<p>^^^ Glad to hear somebody at UT-SW took actions to sort this out. When I heard the incident, I was concerned the same may happen to DS. Your colleague’s son might help other future interviewees, and they all should thank him as well as the persons at UT-SW who took the actions.</p>
<p>MyOpinon, Congrats on all of your recent invites.</p>
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</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, apparently NW has only sent very few interview invites so it it is still very early in the process for them. A good reason to remain optimistic !!</p>
<p>^Thanks for support, MyOpinion!</p>
<p>So I noticed that I’ve submitted secondaries to all but Duke (which should be done soon, hopefully) and am still waiting for 4 or 5 of them to email me that my app is complete and being processed (I’ve received emails that my secondary has been received; I know my letters are complete/filed with AMCAS; no updates on any school’s online app/site). </p>
<p>Seems like this is just a waiting game in terms of files being complete and interviews being offered. Is there any point that I should follow up with schools that have received my secondaries but haven’t notified me I’m complete yet?</p>
<p>DS is very stressed out about his work and going to interviews. In the second and third weeks of October, if he is not able to reschedule any of his interviews, he will skip most workdays in those two weeks. Originally he has two interviews lined up in those 2 weeks, but now two additional interviews fall into those weeks. (These two new ones are in-state ones, which I think he should value more.)</p>
<p>But it is a good news that about a half of his in-state schools seem to like him as far as the interview invite is concerned. So his ECs may not be that bad. (He did do many ECs in the last 4 years, but many of them may not be premed-centric. He was very much into any kind of “premed clubs”. Most are just “let’s do it because it is fun.”)</p>
<p>
I am just guessing here: Is it possible some schools just do not send out an “application complete” email message? Can you find whether these schools will send out this kind of email from sdn? (However, it appears the school-specific thread on SDN does not have many posts, unless that school is a very popular one.)</p>
<p>I heard that the timing to send an email is critical, but I do not know whether it is now a good time to send one.</p>
<p>mcat2,
Congrats on your S’s interviews!
My D. is driving again today after very cruel (according to her) test in a morning, another day to worry and wait for a call.</p>
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</p>
<p>kristen, I have noticed that some schools take almost 2-3 weeks (after they have all the information) to report you “complete” and send you an email. I have found that the “status update” on the websites is most unreliable. Some people are getting interviews while the status still indicates “under review”. I would call only if it has been 4 weeks and I have not gotten a change of status or an email.</p>
<p>This whole process is ridiculous. For instance, Boston University will send you a “complete email” at some point. Then, they will send you a " you have been complete for 30 days, email" and then eventually invite you for an interview about 4 weeks after that!! In addition, there seems to be a “magic 3 week survival time”. People are getting rejected EXACTLY at 3 weeks after completion. If they go on the fourth week, they get the “30 day email” which then raises your hopes for an interview invite.</p>
<p>Plain weird and stressful, needless to say.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, Thanks!</p>
<p>DS is on his 2nd interview trip today. This trip is more tiring than his last one, as it involves two legs of flying. He left home at 10 am, and did not arrive at the hotel until about 8:00 pm. Fortunately, the interview will start at noon tomorrow. Several of his high school friends are at that school now, I think.</p>
<p>He heard from another premed friend that, when that premed friend was interviewed at Vanderbuilt recently, he was grilled by a “jerk” – I do not know the details though. DS did not apply to that school. Now, I have a hard time to keep track of many schools he has completed the application. Hopefully, the number of completed applications is above 15. I think he will be happy if he gets 7 or 8 interview invites totally in the end. (He had 7 now but will likely drop one or two from these.)</p>
<p>I think I was grilled at Vandy too, but I think I am pretty good at not taking stress interviews personally. Glad to know that it was not an isolated incident, however. They might be testing to see if you are human and have emotions like fear and embarrassment, there are too many pre-med robots these days. That would be my guess.</p>
<p>Why would your son drop interview invites? I think it might be a good idea to go to those anyway, because it might be better in the long run. Missing classes/work is a pain, but having to re-apply would be even more expensive in time and money IMO.</p>
<p>thanks for the thoughts, mcat2 and lollybo. i didn’t plan to rely too heavily on status updates, but nonetheless thought i should check lest there’s an interview invite waiting that i missed. nope, not the case. </p>
<p>sent in 12 secondaries so far. files complete at 7, secondaries received by other 4, no real word from SLU (which was the first I paid for and sent in, in mid-august). called today, was instructed by an automated voice to send an email to a certain address, sent the email, will wait until mid-next week to see if i get a reply. i’ve been complete at the others sometime between 9/15 and 9/22–so just for a week or two, really. </p>
<p>the waiting game’s surely annoying, but i guess i’ll just stick with the attitude of “no new is good news” (ie, no rejections!) until it seems like this has taken an alarmingly long time. and hey, i’m sure reading about interview experiences here will prove to be helpful too!</p>
<p>^ His mom asked him to drop two, seeing that he needed to stay at work till almost 8:00 pm everyday recently – including weekends. He and his mom are very “daring” (I am the “chicken” one :)) They even said it is OK if he does not get into any in the end.</p>
<p>So far, I think he has had 4 OOS ones and 4 IS ones. He really should have applied to his IS earlier such that he could go to his IS interviews on earlier days/months. Well…no one is perfect and imperfect human does not always do things as he should do.</p>
<p>kristin, I do not know whether you applied to tufts or not. It is rumored tufts gives out its first batch of invites to mostly high stats kids – the school may not even look closely at the other parts of their applications. But for the second batch of invites, that school will look at the whole application package – which is then your strong point, I think.</p>
<p>DS has not had much luck in NYC schools (e.g., the first NYC school which he completed his application for is Mt. Sinai). It appears the bigger the city, the harder to get an invite from a school there – at least it is so for DS (but seemingly not so for MyOpinion.) I vaguely remember that curm once learned from an SDN celebrity that some OOS schools do not particularly like kids from Texas in general unless they have a compelling reason to consider such kids (e.g., those kids who can “walk on the water” :))</p>
<p>DS for some reasons tried to avoid any school in a “bad” city – baltimore and philly are not his favored cities, no matter how good the school there may be. (He said he does not want to get mugged :))</p>
<p>mcat2,
he was grilled by a “jerk” – </p>
<p>-D. had experiece like that at diff. school on her very first interview too. D. stayed cool though, showed real maturity (she is one of the younger ones), answered the same way I would.</p>
<p>"DS for some reasons tried to avoid any school in a “bad” city "-- </p>
<p>-The same here.</p>
<p>DS had two interviewers yesterday. One of them is actually a MS3 or MS4 student, and the other is a professor.</p>
<p>Could the evaluation by the second interviewer (the professor, with some psychology background) carry more weight than the first one (the MS student) just because of the difference of their seniority?</p>
<p>DS could sense that he did very well with the MS student (who said “he is a strong candidate,” hopefully he really thought so.) But he could not sense how well he did with the other one. (He feels that the professor maybe intentionally did not let the interviewee know what is his opinion about him during the interview.)</p>
<p>It is rumored that an applicant might have about 40-50% chances to get an acceptance after the interview. DS appears to like the student body there.</p>
<p>During the information session, he was told that most students can pay off their debt relatively quickly after the residency. so the students should not worry about carrying the debt. Is it really true?</p>
<p>It is funny that he met the same student/interviewee two times in his previous interviews, and he will see him again in his next interview. What a coincident! Does this happen often? This is the reason why I think many students apply to the same set of schools. (or, at least a lot of overlaps.)</p>
<p>Happens all the time when you are talking about “nationally known” schools drawing from the same small pool. (It happened for my D in UG, too.) And in Texas, it happens all-the-time. My daughter had even met a few of her current classmates on the interview trail at other schools.</p>
<p>DS kept running into the same interview invites too. When he went back to second-look weekends, he found several people that were admitted to the same schools he was. So when he showed up for first day of classes this year, he wasn’t too surprised to run into a few familiar faces.</p>
<p>DS finally had a chance to see “dead bodies” – during his interview trip. They smell bad but at least he did not faint or felt terrible afterwords.</p>
<p>Is it true that the financial conditions of many (but not all) medical schools are not that good even though the not-so-good financial situations of most of them are very well publicized? In other words, as a break-even “business”, running a medical school is really not a good one (as compared to running a brand-name undergraduate college where there are no lack of students/parents who are willing to pay close to full tuition.) DS heard of this during his interview trip.</p>
<p>Received great news today with a Northwestern invite! I love the school and I am really excited about having the opportunity to interview there. Great way to start the week! I also have my first interview this week so I will give you my impressions of the place by the end of the week… Best of luck to all !! Patience pays, so let’s keep hanging in there!</p>
<p>MyOpinion, Congrats, again. NW is a very good school. (DS does not apply there though.)</p>
<p>A question about how you arrange the transportation between the hotel (assuming here that you stay at a hotel rather than with a student host) and the medical school on the interview day. Do you take a cab, rent a car, or rely on hotel’s shuttle service? The problem is not many hotels provide the shuttle service. Even if a hotel provides the shuttle service, the service may not be available at the time you need the service. (For example, somebody else reserves the service before you do.)</p>
<p>Another question: by what means do you go from the airport to the hotel? DS took Supershuttle on his last interview trip. This is just because he is more familiar with their service. But not every city has Supershuttle. At some train station which is not in a big city, there may be not many cabs waiting at the train station. So the cab needs to be reserved in advance.</p>