I’ve been seeing posts on here regarding the general increased competitiveness at schools. Wanted to give some thoughts + hear what you all have to say.

Opinion - I like both admit and cycle track and they are super helpful. However, they not representative of the true population. In many ways, they perfectly capture how sampling bias can skew our perception of what is real. It is possible if you are 520+, you may be more inclined to use these websites because you know you’ll get a bunch of interviews.

Evidence - for ANY given school, compare the percent interviewed on admit vs what the true percent interviewed is. For ex, on admit, Pitt interviews 16% of people but irl it’s really ~8%. This trend is nearly the same for all top schools.

On admit, you can see the confidence band for GPA AND MCAT. So rely on this.

Lastly, I’ve noticed there is a lot of “survivorship bias” on here. Once people get their acceptance, they check out on this platform (rightfully so).

TLDR- take these websites with a grain of salt, they are useful tools but not fully representative of what could happen in your cycle :)

What are your thoughts?