Queens WS

[mrsweasley]

Really? I find it's not bothering me as much. (And no I don't have a super high MCAT or GPA before people say I'm being egotistical...I'm pretty much borderline right now). I guess I am just in denial that this year is so important lol.

 

my 3.68, 30Q and I are checking the stats every time I open my laptop! if i'm not borderline I don't know who is!

[The Law]

my 3.68, 30Q and I are checking the stats every time I open my laptop! if i'm not borderline I don't know who is!

 

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

 

I applied too, but I don't really see me getting anything w/my 3.69 and 9/10/9 S... oh well!

[Alastriss]

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

 

I applied too, but I don't really see me getting anything w/my 3.69 and 9/10/9 S... oh well!

 

Law! there will be no negative energy in this thread! positive energy..NOT negative energy

[The Law]

Law! there will be no negative energy in this thread! positive energy..NOT negative energy

 

hahaha okay... *happy thoughts happy thoughts*

 

here's some for everyone:

[Chowchilla]

i just called the admissions office at queen's and the lady who answered said they will not be posting cutoffs this year. i asked her why, and she said it's because they are using 'new criteria' for making offers. she said that people will be notified 'one way or the other' by February 1st. when i asked her what these new criteria were, she said she was not at liberty to answer.

 

if anybody has more information to shed light, that would be much appreciated.

[lostintime]

OMG!!! Noooooo...Queens is turning into another McMaster...noooooo....

[Alastriss]

i just called the admissions office at queen's and the lady who answered said they will not be posting cutoffs this year. i asked her why, and she said it's because they are using 'new criteria' for making offers. she said that people will be notified 'one way or the other' by February 1st. when i asked her what these new criteria were, she said she was not at liberty to answer.

 

if anybody has more information to shed light, that would be much appreciated.

 

ok

So I just called them, and I asked whether or not the system was going to be changed. She said it will be similar and it won't be a huge change. I think theyre going to do the UWO thing where meeting the cutoff won't result in an automatic interview.

[lostintime]

*sigh of relief* I think doing a massive change (i.e. weighing essays and/or sketch heavily before cutoffs or something) is very unethical because lots of people didn't apply when they had like 7's in VR to not waste money. I guess this really shows that you have to apply EVERYWHERE. I'm still bitter about losing my $90 in Manitoba though *sighs*.

[Jochi1543]

Hm, maybe they are gonna read the essays, too, now? Weird.

[Jochi1543]

*sigh of relief* I think doing a massive change (i.e. weighing essays and/or sketch heavily before cutoffs or something) is very unethical because lots of people didn't apply when they had like 7's in VR to not waste money. I guess this really shows that you have to apply EVERYWHERE. I'm still bitter about losing my $90 in Manitoba though *sighs*.

 

Yeah, they should really warn people about the changes in the selection process BEFORE the app deadline, so I find this whole thing to be weird.

[KMG007]

Hi

 

I also find this weird considering the "Method for Selection" was updated in December of 2007....so last month and it reads as we have always understood it that if you pass the GPA and then MCAT cut off you get an interview. Check for yourself.

 

http://meds.queensu.ca/undergrad/admissions/method_of_selection

[Jochi1543]

Hi

 

I also find this weird considering the "Method for Selection" was updated in December of 2007....so last month and it reads as we have always understood it that if you pass the GPA and then MCAT cut off you get an interview. Check for yourself.

 

http://meds.queensu.ca/undergrad/admissions/method_of_selection

 

Yeah, pretty straightforward. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they will start calling verifiers on the sketch or something like that? I dunno.

[Alastriss]

*sigh of relief* I think doing a massive change (i.e. weighing essays and/or sketch heavily before cutoffs or something) is very unethical because lots of people didn't apply when they had like 7's in VR to not waste money. I guess this really shows that you have to apply EVERYWHERE. I'm still bitter about losing my $90 in Manitoba though *sighs*.

 

sometimes i hate the fact that my dream is being a physician, the stress rollercoaster associated makes me wanna blow my brains out.

[Alastriss]

Yeah, pretty straightforward. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they will start calling verifiers on the sketch or something like that? I dunno.

 

well the verifiers thing is not a way to select people, of course unless they get flagged, but I mean maybe reading over the essay or using the LOCs? I dont know

They also told me the cutoffs would be posted in january and this was by the end of december, i just want to know what they are doing over there.

[mcpherv]

i just called the admissions office at queen's and the lady who answered said they will not be posting cutoffs this year. i asked her why, and she said it's because they are using 'new criteria' for making offers. she said that people will be notified 'one way or the other' by February 1st. when i asked her what these new criteria were, she said she was not at liberty to answer.

 

if anybody has more information to shed light, that would be much appreciated.

 

Well, I have two reactions to this. First of all, I'm not thrilled by additional subjectivity being thrown into the mix.

 

However, on the flip side, its possible that the candidates were very strong this year and they've resorted to this new approach in order to keep the rough cutoffs sane. The computerized MCAT may be starting to inflate MCAT scores due to the number of times an individual can now write it in any given year.

[kgmed23]

I doubt that CBT MCAT actually is helping inflate scores. Since it is difficult to get a seat, everyone can't re-write whenever they please and re-writing necessarily doesn't result in a great score (unless you do work harder).

[Alastriss]

Well, I have two reactions to this. First of all, I'm not thrilled by additional subjectivity being thrown into the mix.

 

However, on the flip side, its possible that the candidates were very strong this year and they've resorted to this new approach in order to keep the rough cutoffs sane. The computerized MCAT may be starting to inflate MCAT scores due to the number of times an individual can now write it in any given year.

 

that's whats proposed but I cant see that happening..this is my reason and please find a flaw if I am wrong.

 

ok so let us first agree that percentile scores did not change when all administrations are taken into account. A quick look at the data will tell us that. Agreed? now lets move on to the hard part.

 

Now its not just important that percentile not change, but the volume of testwriters as well.

 

Model: having a top 2% exam where there are 100,000 people taking it, and applying to a 500 seat school where your score HEAVILY influences ur chances of admission isn't a good score to have, even if its 2%, because of volume of seats.

 

But this year, N was less than last year, so the above phenomenon cant have happened.

 

Furthermore people would hardly be able to write the test more than 2 times a summer I think. And for the most common rewrite purpose amongst the science students is the need to get that VR from an 8/9 to a 10+ which has is not probable to happen (possible, but not probable). Furthermore, things are as likely to go wrong as they are to work out for the other subjects (ie get an 11 in PS first time and rewrite to improve another section and you can end up with a 9 in PS the second time)

Finally, a lot of people who d get 9s wont rewrite, cuz a 12 9 X 13 is good enough for them and don't want to go through the process again.

 

given all this and the 500 less applicants this year, is it reasonable to assume that the CBT has swayed queen's to renovate, even slightly, their admission's process? I still wanna blow my brains out over here

[mcpherv]

I doubt that CBT MCAT actually is helping inflate scores. Since it is difficult to get a seat, everyone can't re-write whenever they please and re-writing necessarily doesn't result in a great score (unless you do work harder).

 

I wrote my MCAT before the computerized system came into practice, so I haven't had experience with the new system. I would still think that if one were fairly determined to rewrite the MCAT that seats even a few hours away in any direction may be possible to find a month or two before the test date?

 

that's whats proposed but I cant see that happening..this is my reason and please find a flaw if I am wrong.

 

ok so let us first agree that percentile scores did not change when all administrations are taken into account. A quick look at the data will tell us that. Agreed? now lets move on to the hard part.

 

Now its not just important that percentile not change, but the volume of testwriters as well.

 

Model: having a top 2% exam where there are 100,000 people taking it, and applying to a 500 seat school where your score HEAVILY influences ur chances of admission isn't a good score to have, even if its 2%, because of volume of seats.

 

But this year, N was less than last year, so the above phenomenon cant have happened.

 

Furthermore people would hardly be able to write the test more than 2 times a summer I think. And for the most common rewrite purpose amongst the science students is the need to get that VR from an 8/9 to a 10+ which has is not probable to happen (possible, but not probable). Furthermore, things are as likely to go wrong as they are to work out for the other subjects (ie get an 11 in PS first time and rewrite to improve another section and you can end up with a 9 in PS the second time)

Finally, a lot of people who d get 9s wont rewrite, cuz a 12 9 X 13 is good enough for them and don't want to go through the process again.

 

given all this and the 500 less applicants this year, is it reasonable to assume that the CBT has swayed queen's to renovate, even slightly, their admission's process? I still wanna blow my brains out over here

 

 

2 times a summer is still twice the number of times that an individual was able to take the MCAT during the summer in the previous system, where there were only single April and August administrations.

 

I think that there is a decent bit of luck involved in your resulting MCAT score (ie. your familiarity with the exact topics covered on your copy of the exam, etc.). Furthermore, there may be those individuals that were sick, slacked off the first time, etc that could have a decent shot at improving their score the second time around.

 

Under the current system, you have a significant number of individuals that are getting rejected that score say, 9 on the VR section, while they fairly easily broke 10 on the other two sections (I know of a few of these individuals). Factoring in the above concept of there being luck involved, they may decide to rewrite, and even if 25% of these people achieve a 10 on VR the second time around, (edit: just checked, and according to this table, 37% of retesters who scored 9 on VR the first time improve by 1 point or more http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/retestvr.htm) while maintaining reasonable scores on the other sections, you still have an inflation in the scores. On the flip side, its possible in this hypothetical scenario, that if there are more of these individuals rewriting, then a given score on any section may become harder to accomplish.

 

Queen's considers the best set of your MCAT scores, and therefore people recieve no penalty for rewriting it, so if any of your set of scores meets the cutoffs in a given year, then you'll recieve an interview

 

ie. if your first set was:

 

(all scores are listed as: P/V/B)

 

9/10/13 32P

or something similar, and you decided to rewrite after the cutoffs changed to

 

10/10/10 30P, like it was last year

 

and you subsequently got:

 

12/9/12 33P

 

and the cutoffs reverted back to the previous

 

9/10/9 32O

 

then you would still get an interview based on your first set of scores. Therefore there is no disincentive to rewriting several times and hoping that one set of scores meets the cutoffs. Finally, while the there are the same number of test administrations in any given year, you may be getting into a scenario where the rewriters are more aggressive about making sure they obtain a test seat than are the people that are oblivious to the process and are writing for the first time. Furthermore, due to the reduced success rate over the last couple of cycles associated with the double cohort class graduating, you may in fact be getting an increase in the number of retesters in Ontario.

 

A lot of hypotheticals here. You're right, it doesn't come out cut and dry either way. I guess we'll have to see what Western does as well in order to see if the test scores are in fact inflating. However, Western uses the more recent set of scores, so the affect described above could be reduced in effect there. Its really hard to say. I would've thought, though, that with ~500 fewer applicants this year, that any possible score inflation would have been offset. I don't know.

[Jochi1543]

well the verifiers thing is not a way to select people, of course unless they get flagged, but I mean maybe reading over the essay or using the LOCs? I dont know

They also told me the cutoffs would be posted in january and this was by the end of december, i just want to know what they are doing over there.

 

I spoke to someone who called today and was explicitly told that cutoffs would be posted Thursday or Friday. Which of course, completely disagrees with half the stuff posted in this thread today. I wonder if they are just messing around with us? Seems like a stupid thing to do, but they are definitely telling conflicting things, and all on the same day.

[mcpherv]

I spoke to someone who called today and was explicitly told that cutoffs would be posted Thursday or Friday. Which of course, completely disagrees with half the stuff posted in this thread today. I wonder if they are just messing around with us? Seems like a stupid thing to do, but they are definitely telling conflicting things, and all on the same day.

 

Haha - this just keeps getting more and more fun.

[Alastriss]

I spoke to someone who called today and was explicitly told that cutoffs would be posted Thursday or Friday. Which of course, completely disagrees with half the stuff posted in this thread today. I wonder if they are just messing around with us? Seems like a stupid thing to do, but they are definitely telling conflicting things, and all on the same day.

 

Man bring back the cutoffs please for pete's sakes.

Hey maybe you're right jochi, its the game to see how many premeds would commit suicide with all this messing and theyre taking bets on it

[Chowchilla]

ok

So I just called them, and I asked whether or not the system was going to be changed. She said it will be similar and it won't be a huge change. I think theyre going to do the UWO thing where meeting the cutoff won't result in an automatic interview.

when did uwo change their policies? i always thought it was automatic -- meet cutoffs = interview. and i don't like how they're telling each of us something different. i only called queen's because i was expecting them to post cutoffs last week and they didn't. and now there's still a chance that they might. except they're also doing something different. talk about mind games...

[Guest begaster]

This thread is an emotional rollercoaster.

 

Please God (Queen's), don't change the cutoff scheme. And keep the cumulative GPA below 3.71.

[daryn]

Oh my god. I can't take any more of this. My poor old heart can't handle this.

 

I already got the Manitoba rejection yesturday. Ahhhh.

 

 

 

 

 

Does anyone have the feeling that the entire 2007-2008 application year as a whole seems to be very disorganized thus far? It's like...everybody is behind on things or things get changed last minute.

[Chowchilla]

could someone else call them tomorrow and find out what's going on? of course i could just wait till feb 1st and get my answer, but this is just nuts.