<p>I don’t see my advice as conflicting with your advisor’s, necessary.</p>
<p>–Most of the kids who get rejected get rejected because of bad numbers. So once you’re above their numbers, your personal odds of admissions are already higher than the school’s actual admissions percentage.</p>
<p>–But you have to bear in mind that these admissions percentages are something like 4%. So being “higher” than 4%… well, that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot.</p>
<p>–And EC’s matter a lot. A lot. Interviews matter a lot. Timing matters a lot. But they don’t matter so much that they could push a good-numbers candidate down below 4%.</p>
<hr>
<p>–Yes, it’s a mildly bad sign. But (1) it’s just one school, and (2) it’s not definitely a bad sign, just probably one.</p>
<p>BDM, Thanks for your input. Basically, everything (EC’s, interview skills, timing, in addition to stats) counts. The number of legitimate schools also counts. In a perfect world, an applicant should do everything under his/her control. But it is not easy. For one thing, I think DS has lost some points on timing. Knowing the importance of something is not always translated into doing it This is one of the reasons why some people are more successful than others. I think DS’s AMCAS should be verified in a week or two, and his TMDSAS should be verified in 2 or 3 weeks. Patience, patience and more patience!</p>
<p>
lollybo: DS’s solution to this is: not read it at all. He has no idea about who has got an interview invite. Actually, I think the application “tasks” are likely in his mind only a few days every week, even though he knows he is somewhat late – at least later than you.</p>
<p>BTW, if one of your parents is “calmer” than you (more type-B personality), try to delegate the SDN reading job to her. It should help. If something goes wrong, you can blame your parents. Parents usually can take it if they have survived through their child’s teenage period :)</p>
<p>Heh, it’s more like three schools. Thanks for the advice, I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.</p>
<p>Also, is it acceptable for an essay to cover a controversial topic? One of my schools asked for a situation where I had a moral/ethical dilemma that changed my life, but I feel like my dilemma might be too controversial.</p>
<p>^ curm once posted that some rolling admission schools are rolling for some special subset of applicants only (those who have something very special). I do not know much about the medical school cycle. But, during college admission cycle, some early admission at some school is often for the school to recruit those students who may otherwise be snapped by their competitor schools. For all others, they can afford to wait. This is all about supply-and-demand, I guess. Like curm once said, we should consider ourselves not that special (otherwise we will go insane.)</p>
<p>ncg once posted that adcoms at many medical schools are quite conservative. I think they are not like your humanity professors at most colleges who tend to be more liberal. – Somewhat unrelated: At my work place, a joke runs like that: engineers from a more well-off environment will be doing hardware (and usually graduated from a more brand-name school when they were young), while those from a not so well-off family will do software. Those from the bottom will do IT support. An issue is the investment for the latter’s career path is lower than the former’s. (Also, the latter tends to be a Democrat. CEO? He tends to be a Republican. Where will MD’s fit into this “hierarchy”?)</p>
<p>Just get off the phone with DS. He got his first interview invite – He found it from his spam folder!</p>
<p>Not want to be too specific about which school it is here. But it is one of the schools that curm suggested him to put in at the last minutes. Thanks, curm!</p>
<p>Also, it is strange that he said he received the secondary and the interview invite almost on the same day. Both seems to be computer-generated emails.</p>
<p>Is it unusual for a school to do something as strange as this (sending invite and secondary almost at the same time)? Now he is busy working on that secondary. He thinks he should complete the secondary before he picks the interview day. (He has to go online to select/confirm the date.)</p>
<p>At least his AMCAS has been verified. But his TMDSAS has not, even though he submitted his TMDSAS primary one week before his AMCAS primary. Also, his premed committee packet has been received by AMCAS, through Visual Eval. (I guess his school uses Visual Eval.)</p>
<p>UT-H is the school that asks a bunch of questions to Texas kids who apply outside of Texas. (“What were you thinkin’?”) They also use the Match almost exclusively (while UTSW uses the pre-Match almost exclusively).</p>
<p>Not Visual Evals…Virtual Evals.;)</p>
<p>Pitt is notorious for wait-listing almost everybody but superstars and is therefore a “non-rolling” rolling school. Baylor lets a few in early and most late for a similar pattern. </p>
<p>And last, but not least, I so called that invite. Uh-huh. Yep. I did. Boo-yah. ;)</p>
<p>curm, Thanks for your words of wisdom. DS is extremely happy about his first invite. (I think he likely received on Aug. 4th or 5th, but he did not know it then.)</p>
<p>He is definitely playing catchup now. He has done everything needed for his premed committee. (It appears that his premed committee wrote and sent out his letter to both AMCAS and TMDSAS only a few days after he had requested them to submit it. It is really nice to have a committee like this.) So, the main work for him from now on is to write the secondaries. (not very sure how many he has completed as of today. We only knew that he had completed UT-SW and Dartmouth one week ago.)</p>
<p>I look up the 2009-2010 thread. Somemom’s D had her TX verified on 8/7/09. DS’s TX application is about one week (+ 1 year) after hers. But TMDSAS seems to take 1 week longer to process this year. We hope his TX application could be verified by 8/21. He plans to work on Baylor, A&M and texas tech besides Michigan. I do not know his plan for other OOS schools. (It appears he may work on the secondary for “his own school” relatively sooner, even though he said he does not have a high hope for this one. maybe he starts to fall in love with the one which first shows him love :))</p>
<p>my son, hubbellgardner, has been too busy to peruse this site. But he is now a student(he is a 4th year medical student) member of his medical schools admission cmte(UT-San Antonio) and he interviewed his first 3 applicants this week-he told me it was very interesting to be on the other side of the process, while at the same time preparing to apply for a residency position at other medical schools. One day the interviewer and the next, the interviewee. Looks like he will be heading back to the southeast for residency-Vanderbilt, UVA, Duke etc… lots of his college friends are in the area and some are already residents at those schools. Our family’s 8-year premed and medical school journey nearing its end. Just hope he never needs to call his brother, the budding lawyer, for help.</p>
<p>Same here!.. I am not even complete yet. My school said that my committee letter should go out this week…Hopefully, I will get an interview invite before I get a rejection…I am keeping my fingers crossed over here :)</p>
<p>Hey, hubbellsdad!! Nice to “see” you. I just mentioned hubellgardner on the thread and rec’ed UTHSCSA to a Missouri mule. </p>
<p>A few years back in his old stomping ground would be great for him, wouldn’t it? What is he shooting for in the way of residency? </p>
<p>Thanks again for helping my daughter. She leaves in a few days to start the next stage of her med school journey- med school itself. Prep is over , now it begins in earnest. She’s pretty pumped.</p>
<p>Hi hubbellsdad, Thanks for dropping by occasionally to give these lowest-ranked students (i.e., premeds) on the medicine-career track some insights about what lies ahead.</p>
<p>You would give your son a newer car to replace his old civic before he moves back to SE, right? Being such a good son, I think he deserves it – unless he decides to marry the debt! :)</p>
<p>lollybo and MyOpinion, I feel for you, but please note that most schools (esp., most NE schools) likely do not give out many invites at such an early date. curm posted the list of schools that tend to give out a lot of invites early on the 2009-2010 thread. Maybe the schools you apply to are not among these schools. Look up his post on that thread. (Many of these schools are texas ones, as I remember.)</p>
<p>For your easy reference: The list of schools which give out many invites early was posted by curm (thanks, curm) on post #297 and #298 on page 20 of 2009-2010 thread:</p>
<p>mcat2: the civic only has 110,000 miles on it! Actually, a ‘significant’ down payment on new wheels will be his graduation gift(although a case could be made that 8 years of higher education on the old man was gift enough!)
Curm: hubbell is headed towards internal medicine enroute to a subspecialty(critical care/pulmonary/cardiology as of ‘today’). But I have told him, I was an internal medicine categorical intern myself, back in the day, until I saw the light…</p>
<p>For those afraid to go to sdn, here is this year’s list of invites so far (although I know some TX schools that are not on the list are doing interviews):</p>
<p>Albert Einstein: </p>
<p>Creighton: </p>
<p>George Washington: </p>
<p>Georgetown:</p>
<p>Indiana University: </p>
<p>Loyola (Stritch): </p>
<p>Mayo: </p>
<p>Medical College of Georgia: </p>
<p>Ohio State: </p>
<p>Southern Illinois University:</p>
<p>University of Arizona: </p>
<p>University of California, Davis: </p>
<p>University of Chicago: </p>
<p>University of Connecticut: </p>
<p>University of Michigan: </p>
<p>University of Pittsburgh:
University of Virginia: </p>
This is one of the reasons why some people are more successful than others. I think DS’s AMCAS should be verified in a week or two, and his TMDSAS should be verified in 2 or 3 weeks. Patience, patience and more patience!</p>
</p>