<p>Thanks guys. Curm, “conversational” means it’s practically a transcript of a conversation I’d have with someone–words I’d normally use, syntax I’d use, etc etc. Perhaps like I’d write a journal or a letter as opposed to, say, a thesis paper or lab report. </p>
<p>No telling how hick that is…considering I AM from Missouri and all ;)</p>
<p>As a former proud resident of Knob Noster, Mo. , i know my hicks. ;)</p>
<p>Well, I am done with all secondaries over here and pretty happy about that! Still waiting for the Committee Letter to be received by AMCAS (My school keeps telling me " do not to worry, we know how this works")…I know of some people being invited only a few hours after being complete…I am hoping for a few of the those!</p>
<p>Haha, driven through Knob Noster a time or two (mom grew up 'round there). SMALL WORLD that’s for sure! Army brat, perhaps?</p>
<p>That would be Air Force brat.</p>
<p>Knob Noster’s a real place? I just thought it was a creation of the Curm</p>
<p>Ah, my apologies dear Curm–I can never keep all those branches straight anyway. One of the cool things about going to school in Missouri is that during the first or second home football game, the B2 does a flyover during the National Anthem (which happens right before the Missouri Waltz–a popular one with the students, believe it or not). It’s one of those things that’s known but rarely announced, so it always catches ya by surprise! Looking forward to seeing it one last time as an undergrad!</p>
<p>PS: somemom, Knob Noster’s the home of Whiteman Air Force Base (when referring to it as AFB rather than just Whiteman, now I realize how easily I shoulda known curm’s an Air Force brat) which is where the stealth bombers (B2s) live. They are pretty badass.</p>
<p>…Sweet</p>
<p>My school already sent the Committee Letter!!.. Let’s see how long it will take for AMCAS to report it. Finally, I should have some news from some of the schools in the next couple of weeks…</p>
<p>Congrats MyOpinion! I’m sure you will get many interviews with your stats.</p>
<p>My first interview is coming up next Thursday. Are there any good tips for interviewing? I will dress conservatively (already got my suit), and I am going over some common interview questions right now. However, I prefer to be a spontaneous conversationalist, and I am afraid that having pre-prepared answers might cause me to sound stilted and unnatural. I did get some very nice information about questions that might catch me by surprise, but I think that studying interview questions rigorously might put me in a “high stakes” mode where I become too nervous and stilted. How much time should I be spending on these questions?</p>
<p>Also, do you guys have any good miscellaneous tips for interviewing? Anything from hotels, transportation, etc?</p>
<p>MyOpinion, glad to hear that your college sent your Committee Letter. Eliminate one more hurdle.</p>
<p>lollybo, I have no tips to offer, but I want to wish you a good luck.</p>
<p>For some reason, DS’s interview is like 1.5-2 months away. It may be the price to pay for submitting the primary application late. I heard the interview date depends on when your AMCAS primary was submitted. So, even if person A receives an invite later than person B, the selectable dates for person A may be earlier if his/her AMCAS submission date is earlier. (To clarify: this is only true for a particular school.)</p>
<p>lollybo,
Schools that my D. will have interviews are offerring to stay with current Med. Students, and she is planning to do that, except for one where she has HS pre-med friend just moved to apartment, so she will stay with her. She will drive to all interviews.</p>
<p>DS’s application status on TMDSAS is finally changed to “transmitted” Today, on August 24. It took one month and 12 days (counting from the day when his payment was received) to get to this stage.</p>
<p>Do not know what to expect next. My guess is that it may take, say, 3 weeks before most TMDSAS schools download his application, and then another 2 weeks for them to complete the evaluation of his application. If this is the case, his invite, if any, may come toward the end of September, and the interview day (if any) would be around the beginning or middle of November.</p>
<p>Will he still have a chance to get a pre-match offer by November 15 (when the first batch of pre-match offers for IS applicants are announced) or it is already unlikely because of his late TMDSAS submission?</p>
<p>DS’s first interview for an amcas school will be at the end of September. His current plan is to take a train to get there. The hotel has been reserved.</p>
<p>Hmm…Is there any TMDSAS school that may do things similar to what Michigan does, i.e., having auto-invite based on stats only?</p>
<p>AMCAS is not showing my LORs yet. I am being told that by Friday. Hopefully, I will be complete at all the 20 schools I applied to next week!! I am just taking it easier now and not too anxious anymore…</p>
<p>Ugh. Still no committee letter for my D. She’s had everything into them since well before the deadline in early May. She’s been AMCAS verified since mid -June. All secondaries received (about 12) have been sent out. BUT SHE’S NOT COMPLETE! This is incredibly frustrating! The pre-med advisor tells her, oh, you’ll be fine, it will get done. I don’t understand the delay and I don’t know how to advise her.</p>
<p>kschmidt, I understand your daughter frustration as well as yours. I was verified June 14th and all my secondaries have been sent back, some for a few weeks now. My school has an excellent pre med office and they take their job very seriously. I have been advised that all letters get sent during august and september, year after year. We are required to have all our information, CV, essays, letters from professors and the personal interview by late May, and for that reason I was expecting my letter would have gone out in mid july. This tells me, that as CCers and SDNers we get a little paranoid and that the whole “being early thing”, is totally overplayed and perhaps somewhat misunderstood.</p>
<p>I have been reassured that our applications are not at ANY disadvantage whatsoever, and in fact, my school shares one of the highest percentages of premeds being accepted to med school…So I am giving them the benefit of the doubt!</p>
<p>kschmidt and MyOpinion, While we (here, we are annoying parents in the eyes of a child) were “nagging” DS about requesting the premed committee letter ASAP, he told us it is usually around August (or end of July? A senior moment here) that the premed committee at his school would start sending out the committee letter and he is not late. I think his committee letter was indeed sent out about the time when both his TMDSAS and AMCAS were verified in the end. – However, he did not submit his primary applications to both early, as compared to most/many SDNers.</p>
<p>I do not know whether this is true but I would trust what he told us. This is just another data point on when a premed committee normally sends out the committee packet.</p>
<p>
DS’s current issue, if any, is he might not even complete the secondaries for all the schools he has submitted the primary, let alone completing them timely within two (or at most three) weeks as it is often recommended here. We do not want to be nagging parents on this front. After he had submitted about 10 secondaries, we were happy and kept our mouth shut. Actually, we do not know how many secondaries he has completed. My guess is 9 plus/minus 3 as of today. He likely applied to 22 or 23 schools, but some of them do not have secondaries.</p>
<p>Occasionally, we ourselves even discourage him from continuing his application to some of the schools in his list. (Our reason: we do not want him to have the pressure that he has to get in somewhere this year, and it is perfectly OK for him to not get in as there is always an alternative career path for him.) Hopefully, we do not mislead him here.</p>
<p>He did write about his cooking on one of his essays as he was “bored” about writing the same thing again and again. He was sometimes quite adventurous – On his college application, he wrote about his high school sweetheart (to put it bluntly: He was “dumped” although it was arranged like a mutual agreement to separate on the surface! At least it is not an nasty end.)</p>
<p>Well I share things with both mcat2 and kschmidt. DS still waiting on that last LOR (mind you had the PI not promised him the LOR he would be complete everywhere since he has 3 valid LOR’s). He still hasn’t finished all his secondaries. And, I do nag a bit too but after a while you just have to stop. I had helped him tier his applications into those he is most likely to get into, second most and third. He has completed all the tier 1 secondaries (one not received because missing LOR) and all but two of the second tier secondaries. The third tier he only submitted two which required no work. If he completes all the tier 1 and 2s with the 2 tier threes that will give him 17 with 1 rejection already (was a tier 2).</p>
<p>His PI promised him the LOR several weeks ago with no result. We even wrote a draft to give to the PI for him to use if laziness was the issue. We unfortunately are beginning to think that the PI won’t write the reference because he doesn’t want DS to get into med school thinking he can continue with his indentured servitude in his lab indefinitely (80 hour weeks being paid hourly for 40) with almost no time off and no raise even though required by the institution.</p>
<p>We’re all grumpy about the situation.</p>
<p>Echoing the slight committee letter frustration here. </p>
<p>I scheduled my interview today, and my committee’s policy is to write the letter and send it out shortly thereafter. I go to a big state school with approximately 100 premeds applying this cycle. My school has only completed four committee interviews so far (they’re not backed up; they’ve only received four complete applications, and I swear more than half of those premeds are good ones (and friends!)), and no one in my advising office finds that alarming; apparently, those of us that are so on the ball and chomping at the bit really are…ahead of the game. </p>
<p>Still working on secondaries (finished 2, working on 2, another 2 don’t have essays, the rest are waiting in the wings). I’ll keep you guys posted!</p>
<p>
I sympothize your S for his situation if it is really the case.
The father of a coworker was a dean of some state school, so my coworker knows a lot of stuff about colleges. My coworker said his department (where he got his PhD from) never wants a professor doing research to teach any undergraduate class. Those researcher/professors are for PhD candidates only. Their department hires instructors whose sole job is to teach and they give these instructors a reasonable degree of job security also. He thinks this arrangement actually helps the undergraduate students rather than harm them. However, this works in those career-oriented majors only (that is, in those engineering fields where an additional graduate degree is generally not particularly valued by the industry.) This is because, to get into most top medical schools, it usually requires some research experiences – This is because this (i.e., research activity) is what distinguishes a top medical school from other not so top medical schools.</p>