MCAT CARS Cut-off Speculation for 20-21

[sciencegirl314]

Hey guys, just feeling anxious 24/7 like usual about all this stuff and wanted to get your thoughts on the coming year. What do you  anticipate the CARS cut-off to be? Seems to hover at 126-127 recently but given that the process becomes more competitive each year, I feel like it'll be 127 this cycle potentially (as someone who has a 126, I'm obviously very worried haha).

[scoobydoo1623]

19 hours ago, sciencegirl314 said:

Hey guys, just feeling anxious 24/7 like usual about all this stuff and wanted to get your thoughts on the coming year. What do you  anticipate the CARS cut-off to be? Seems to hover at 126-127 recently but given that the process becomes more competitive each year, I feel like it'll be 127 this cycle potentially (as someone who has a 126, I'm obviously very worried haha).

For the first time, Queen's is incorporating CASPer into the mix this cycle, so who knows what the cut offs will be. Usually when a med school adds an additional, novel factor into their admissions requirements (e.g - Western and their new essays), thresholds tend to go down.

[sciencegirl314]

4 hours ago, scoobydoo1623 said:

For the first time, Queen's is incorporating CASPer into the mix this cycle, so who knows what the cut offs will be. Usually when a med school adds an additional, novel factor into their admissions requirements (e.g - Western and their new essays), thresholds tend to go down.

Really hope that they use the CASPer in this capacity. The only other way I can imagine is that they may use it to further cut down the applicants from consideration as another cut-off after the GPA and MCAT. Defininitely tough to say how it will play out.

[rmorelan]

11 hours ago, sciencegirl314 said:

Really hope that they use the CASPer in this capacity. The only other way I can imagine is that they may use it to further cut down the applicants from consideration as another cut-off after the GPA and MCAT. Defininitely tough to say how it will play out.

true - only positive thing is at the end of the day they still need to interview roughly the same number of people - the overall pipeline cannot reduce the number too much. Usually at worst the cuff offs remain the same and new scoring system is added to the end evaluation but that seems unlikely with CASPer as its entire point is a screening tool rather than an evaluation tool directly. 

[scoobydoo1623]

18 hours ago, sciencegirl314 said:

Really hope that they use the CASPer in this capacity. The only other way I can imagine is that they may use it to further cut down the applicants from consideration as another cut-off after the GPA and MCAT. Defininitely tough to say how it will play out.

Yea.... they can't cut down the applicant pool too much, so for GPA + MCAT to be used with the same cut offs as previous years PLUS the additional screen of CASPer would most likely result in a severe decrease in the applicants under consideration for an interview (guestimation). So, with a GPA + MCAT + CASPer evaluation, two or all of these factors have to lighten up to maintain the same number of applicants under consideration for an interview. All speculation, but I think this makes sense logistically (assuming that their goal with CASPer was to emphasize different applicant strengths rather than solely cutting down the applicant pool - latter is less likely). 

[MedicineLCS]

Not to freak anyone out, but one thing to bear in mind is the cutoffs do (apparently) fluctuate based off the pool, and it's possible with other schools seeing admissions spikes, that Queens (without the strict rules of Western, and opaque cutoffs) could have attracted significantly more applications this year, leading to everything staying relatively similar. If you gain a couple hundred more applications, some of them actually competitive, it may not move the cutoffs that much as you would expect with the addition of a new screening tool, particularly if this year is a test-run for CASPer. But in the end, no one knows, so it's all speculation until the invites come out...