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Can Someone Clarify These Myths(Truth)?


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Hey guys,

 

I had a few questions about some things that I've heard from other applicants + current students. I just wanted to confirm:

 

  • Is it true that they drop your lowest and highest station? I can't find this information anywhere officially...
  • How much does 15% GPA +15% CARS post-interview score matter? Is there a huge deviation? (E.g. I have a 3.97 GPA with 125 CARS... is this similar to 3.7GPA with 130 CARS?)
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I've heard the highest and lowest station idea as well. I doubt we'll find it out officially unless we get accepted and join the adcom. I don't think this knowledge will really make a difference for us now, so I wouldn't worry about it.

About the GPA/CARS combination, a friend of mine got accepted last cycle with almost identical stats to yours (3.98/125), so it's clearly possible. Keep your chin up, and try not to stress over the six week wait! (I know this is a hard thing to do, personally!)

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1. I've heard they do, but also cannot confirm. That being said though I don't think it really matters. Most people's highest and lowest scores would average to about their mean score, so it probably won't affect admissions too much. 

2. Apparently (again, no official source) Mac uses z-scores for the GPA and VR/CARS calculation. So it all depends on the mean and the standard deviation of the scores for those variables. My guess is that if you have a z-score of 0 (i.e. your score falls at the mean), you'd get a score of 7.5/15. Anything higher or lower will be scaled accordingly. So basically the calculation depends on where you fall on the distribution. 

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1. I've heard they do, but also cannot confirm. That being said though I don't think it really matters. Most people's highest and lowest scores would average to about their mean score, so it probably won't affect admissions too much. 

2. Apparently (again, no official source) Mac uses z-scores for the GPA and VR/CARS calculation. So it all depends on the mean and the standard deviation of the scores for those variables. My guess is that if you have a z-score of 0 (i.e. your score falls at the mean), you'd get a score of 7.5/15. Anything higher or lower will be scaled accordingly. So basically the calculation depends on where you fall on the distribution.

 

Where did you guys hear that? I'm curious to know because I really bombed one station, so that would be great if they dropped the lowest.
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1. I've heard they do, but also cannot confirm. That being said though I don't think it really matters. Most people's highest and lowest scores would average to about their mean score, so it probably won't affect admissions too much. 

 

2. Apparently (again, no official source) Mac uses z-scores for the GPA and VR/CARS calculation. So it all depends on the mean and the standard deviation of the scores for those variables. My guess is that if you have a z-score of 0 (i.e. your score falls at the mean), you'd get a score of 7.5/15. Anything higher or lower will be scaled accordingly. So basically the calculation depends on where you fall on the distribution. 

Since 125 CARS is considered the bottom of the cars scores, would I have like 0/15% for the cars portion LOL 

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Cause you met the pre-interview cutoffs. Don't worry yourself, my 3.61 cGPA falls in the same Z-score range as your CARS. And there have been people that have gotten in with worse GPAs.

Just curious if there's a way to calculate or know the z score? Or is this an estimation based on the admission stats from prior years?

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Just curious if there's a way to calculate or know the z score? Or is this an estimation based on the admission stats from prior years?

It's going to be entirely dependent on the current applicant pool. You would need to create a normal curve from all the scores. And since they don't release rejection statistics, it's impossible to calculate how much the average and standard deviation are.

 

But yeah, my prediction was purely an estimation based on previous years.

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Just curious if there's a way to calculate or know the z score? Or is this an estimation based on the admission stats from prior years?

It's all estimated from previous years admissions stats. No way to know for sure the stats of the current cohort, but that being said I would expect the GPA and CARS distribution to stay pretty stable from year to year, possibly with a slight upward trend. 

 

Also though I wouldn't stress if you're below the mean for CARS or GPA. If anything this might bode well for you - to get to the interview stage you must have compensated by killing CASPER, which is supposedly a pretty good predictor of MMI performance. Now that GPA and CARS are worth relatively less in the formula, you have even more of a chance to benefit from the strong parts of your application. 

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