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Final Weighting Formula


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I saw in a couple other posts questions about the final weighting formula. To me, it appears that it is 100% interview. In the 2009-2010 admissions handbook (available at http://www.schulich.uwo.ca/education/admissions/medicine/documents/AdmissionsPolicy20091105.pdf )

 

on page 5 they state:

"An OFFER OF ADMISSION is based on

1) the interview score

2) achieving the minimum MCAT score

3) achieving the minimum GPA in EACH OF TWO undergraduate years in which a minimum of 5 full or equivalent courses (30 credit hours) have been completed."

 

Obviously everyone at the interview has 2 and 3, therefore, the only thing they would base their admissions decision is the interview score. Again, I would emphasis that it says "achieving the minimum" not, "the higher, the better" or something to that effect.

 

Any thoughts on my logic?

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I saw in a couple other posts questions about the final weighting formula. To me, it appears that it is 100% interview. In the 2009-2010 admissions handbook (available at http://www.schulich.uwo.ca/education/admissions/medicine/documents/AdmissionsPolicy20091105.pdf )

 

on page 5 they state:

"An OFFER OF ADMISSION is based on

1) the interview score

2) achieving the minimum MCAT score

3) achieving the minimum GPA in EACH OF TWO undergraduate years in which a minimum of 5 full or equivalent courses (30 credit hours) have been completed."

 

Obviously everyone at the interview has 2 and 3, therefore, the only thing they would base their admissions decision is the interview score. Again, I would emphasis that it says "achieving the minimum" not, "the higher, the better" or something to that effect.

 

Any thoughts on my logic?

 

Western does not announce its admission rules because it desires flexibility - it can change the rules at any point without apologizing and no one would even know. However this year it was mentioned that it was 25% GPA, 25% MCAT and 50% interview - values that traditionally have been used in the past as well. They have and likely never will, explain how the MCAT and GPA values are used exactly in the evaluation.

 

Hope that helps :)

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Western does not announce its admission rules because it desires flexibility - it can change the rules at any point without apologizing and no one would even know. However this year it was mentioned that it was 25% GPA, 25% MCAT and 50% interview - values that traditionally have been used in the past as well. They have and likely never will, explain how the MCAT and GPA values are used exactly in the evaluation.

Reference for this..?

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Western does not announce its admission rules because it desires flexibility - it can change the rules at any point without apologizing and no one would even know. However this year it was mentioned that it was 25% GPA, 25% MCAT and 50% interview - values that traditionally have been used in the past as well. They have and likely never will, explain how the MCAT and GPA values are used exactly in the evaluation.

 

Hope that helps :)

 

very interesting, I kind of like this distribution. Seems very fair

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They have and likely never will, explain how the MCAT and GPA values are used exactly in the evaluation.

 

 

The old premed philosophy was that it was your best year, since some people only have one year.

 

I've also heard rumors more recently that it's 2 years, and for those that got conditional interviews, they are assigned the cutoff gpa as their 2nd year of gpa.

 

Neither of these are confirmed and as the quote above suggests... I really doubt Alastriss or RMorelan will be able to divulge information of that nature.

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when they say "25% GPA," is that your simple OMSAS GPA or your best two years?

 

Thanks

 

As supafield pointed out how GPA is precisely used (as with the MCAT) we either don't know or can't say. It is yet another thing (along with the formula itself) that is subject to secrecy and change.

 

One thing I am not sure is quite clear - or better I guess isn't usually verbalized because of course premeds are really smart people - is that schools don't like to reveal everything because then there are hard targets floating around and that is actually problem is many cases. As an example the VR score on the MCAT this year for the cut off is an 11. People who want western will see that and study more VR and retake (multiple tests perhaps) the test to get that score. Then we are left with thousands of people (literally) with 11 in VR and then the cut off is useless for its real purpose - to reduce the number of people we have to interview. This reduction is necessary because each school only has enough resources to interview so many people. If you take on too many and you are stretched too thin you have to compensate in annoying ways (say like Queens' shorter standardized interview system - you can go to the Queens forum and read all about that :)).

 

Give people too much detail and you wind up with "clones" as applicants, ie everyone has the target score. Also the higher you set one target the more pissed off people will be you change the target to something else because the original just wasn't cutting down the numbers of people who apply to a managable number (refer to the VR increase this year :)). Also everytime you change it there is huge debate (that is code for really heated argument) about what the new ones should be. Selection of cut offs is a combination of getting people who academically seem like they can "hack" med school, and ruthlessly restricting the people who you have to see later on.

 

Bottom line is to work hard, do as well as you can in every aspect of things, because the way things are used and the cut offs themselves simply move around in the shifting winds of the admissions game :)

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when they say "25% GPA," is that your simple OMSAS GPA or your best two years?

 

Thanks

 

Now after I just gave that long posting for the general case - I can say that the GPA calcuation, however it is done, only involves your best two years in some fashion. Western really is a best two year school in every aspect of things :)

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Now after I just gave that long posting for the general case - I can say that the GPA calcuation, however it is done, only involves your best two years in some fashion. Western really is a best two year school in every aspect of things :)

 

So we've ruled out the fact that Western may simply use your single best year, in the post-interview calculation?

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So we've ruled out the fact that Western may simply use your single best year, in the post-interview calculation?

 

This is why language is so important and I have to learn to be even more precise :) I said they used the two years somehow - in my way of thinking that would include the possibility of them looking at both years and simply taking your best, or averaging them or and other combination of weighted values for the years.

 

Unfortunately there isn't much more that can be extracted from the offical dogma, and everything and anything is subject to change.

 

Sorry about being unclear!

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...Remember that some students have only 1 year above the cutoff and can get an interview, and subsequently, acceptance on a conditional basis...

 

This is precisely why it can't simply be the 'best two-year GPA', at least not for all applicants.

 

However, since the same pool of applicants needs to be evaluated in the same way, using candidates' single best-year GPA would be consist with this idea.

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When I called, they told me that it's the best two-year GPA. For students who have only one year above the cut-off, they use the single best year, but use some formula to adjust the score (my guess is they set the second best year as the cut-off e.g. 3.70).

 

Definitely possible.

 

In this manner, they could maintain their best two-year GPA in the post-interview formula.

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