The associations between GPA and MCAT scores and probability of acceptance are very strong. Though correlation is not causation, elite conventional wisdom is that the association is mostly causal: increasing your GPA and MCAT scores increases the probability that you’ll get into medical school.
I think you’re overdoing the disclaimers. Medical schools, the people actually making the decisions, assert that they use GPA and MCAT, ie, the clause after the colon. I think it is pretty safe to believe them. The clause before the colon is stronger, so harder to support, but this is not just an observation of correlation, but a statistic chosen for publication by the association of medical schools, to illustrate something about which they know the truth. Of course, they could be trying to trick us into believing they use it more than they do, but that’s a pretty narrow concern.
I think you’re overdoing the disclaimers. Medical schools, the people actually making the decisions, assert that they use GPA and MCAT, ie, the clause after the colon. I think it is pretty safe to believe them. The clause before the colon is stronger, so harder to support, but this is not just an observation of correlation, but a statistic chosen for publication by the association of medical schools, to illustrate something about which they know the truth. Of course, they could be trying to trick us into believing they use it more than they do, but that’s a pretty narrow concern.
Perhaps