into their competitiveness... I basically applied this year just to get my component-specific rankings LOL.

And I agree, it sucks that we don't have any useful information on how they use academic and/or CASPer scores at the file review stage. I'm really not into how much of a black-box CASPer is.

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Mel96b Newbie

Mel96b

Posted
Posted
18 hours ago, medium fundamental said:

Obviously Admissions doesn’t owe us any further explanations but FWIW I do think they are usually the most clear and transparent faculty regarding admissions selection among Canadian med schools, it’d be nice if they clarified this issue since it looks like they're keeping the same formula from now on.

Email them!! They might give you answers if they can. It looks like they probably calculated a score based on these two metrics & then used a cut-off... And the Casper must have dragged you down :( 

Sorry for you, but good luck for the next cycle!! Don't give up!!

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ballercat Newbie

ballercat

Posted
Posted

Received my ranking this morning and filled out the ranking form sometime in the fall! Was hoping to receive a ranking for casper but oh well I'm pretty sure I didn't do too hot...

OOP for McGill seems really tough, was screened out in the pre-screen section and ranked 103 out of 228 apps 

GPA: 3.98

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Al22 Newbie

Al22

Posted
Posted

I received it on wednesday august 5th (but the .pdf letter enclosed says 'Saturday, July 18, 2020')

Not sure if this can help anyone, but I was ranked 366/788 (IP) at the prescreen stage, so no improvement from last year (350/819), which is as expected because my undergrad GPA is still 3.6, my casper must have stayed average, and while my CV might have improved it is only worth 10% and depends on who reviews the file

They did not provide the breakdown of rankings as they used to do (rankings for CV, Casper, academic) 

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