Guest Jim2375 Posted January 15, 2003 Report Share Posted January 15, 2003 Does anyone know, what GPA does Mcmaster look at ? Is it the overall GPA from OMSAS? Mine is around 3.70 overall and i am an in-province applicant. Do I have a chance ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest nicolekavita Posted January 15, 2003 Report Share Posted January 15, 2003 Jim, You can take a look at the stats for the previous years.www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/mdprog/admissions_selection.htm I believe that Mac does look at your overall GPA from OMSAS. The site gives you an idea of what McMaster is looking for. I think though that you cannot gauge your chances of getting into Mac by your GPA alone, your personal qualities also have a lot of weight. Nicole Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jmh2005 Posted January 15, 2003 Report Share Posted January 15, 2003 Jim, Mac looks only at your cumulative GPA in order to determine your eligibility. They take your GPA and compare it to all the other applicants and you are ranked by percentile score. They then take your autobiographical sketch mark (the 15 essays) and again you are ranked according to the applicant pool by percentile. Each of the GPA and sketch is worth 50%. The top 400 total scores out of the 3685 are then granted interviews. A 3.7 GPA would be very competitive in terms of the GPA portion of the weighting. However, you must score equally well in order to be invited to interview, i.e. you would likely need an autobiographical sketch of 80-85th %-ile or higher for an interview (now, I'm purely speculating..each applicant pool is different each year and it is hard to compare one year to the next...). But you can see that you need as high as you can get on both portions of the weighting, because the higher each component of your application, the more likely you will receive an inteview. Look at the stats that Nicole suggested in the above link, that really tells the whole story! Good luck J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim2375 Posted January 15, 2003 Report Share Posted January 15, 2003 Thank you both for your response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest macdaddyeh Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 Hi there. For those in the know, what exactly is a "competitive" GPA, especially if in a previous post JMH noted that a 3.7 "would be very competitive"? (No, I am not singling you out JMH, rather I am simply obsessing). I know anyone can get an interview with a GPA of 3.0 and I know, as per the established class stats, that people matriculate with that GPA range as well. Would it be safe to pick somewhere in the middle, around a 3.5 to say that someone would be more competitive? That is to say, Do people in that range always have a better chance (if their sketch is good too)? Basic math knowledge would tell me that, by default, ones chances of getting in would increase exponentially with a higher GPA, but is there a known typical "average" for the applicants (not the matriculants). I know this year it may be impossible to tell with the increased number and with all of the other factors (ie. geographic weight, submission score etc). I just want to know... Sleepless in Toronto....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Carolyn Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 If I understood correctly when I heard the admissions guy speak it really is your autobiographical sketch that makes a big difference... Perhaps another mac person can help - he said it quickly and I am not 100% sure... but if it is true it will likely make this whole process a little clearer! For the autobiographical sketch I believe that they take your score out of 21 (i.e. 3 markers with a scale of 7) and make that into a score out of 4... Then they take your GPA (also out of 4) -- then your total score is out of 8 and the top people obviously get interviews... As you absolutely can't be interviewed with a GPA of less than 3 -- on that score there really isn't a huge variance between the applicants... However, for the autobiographical sketch some people may be getting a 0.57/4 (i.e. a 3/21) and others a 4/4 (i.e. a 21/21)... When they looked at this autobiographical score there ended up being a normal distribution. This is why you end up seeing people with lower averages getting in... Plus there is the small stream of people who get interviews based soley on their extremely high score for their autobiographical sketch... So while any increase in GPA helps... it is still truly the autobiographical sketch that makes a big deal. It is why you hear of people with very high GPAs not getting an interview. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest K2Optimist Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 Does McMaster scrutinize each applicant's course load (ie 5 classes per semester) like other Ontario medical schools? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jmh2005 Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 Carolyn is totally right, and as I have said before, the autobiographical sketch will make you or break you and it's really as simple as that. To interview with 3.00 GPA you would likely have to have a sketch in the 98-99-100th percentile (I'm guessing here...) and there are very small few who do achieve this (I have heard a rumor that they interview the top 25 sketches regardless of GPA, but don't know if that is in fact true...). Whereas someone with the median GPA of say 3.55 (this changes each year with the applicant pool...) may only need a sketch of the 85th percentile or higher to interview (but as you can see, it's again the sketch that really determines an interview, because your GPA is your GPA, it really won't change much unless you are still in your 3rd year of school and are planning on doing your 4th if you don't get in). Obviously the lower your GPA, the higher your sketch %-ile must be. It's mainly math at this point as one of you have pointed out. With the increased # of applicants and not a change in the # of interview spots, things are a bit more difficult because some with even relatively high GPA and high autobio scores still may not interview. I'm not trying to discourage anyone, but unfortunately they don't interview more applicants than the "approximately 400", which is usually around 385-390. As for the last question, you don't need to have 5 classes/semester, just as long as you have completed at least 3 full years (i.e. 15 full-year courses) of university by May of the following year of your application...ie. those currently in 3rd year need to have all 15 completed by this May, 2003 if they hope to still be eligible. So, no, Mac is actually not that sticky about this one thing...read the admissions stuff on the website however for the exact details. Hope that helps! Jess Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Koggetsu Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 I really don't like Mac's system of evaluating applicants. Actually I think that the questions they ask are pretty relevant and good questions, but the way they mark or rank them seem to be really inconsistent. I heard someone who handed in the same answers in 2 years and one year he got like 60something %tile and another year he got about 80something %tile. thats a 20% change for the same set of answers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest macdaddyeh Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 I feel your frustration Koggetsu. This is my first time applying and I have yet to receive an interivew:o . Nonetheless, I firmly believe in Mac's unorthodoxy, particularly as a non-science major! What happened in the case your mentioned is an unfortunate reality. But if you think about it, are not all essays and interviews at ANY school a practice in subjectivity? An acquaintance I know who studied at Mac Meds told me that at her interview she just "clicked" and was able to get her message across and felt really comfortable. She spoke with others who felt the opposite; either way some get in, some don't. There is no magic formulae, neither at Mac nor elsewhere! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Koggetsu Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 yep, I understand what u are saying, so I think that luck plays a pretty huge part into getting into med. school. of corse there is always the saying "u gotta be lucky to be good, u gotta be good to be lucky" =P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest peachy Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 Koggetsu, if I'm remembering right, the issue of essays getting wildly different scores in successive years has been discussed to deaths on these forums. You may want to search through past threads - there have been some pretty interesting insights which for me, at least, made me feel that the system is less arbitrary relative to the other schools. Two points that stick out in my mind from those discussions are: - Apparently, Mac DOES have a system where if an essay is given very different scores by multiple readers then it is reevaluated in some way - It's possible that every school out there has just as much variability as Mac - but because they don't give us percentiles, we don't know and we don't get upset about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Namgalsip Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 Wow, I didn't know they would re-evaluate it. I am one of those people...94th percentile first time, 55th percentile second time on the SAME application. I wish I knew that there was something I could do about it:rolleyes oh, or did you mean if they got different scores by different readers in the same year? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest peachy Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 I meant in the same year. I don't know anything about it, this is just what I'm remembering from old threads... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Koggetsu Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 Namgalsip: That is exactly the sme situation as I was talking about, except the case i heard was not even as extreme as yours. I feel so bad for you! See that is why i say the system is somehow flawed, how can there be such a difference in one year's time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tirisa Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Hey guys, I think what peachy is referring to (in terms of re-evaluating applications) is when one of the scores given to your essay questions is clearly not in agreement with the other two. In this case, your essay questions are given to a fourth person to mark. Obviously, since the marking is quite subjective, each score will vary a bit. But if two evaluators give you around a 6/7 and the third gives you a 1/7, then that reader may have been unfairly put off by something you wrote. I'm sure the moderators will clarify if I'm wrong, but I think that's approximately what happens. As for the difference with the same application from one year to the next, now that's another story. I feel awful for you as well, Namgalsip. I hope that this year works out for you. T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jmh2005 Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Hey folks, T is right about the sketch thing, if there is a large discrepancy between the 3 markers in the same application year, a 4th very experienced evaluator is called in apparently to have a read ...after that, I really don't know what they do and whos marks are actually used in the tabulation, sorry! P.S. You guys will have to start a new thread when the interviews come out to hopefully share your good news, should be March 1st (ahh, it's a Saturday...so the 3rd I guess)! J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anitz2006 Posted February 6, 2003 Report Share Posted February 6, 2003 Hi... I'm in first year, and i'm planning on applying to McMaster med. school in a few years.... does anyone know when i should apply?? what year in univ.?? I'm in a 3-year program for biology @ u of t.... also, why do some people get in2 mcmaster with gpas below 3.4 and without an interview, whereas others that have a gpa well above 3.5 aren't getting in or are being waitlisted?? What GPA should a student aime for in first year, to have a better shot @ getting into med school?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jmh2005 Posted February 7, 2003 Report Share Posted February 7, 2003 anitz, You can apply to McMaster in your 3rd year, provided you will have 15 full-year courses, and hold a cumulative average above a 3.00 ( by the end of that academic year. Those are the only prerequisites. No MCAT is required. Please visit the McMaster Medicine web site, admissions...all the info is there. www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/mdprog/ Good luck with your studies! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tappety tap Posted February 7, 2003 Report Share Posted February 7, 2003 Hi JMH, I did a 4 year BSC degree, on the semester system (ie no full yr courses, only half year) I took 10 courses each year for two years but the other two years, I took less. (4 courses for two semesters, and 3 courses another and 5 courses for the remaining semester.) Basically if Mac counts 3 full years as three years of 5 courses each semester, I don't have it. Do you think I'm ok or will I get disqualified?? Thanks! Melissa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jmh2005 Posted February 7, 2003 Report Share Posted February 7, 2003 Melissa, You will be fine, you fit the criteria. You must have 15 full-year (or 30 half-year or any combo thereof) completed by the end of your 3rd year to apply (this is if you had applied in your 3rd year) which you are past (other school do have more specific rules however...)...the only way one could potentially not fullfill the requirement is if you applied during your 3rd year and had to drop say a half credit for whatever reason...you would then only have 14.5 credits. Don't worry...for official clarification, check the website. I posted it a few messages above this one. Good luck. J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tappety tap Posted February 7, 2003 Report Share Posted February 7, 2003 PHEW! I got scared, thanks very much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Carolyn Posted February 9, 2003 Report Share Posted February 9, 2003 "why do some people get in2 mcmaster with gpas below 3.4 and without an interview" No one gets in without an interview... I believe the first part of your question of people getting in with less than 3.4 has been answered in this thread and many others... check out my previous post in this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madulla Posted February 12, 2003 Report Share Posted February 12, 2003 Does anyone know if McMaster considers the last two years of study (10 full course equivalents) when judging academic ability? Back when I completed my first year of university I did poorly for personal reasons, however my average over the last two years has been over 3.7 I noticed that quite a few other universities take recent course work into consideration since one bad year can hurt your GPA. If I keep my current academic performance up my cumulative GPA will be around 3.2 by the time I apply. Thanks alot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest G8M8T Posted February 12, 2003 Report Share Posted February 12, 2003 Mac goes by overall undergraduate GPA. Other schools favor more recent results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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