thami Posted February 4, 2008 Report Share Posted February 4, 2008 Pretty disappointed right now, my 3 point gain on AQ was balanced by a 3 point drop on NAQ, due to a drop in diversity of experiences (from 4.3 last year to 1.7) and high level of performance (from 1.5 to 0). The most disappointing part is that I though diversity was the strength of my application and I tried to highlight it in my essay. I guess I have to keep plugging at it until next year. that is a little scary. why do scores fluctuate so much? did you change the way you presented things in the application? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cutiepie Posted February 4, 2008 Report Share Posted February 4, 2008 There is a difference between something that might potentially being true versus something completely ridiculous! I don't see how having these rumors circulated is productive at all... I'm sorry you had experience with racism during school. The bulk of my bad experiences were in elementary school with reverse discrimination (where it was the Chinese kids bullying me because I was half and couldn't speak the language). In first year of university I went to see a program advisor who I had contacted by email, only to have him look disappointed and say "you are not white" so I am aware all this exists in places where we would least expect it. However, we have to be aware that cases like these are isolated--there will always be discrimination. But if you pull out the race card every time something stands in your way, it's only you who is being disadvantaged. It's counterproductive. If that "rumor" is true, then what is the cause for upset? Last time I checked, it's your mark on the paper (LPI?) that counts, not the marks of other students. You wrote it. You get a mark. If it's graded, isn't that better? It means someone read it and your mark is representative (to some extent) of the skills they are testing. It's unfair, but life isn't fair. The marks of all "those western people" aren't affecting your mark in any way! Thami My concern isn't ridiculous. Some people feel the same way. Obviously, that's a legitimate reason for a discussion forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biochemnerd Posted February 4, 2008 Report Share Posted February 4, 2008 I haven't logged on for a while, but then i saw this discussion about racism. I can imagine how hard it would be for people getting rejected. I believe those people must have an outstanding application and expereience as well. If med is something you really want in life, don't give up and hopefully there is better luck for you next year. for those discrimination discussion, I personally don't want to believe it. I have been applying to and getting interviews from ubc in the past 2 years; got rejected each time was really hard and i really want to blame the system rather than reflect upon myself. but i think that reflecting upon oneself and look for possible improvements would be more productive than blaming to other sources. that's just my ways to empower myself and try to take full responsibility for things happened to me. I hope for those got rejected this year can convert the negative anger to something more positive and please try not to further those discussions; lets make this thread a productive place to prepare people for med. that's my 2cents, may be shallow, but i apologize if i offended anyone. ________ Medical marijuana Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfuguy Posted February 4, 2008 Report Share Posted February 4, 2008 hey I don't see how focusing on extracurriculars more and using the mcat less to evaluate applicants limits the number of Asians that get admitted. If someone is a bookworm and does not show EVIDENCE of good communication/social skills and compassion, should that person be admitted to medicine because they are intelligent and logical, which is what the mcat is believed to be a predictor of? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pitseleh Posted February 4, 2008 Report Share Posted February 4, 2008 that is a little scary. why do scores fluctuate so much? did you change the way you presented things in the application? I wouldn't say substantially. This year with the extra space I fleshed out my volunteer descriptions but I don't think there was a significant difference in how I presented them. I emailed UBC to ask about it, and they said things will fluctuate year to year because you are being compared to all the other applicants, which is fair enough. I'd understand the drop if I had small reductions in every category. But it just seems odd to me that I would go from a high score to a low score in a particular category over the course of a year. I can't imagine the applicant pool changing so significantly that it would justify such a big shift. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ointment007 Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 you know, as much as i'm laughing (bemusedly) at my 0.5 in the "high level of performance in an area of human endeavour'" category, i must give props to UBC for ACTUALLY READING MY FILE and spelling out exactly what areas of my application to work on! i am SO sick of the word "cut off!!" esp. since i know what they really mean: FK off! /end of brief rant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Masaki Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 I am asian butt I given interview by UCB becuse I expressed my comunication assets in my NAQ online page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avenir001 Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 LOL, get outta here u dentist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Masaki Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 UCB medical education university gave me intraview so that is why I am postering on this forum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MPH07 Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 I am curious to know how many people who had verifiers contacted and were rejected were within 0.5 points of an interview (e.g. Me --> 0.3 points from cut off and had verifiers contacted). I ask this b/c I wonder if they contacted verifiers before they handed out interviews to those only at the cusp of at cutoffs and then made their final decisions accordingly... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TankMasterFlex Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 Keep in mind that we hear more about people that had huge fluctuations in their NAQ score. From everyone I've spoken with (many good friends), staying involved with current activities and adding anything led to an increase in NAQ. No one that I actually know (and I've spoken with a lot of people) has done more extracurricular stuff and had their score decrease. I think it's a minority of people that get these huge fluctuations, but these are the ones we hear about... I remember reading somewhere (maybe my rejection letter??) that they come up with an average applicant in all of the NAQ categories, and score people relative to that "average" person... maybe the things that this average person did change from year to year and thus our scores change accordingly. who knows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avenir001 Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 ya, that's what i thought too...that they probably quickly go thru a subset of applications to get a feel for the calibre of the avg applicant...then go thru all applications in detail, scoring them relative to the avg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviathan Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 UCB medical education university gave me intraview so that is why I am postering on this forum I LOL'd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfuguy Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 At the post interview rejection advising session that i went to in june the advisor told me that they use last year's 'average' person as guide on how to score this years applications. Same idea though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medgirl08 Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 I am curious to know how many people who had verifiers contacted and were rejected were within 0.5 points of an interview (e.g. Me --> 0.3 points from cut off and had verifiers contacted). I ask this b/c I wonder if they contacted verifiers before they handed out interviews to those only at the cusp of at cutoffs and then made their final decisions accordingly... I missed it by 0.6. I also had one of my verifiers contacted! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agentchris Posted February 5, 2008 Report Share Posted February 5, 2008 hey peeps, i thought i'd add my 0.2$ about the naq....wording and presentation is critical....i'm OOP and didn't get and interview invite but my naq jumped from 9.5 to 19.47 this year. My overall gpa sucks which is why i missed the cutoff barely. I spent 3 months on the autobio this time around, revising and rewording it constantly. I still had 1000 words to spare on the essay and 1000 to spare on the 10,000 limit given for the naq activities. So it's not really necessary to fill everything up. What changed was wording especially looking for the right verbs to describe roles. Verbs catch the reader's eye because they show action. Conciseness was another factor i focused on. If i could cut out a word without losing meaning, I did, even if it meant i wasn't filling up space. I think this highlighted the role better. Anyways, just my experience... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Masaki Posted February 6, 2008 Report Share Posted February 6, 2008 could you give us an example of the kind of wording you used? I tried improving my wording aswell, but I'm not sure if I did it the right way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
talmeth Posted February 7, 2008 Report Share Posted February 7, 2008 I wont know until I see my score... but I think that the change in application format this year (large open spaces to write in) probably had a major impact on more than one person's NAQ. Previously you had to cram everything into barely two lines of text. This year, you at least had the opportunity to express yourself and show some of the communication skills so many people claim to possess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviathan Posted February 7, 2008 Report Share Posted February 7, 2008 That is one dumb rumor. I'm kind of getting irritated by posts like this (eg. check out the Queen's forum) suggesting "theories" about how "western people" are out to get people of a minority. I'm not naive enough to think there is no discrimination in the world, but all of these posts just sound like excuses for not doing well (or potentially not doing well) on exams. just...stop! stop stop stop! - Thami What a pile of crap. Have you seen how many Chinese people are at UBC? Half of them can barely speak English, despite this rumoured "LPI racism". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thami Posted February 8, 2008 Report Share Posted February 8, 2008 What a pile of crap. Have you seen how many Chinese people are at UBC? Half of them can barely speak English, despite this rumoured "LPI racism". Yes I must agree. Rumors = bad. Reading that still gets me all riled up (or maybe I just have an anger problem ). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superking25 Posted February 8, 2008 Report Share Posted February 8, 2008 hey peeps, i thought i'd add my 0.2$ about the naq....wording and presentation is critical....i'm OOP and didn't get and interview invite but my naq jumped from 9.5 to 19.47 this year. My overall gpa sucks which is why i missed the cutoff barely. I spent 3 months on the autobio this time around, revising and rewording it constantly. I still had 1000 words to spare on the essay and 1000 to spare on the 10,000 limit given for the naq activities. So it's not really necessary to fill everything up. What changed was wording especially looking for the right verbs to describe roles. Verbs catch the reader's eye because they show action. Conciseness was another factor i focused on. If i could cut out a word without losing meaning, I did, even if it meant i wasn't filling up space. I think this highlighted the role better. Anyways, just my experience... Man... with writing THIS eloquent, I'm not surprised your NAQ jumped up so much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superking25 Posted February 8, 2008 Report Share Posted February 8, 2008 and 0.2$ is 20 cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jixe Posted February 8, 2008 Report Share Posted February 8, 2008 and 0.2$ is 20 cents. Maybe he wanted to put in 20 cents. ...just my fifty cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agentchris Posted February 8, 2008 Report Share Posted February 8, 2008 and 0.2$ is 20 cents. haha and what's wrong with sharing my 20 cents? Masaki: i used pretty much all point form. And rather than say 'led a fundraiser' or 'formed a group', I would specify those things that showed I was a leader so 'Recruited volunteers for...' Contacted chefs and rented kitchen space to allow...' 'Followed through regarding...' 'Delegated volunteers to...' 'Raised x amount of dollars, Transmitted funds overseas to support...' So basically i just paid a lot of attention to different kinds of verbs that could highlight a role more clearly. But of course, there was a lot more space to use up this year in the app so that was likely also a factor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agentchris Posted February 8, 2008 Report Share Posted February 8, 2008 Maybe he wanted to put in 20 cents. ...just my fifty cents. Wow Jixe, looks like we were thinking the same thing at exactly the same time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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