For those rejected, Feedback Email Sent Out / Discussion

[OPSRehman]

So I didn't get an interview invite, and today I got an email today that gave me feedback. I'm guessing others got it as well, so it may be good to share thoughts.

My feedback: 

cGPA (x/4.00)	MCAT (x/132)	Raw Personal Activity (x/15)
Max Score	4.00	131.50	11.00
Average Score	3.83	128.34	7.15
Your Score	3.97	130.75	2

Feels bad man. I thought I was atleast average (I got an interview for UofC which is more EC-heavy so I thought my ECs were decent) but this score says otherwise. Maybe I just wrote things poorly or something else I don't know. We'll see next time.

 

[Saskapp12]

Take solace in the fact that with that GPA and MCAT, it’s a matter of “when” and not “if” you get into med school if you’re willing to boost ECs. And honestly, lots of the time it seems like admissions people look more at what you learned/how you grew from ECs vs what the actual activity is, so it could be something as simple presenting yourself in a different manner 

[Saskapp12]

On another note, does anyone know if the “Average” is “applicant average” or “interview invite average?” 

[mscpmed]

Damn, that's brutal. But on the bright side, since you did get a U of C interview, it may just be a matter of rewording your statements next cycle if this one doesn't work out. 

I scored 7/15 on personal activities, which was a bit of a relief, but not enough to pull me up from a mediocre GPA. At least now I feel like I stand a chance in next year's cycle

[mscpmed]

3 minutes ago, Saskapp12 said:

On another note, does anyone know if the “Average” is “applicant average” or “interview invite average?” 

I'm almost certain it's interview invite average, there's absolutely no way the average applicant had a 513 MCAT or an activity score of 7/15. 

[Saskapp12]

4 minutes ago, mscpmed said:

I'm almost certain it's interview invite average, there's absolutely no way the average applicant had a 513 MCAT or an activity score of 7/15. 

Makes sense, thanks!

[tungsten44]

So my score breakdowns were 3.92/129.5/5

i really wish we were able to get an idea of where we fell in the ranking, wondering if that would’ve been enough to get an interview had a I been an IP applicant

[regretful spoon]

I had an identical score of 3.92/129.5/5 as well. My EC score last year (interview) was 8 and I added much more to my app this year( 3 publications, 30k in scholarships and more hours) but it still dropped. Two years ago I got an interview with a lower gpa and EC score of 4 so I’m assuming I may have possibly failed the Casper test this year or the competition this cycle was much higher! 

[Dust_Bucket]

7 minutes ago, tungsten44 said:

So my score breakdowns were 3.92/129.5/5

i really wish we were able to get an idea of where we fell in the ranking, wondering if that would’ve been enough to get an interview had a I been an IP applicant

Same here, 

I was 3.97/129.75/8 so I wonder if I just catastrophically failed on the CASPer or on my references (or whether I just needed a higher EC score). 

[tungsten44]

6 minutes ago, Dust_Bucket said:

Same here, 

I was 3.97/129.75/8 so I wonder if I just catastrophically failed on the CASPer or on my references (or whether I just needed a higher EC score). 

Definitely could’ve been CASPer for me as well since I didn’t get an IP Mac invite with 3.76/131 so I must have done pretty damn bad 

[zoxy]

40 minutes ago, OPSRehman said:

So I didn't get an interview invite, and today I got an email today that gave me feedback. I'm guessing others got it as well, so it may be good to share thoughts.

My feedback: 

cGPA (x/4.00)	MCAT (x/132)	Raw Personal Activity (x/15)
Max Score	4.00	131.50	11.00
Average Score	3.83	128.34	7.15
Your Score	3.97	130.75	2

Feels bad man. I thought I was atleast average (I got an interview for UofC which is more EC-heavy so I thought my ECs were decent) but this score says otherwise. Maybe I just wrote things poorly or something else I don't know. We'll see next time.

 

Are you IP or OOP?

If you're IP, that's insane. The process is so arbitrary, what a joke.

[OPSRehman]

14 minutes ago, zoxy said:

Are you IP or OOP?

If you're IP, that's insane. The process is so arbitrary, what a joke.

I'm IP, and yes, it feels so dumb. I don't know if this is just bad luck or I seriously messed up. 

[zoxy]

5 hours ago, OPSRehman said:

I'm IP, and yes, it feels so dumb. I don't know if this is just bad luck or I seriously messed up. 

It's 100 percent not your fault. As others have said, some people get lower extra curricular scores in a following cycle despite boosting their ECs. The process is very arbitrary, they just don't care. If you go to the UBC sub, you'll find so many examples of this.

Hopefully you get into UofC and end up where you want to be, but a year in advance.

At least with that GPA and MCAT you should have a really good shot at Sask, Western, Mac, and Manitoba.

[barromac]

I'm IP and got 4.00/127.5/3

Pretty disappointed but at least we got an idea of what went wrong.

[garceyues]

Welp, it looks like things did get more competitive this year. The average cGPA and MCAT increased slightly, but the personal activity score jumped from 6 last year to 7.15 this year. I feel like I'm in a race against time to become competitive enough for an interview since cut-offs seem to get incrementally higher each year. Definitely feeling quite defeated in terms of my ability to interview at the U of A.

For OOP applicants that were rejected, what was the average score for cGPA, MCAT, and personal activities? I think the average of 3.83/128.34/7.15 is for the IP pool only but I could be wrong. I know that they divided things up separately based on IP and OOP pools last year.

One thing I noticed was that the personal activity score is now out of 15 rather than out of 17 like it was last year. I'm not really sure what to make of this. How do you score 16 activities and 5 long answer write ups out of 15? 

 

2 hours ago, Saskapp12 said:

Take solace in the fact that with that GPA and MCAT, it’s a matter of “when” and not “if” you get into med school if you’re willing to boost ECs. And honestly, lots of the time it seems like admissions people look more at what you learned/how you grew from ECs vs what the actual activity is, so it could be something as simple presenting yourself in a different manner 

I feel like what you learned and how you grew is definitely the approach that U of C takes, but for U of A who knows honestly. U of A really doesn't give us any direction in terms of what they are looking for. I know people that did both and were fine at the U of A, but of course GPA and MCAT could have also compensated for subpar ECs or mediocre writing.

2 hours ago, Saskapp12 said:

On another note, does anyone know if the “Average” is “applicant average” or “interview invite average?” 

I believe 3.83/128.34/7.15 refers to the "interview invite average" although they didn't clearly state that in the rejection email. Last year however, the "average" stats they provided were the averages for those that got interviews (it was stated in my rejection letter last year) so I would assume its the same thing for this year. Like @mscpmed said, those stats are realistically too high to be the average applicant average. U of A's IP admission average has been a ~513 MCAT ~3.81 cGPA for the past few years, so there’s almost no way the pool become so competitive that the average applicant has those stats.

[babakoto]

lmaoo when I got the email notification I thought they just wanted to let me know AGAIN that I've been rejected 

 

whelp I got a 4/15 on personal activities. Like many here, I've done decently well at Calgary and thought my ECs were pretty good...guess UofA is looking for something else

[Dust_Bucket]

34 minutes ago, garceyues said:

Welp, it looks like things did get more competitive this year. The average cGPA and MCAT increased slightly, but the personal activity score jumped from 6 last year to 7.15 this year. I feel like I'm in a race against time to become competitive enough for an interview since cut-offs seem to get incrementally higher each year. Definitely feeling quite defeated in terms of my ability to interview at the U of A.

For OOP applicants that were rejected, what was the average score for cGPA, MCAT, and personal activities? I think the average of 3.83/128.34/7.15 is for the IP pool only but I could be wrong. I know that they divided things up separately based on IP and OOP pools last year.

One thing I noticed was that the personal activity score is now out of 15 rather than out of 17 like it was last year. I'm not really sure what to make of this. How do you score 16 activities and 5 long answer write ups out of 15? 

 

I feel like what you learned and how you grew is definitely the approach that U of C takes, but for U of A who knows honestly. U of A really doesn't give us any direction in terms of what they are looking for. I know people that did both and were fine at the U of A, but of course GPA and MCAT could have also compensated for subpar ECs or mediocre writing.

I believe 3.83/128.34/7.15 refers to the "interview invite average" although they didn't clearly state that in the rejection email. Last year however, the "average" stats they provided were the averages for those that got interviews (it was stated in my rejection letter last year) so I would assume its the same thing for this year. Like @mscpmed said, those stats are realistically too high to be the average applicant average. U of A's IP admission average has been a ~513 MCAT ~3.81 cGPA for the past few years, so there’s almost no way the pool become so competitive that the average applicant has those stats.

They e-mailed us the same invite average stats so I am assuming the stats given refer to the entire pool of invited applicants (no distinction between IP and OOP).

I also got clarification from Kimberly that the averages listed were indeed for the invited applicants. 

[Yoyo2017]

Got 4.00/131/6. Wonder what I needed as OOP to receive an invite. Also might have failed Casper depending on how low their cut-offs were bc I didn't get Mac.

[Butterfly_]

27 minutes ago, Yoyo2017 said:

Got 4.00/131/6. Wonder what I needed as OOP to receive an invite. Also might have failed Casper depending on how low their cut-offs were bc I didn't get Mac.

I think your stats are stellar.

What you needed was probably some luck.

[garceyues]

On 4/8/2021 at 2:34 PM, Dust_Bucket said:

They e-mailed us the same invite average stats so I am assuming the stats given refer to the entire pool of invited applicants (no distinction between IP and OOP).

I also got clarification from Kimberly that the averages listed were indeed for the invited applicants. 

Hmm that's really interesting if those stats are for both IP and OOP. I would assume they would make a distinction given 1) that they have in previous years, and 2) the admission statistics on their website separates things by IP/OOP. The average numbers are also quite similar to the IP pool averages from last year even though there was a slight increase. I would presume that they would have skewed much higher if the two pools were combined.

[offmychestplease]

I think many people here are underestimating Casper. Yes Casper is P/F but the pass threshold could have been something like say the 30th percentile and anyone below that would get an auto-reject despite other parts of the app being perfect. Also, verifiers/reference issues could be another thing that sinks an otherwise perfect app. Finally, EC's are likely worth a lot more than many give them credit for. So despite a high GPA/MCAT if your EC score is very low that could be what did you in or they may be a cutoff EC score (ie. if you got a 2 EC score or less that would disqualify you automatically etc). 

In summary, don't compare yourself to the GPA/MCAT/EC averages alone, there is much more to the story.   

[PirouetteCacahuete]

For those that worry it might have been their CASPer; I was invited at UofA as OOP, and I know for a fact that I did horrible on that particular CASPer. I ran out of time, said some stupid stuff in my haste on two stations, felt terrible about it after, and was rejected pre-II explicitly Or implicitly on the basis of a bad CASPer elsewhere.
 

So, unless the CASPer pool was weak allowing me to stay above some cutoff or place competitively (And I highly doubt this is the case), it seems to me that the test didn’t play a big part of the selection this year. I honestly thought for sure UofA was not happening for me given my result everywhere else with the test... I believe this is the first year UofA uses it, which tells me they could potentially be testing the waters. 
 

I also have 4.0/128, so my CARS wasn’t enough to pull me up either. 
 

I’m just as puzzled as you all are... didn’t think my ECs were above average in any way and I scored below average at UBC in the OOP pool. I’d be curious to see what score they assigned at UofA, but ofc I can’t. 
 

Looks like it is extremely subjective.
 

 

 

 

[offmychestplease]

this was the fourth year that UofA used Casper lol

[PirouetteCacahuete]

On 4/13/2021 at 7:18 PM, offmychestplease said:

this was the fourth year that UofA used Casper lol

Thanks for the correction! I remember using the AFMC from last year to build my spreadsheet and having to add it in this year for some reason at UofA. Either way, I can guarantee you mine was not good by any stretch of the imagination, so idk.