<p>I feel a little better now, thanks everybody! I think it’s the lack of control that really gets to D; everything she could and should have done has been done. Now hurry up and wait for the committee. I need to stay away from SDN and quit thinking about all those interviews slots getting filled up out there…</p>
<p>AMCAS received my Committee Letter this AM!. It shows as Received when I click on the Details section of my Application . I just contacted AMCAS (I know, paranoid) and I was also told the following:</p>
<p>The schools have different systems. Some will receive a Pop Up message indicating that they have new information to download from AMCAS, others download automatically from AMCAS daily and others do it once a week (I know Northwestern to be one of those doing it weekly). So, now I will begin checking my school apps to see if they show me as complete.</p>
<p>I think I am going to start that on Monday… (who am I kidding !!! I will probably be clicking later this afternoon… .can’t help it!!)</p>
<p>Well good news to report. The school S is most likely to get into just sent him an interview invite and upon calling they had time Sept 7 and since it’s driving distance from home it means we get to see him for Labor Day. This means that some of the schools are going ahead without the PI reference since he had the required ones without it. He had received an interview from these guys in his cycle two years ago but the interview was in January and his Junior year grades were just not going to work (also had lower MCAT then). He really liked the school then so is very hopeful this will work out (he’s good in that he’ll go whereever they take him.)</p>
<p>So anyway, yeah!</p>
<p>Just received emails that I am complete at three schools, now 18 to go !! Keeping my fingers crossed for interview invites before any rejection… (just to keep the confidence thing going…)</p>
<p>MyOpinion, Congrats for your Committee Letter having been received by AMCAS. I believe a good news will come to you very soon. Even in the relatively slower pace standard in the south, it would take at most 16 days or so (after everything in TMDSAS is ready, i.e., after being “transmitted”) to receive a response from some school. Texas primary applications seem to take a little bit over 6 weeks on average (for your transcripts to be verified) now.</p>
<p>sharonohio, Congrats to your S. The first one is always the most exciting one.</p>
<p>Congrats to your S, sharonohio!</p>
<p>some texas med schools changed their prereqs for the next application year. great… hopefully my school lists the ap credits on the transcript. i do not want to take a higher level stat class because i cant retake a class i got ap credit for. just ranting haha</p>
<p>Yeah for the good news!!</p>
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<p>bigreddawgie, what changes are you referring to? From your post, am I to infer it has to do with AP credits?</p>
<p>Good news this morning! The committee is finished with their review and my D has an appointment next week to discuss. Discuss what, I’m not sure, but it could be her rating. Apparently they rate each med school applicant (strong applicant, good applicant, average applicant, weak applicant). Another thing to worry about! Ha ha. But its a huge relief knowing that her application isnt being held up and that now the chips will just fall where they may. Sigh.</p>
<p>Congrats to your D. Wow, I do not know the committee may rate the applicant. I thought they just try to help to present the applicant in the best possible way. I hope DS did not screw something up in his dealing with the committee member/advisor. He did not argue with them or anything like that, but he definitely did not spend much efforts on “pleasing” them. At one time, the advisor may ask DS to add another LOR but in the end he did not do it as it is too difficult to chase down another professor in the summer.</p>
<p>GA2012MOM, The change in tmdsas policy is likely to do with the statistics class. It may be a REQUIRED class next year – a calculus classs only (either one or two semesters of calculus) will not meet their requirement, if I remember it correctly. But texas medical schools accept AP if your college put the AP course number on the transcript. Sometimes I feel that texas medical schools are like most state UG regarding APs. While top UG schools often do not consider any AP as a legimate course credit (they just use APs for the placement purposes, and give you some AP-equivalent special credits that are essentially useless – they still require you to retake all required core education classes, and these courses should be taken at the home institute only unless they approve you in advance) , state UG schools often do.</p>
<p>Yes, some schools are adding requirements, then realize that it is too late, since UG do not have resources to add more sections to some classes, so they changing reqs to highly recommended. Well, D. got both lucky and not so lucky with that. She was lucky because her absolutely awesome pre-med advisor not just warned her about it in a timely manner, but also happend to be prof for one of the classes that she needed to add to her schedule, so he force added her. However, D. needed to drop one of her minors to complete this requirement, and then she was advised that Med. School has changed it to highly recommended, because of number of complaints from UG colleges. Oh, well, whatever is done, usually works for better. She has an interview at this school, so it is very important to complete their requirements before graduation.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation mcat2. Her school only accepts AP for placement and she already was planning on statistics, so she’ll be fine with that. I just didn’t want her to get blindsided at the last minute. She is also planning the biochem which falls under the “highly recommended” catagory it seems for several schools, but not until senior year after she applies. I always feel that highly reccommended means you should go ahead and take it.</p>
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<p>^^^^ Wow, thanks for the info Mcat2. Do you guys know if an Econ class titled Intro to Statistical Methods will count for this requirement? I remember reading on sdn that some posters were able to count their Econ class (Intro to statistical methods) as a part of their BCMP gpa.</p>
<p>^ This is just a guess but based on past experience I doubt it…the way things were worded was that Texas schools wanted a math class that was
“taken in college” so AP classes didn’t count…and I doubt that Econ would be listed under the Math department.</p>
<p>Send them an email for clarification…that’s what we did way back when. My S had to scramble and take a statistics class senior year to meet the requirements…</p>
<p>Another interview invite for DS. It is a mid-tier (maybe ranked around 50) OOS medical school in a relatively large city. He added this school at the last minute when he heard a brother of somebody he knows went there. (He probably did not write the optional secondary for this school.)</p>
<p>So far only OOS schools show him love (i.e., giving him an invite.)</p>
<p>^Biochem is a requirement for 2 of my D’s short list of Med. Schools (has been added to one few weeks ago). It is smart to have it in senior year. D. decided taking it after she knew that her MCAT score will be enough to apply to these 2 schools. In her UG, Biochem is relatively easy according to others who took it.</p>
<p>mcat2,
D. is opposite, only one invite to OOS, and that one is farthest away (4.5 hours to drive, which was her main criteria to pick up schools).</p>
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<p>MiamiDAP, Is 4.5 hours drive the farthest away? So far, the closest one which DS got an invite from is like 5.5 hours away!</p>
<p>One of his lab members was admitted into a medical school very late in the 2009-2010 cycle (coming off the wait list maybe) so one less worker there. Another member could not get along with her postdoc and the PI decided not to renew her contract so she was recently gone. DS thinks he might be the one who will be assigned to take over her work (likely because he could get along with any one in the lab) in additional to his originally assigned work very soon, as two of the new hires (one of them is 10 hours per week only) will not get on board at least 1.5 month away and the postdoc who lost her member is very pregnant and likely could not wait till the new members join her. What a crisis!</p>
<p>Because of this (lack of time, or a “convenient” excuse?), DS wonders whether he should stop applying to some schools in his list that he is not familiar with (which means nobody he personally knows went there.) – the schools like U. Penn, Colorado, Chicago, Emory. (I suspect that the distance is the criteria he uses to eliminate schools. No wonder he did not want to apply to any schools on the other coast from day one. At least he still has the sense of not saying he wants to stop applying to his IS schools because of the distance.) I really want him to keep uva. (Hey, that one is not that far away.) It is likely because he is very tired of long-distance flights that he had to endure in the past few years.</p>
<p>Is it very unwise to stop applying to some schools when he has not had any offer yet? (He really does not care very much which school he will go to, as long as he could get into one. At least he recently stops talking about his non-sense theory: “the lower rank the school is, it is likely a better fit for him.” (Both he and his mom said this in chorus not a long time ago.)</p>
<p>"MiamiDAP, Is 4.5 hours drive the farthest away? " - yes. the rest are in-state.</p>