<p>kschmidt, I think there are not many MD/PhD applicants. So relatively fewer CCers have had the first-hand experiences. But some might have heard more about how MD/PhD applicants are doing than others. Hopefully, they could give you and your D more inputs.</p>
<p>A good news for DS: He received another invite. However, the interview date is conflicted with another one.</p>
<p>He has received invites from 3 top-10 medical schools, which are all the top-10 medical schools he applied to. But one of these three invites probably should not count. This is because that one is affiliated with his own college. If my impression is correct, that particular medical school may give an interview invite to every applicant from its affiliated college. I could be wrong though. But as far as the actual acceptance is concerned, these “same school” applicants are not favored. For example, one 3.99 GPA kid from this college was not accepted last cycle, likely because his research is “too soft.” Another 3.9+/40 kid was not accepted either. So, the only favor they give you is that “you have a chance to talk to them.”</p>
<p>DS is still waiting for (good or bad) news from one IS school and 3 OOS schools. Unless he tries to complete more applications in the near future, these 4 schools are the only schools he will be waiting for their responses (or silence rejections.)</p>
<p>Had my first interview! I was kind of nervous the night before but by the AM, I was really looking forward to it. I really loved the school and the interviews went great! They lasted 45 minutes each - a professor and then a med student. I was very relaxed and decided to just be myself. There were no “stress” questions and I noticed that the professor only had my secondary application and not the AMCAS info. I may have been a little too excited by the time I interviewed with the med student, but I was just happy that my first interview felt alright.<br>
Curm had mentioned earlier that with the some schools you are likely to run into the same folks with certain frequency, and indeed that seems to be the case. There was a group of 12 of us and the majority seemed to be have had or that will be having interviews at the same schools. I am going to see a couple of them next week in the same places!
The recommendation that I got from those who had been interviewing for a while was: “ok, now the best thing is to forget about this school and pretend you did not like it. That way you won’t feel too bad if they reject you”…</p>
<p>DS interviews today. I believe the actual interview sessions were held this morning. So by now he must have survived the tough part of the interview. Hopefully, he was doing fine. He must be enjoying BBQ provided by the school now. This is his second IS school. He went to another IS one just last week. He will go to another IS one but will likely not go to the other two unless he could not get into any one by the end of December.</p>
<p>I found that the more he cares about a school, the more nervous he may become and would spend more time on preparing for it. If the adcoms at a medical school know this, they may use this to estimate how passionate the student is about this school :)</p>
<p>lollybo, Thanks! It is in the south. (but not southeast. He does not apply to any school in southeast.) I heard from his mom that he thought he had done better on this interview than on his previous interviews. It may be due to the fact that he is now more experienced.</p>
<p>One of his interviewers complimented on his MCAT score, but not on his GPA. But I am pretty sure he has devoted much more time on getting good grades than on that 5-hour (?) test in one afternoon.</p>
<p>D. has never mentioned being nervous. The only thing that she has mentioned besides one being a little on a “grilling” side, was that music has been discussed extensively at least with one of the students. And they did not discuss her research (to her dissapointment). She is more stressed with school work, make-up labs, exams. She is not used to that, everything has always been done on-time. Oh well, she has one more interview on Wednesday, and it looks like it might be the last one. I hope that she is not too relaxed for her last interview. I hope she will not feel like being on break between her exams (one is today and another make-up on Thursday). Will be driving in the busiest time of the day too.
Good luck to everybody!</p>
<p>Still haven’t heard from any of my schools. I’ve decided to give them until Nov 1–about a full 5-6 weeks from completion–before I start harassing them (that, and I’m remarkably busy until then!). </p>
<p>On the other hand, some of my friends have been receiving rejections lately, and the friend who I (probably shouldn’t) compare myself to that has received lots of interviews is a high-stats guy going for MD/PhD. So in terms of the other friends, at least I have the position of “no news is good news” in terms of not being rejected–and in terms of the MD/PhD guy, he’s probably not the best comparison.</p>
<p>Kristin, my D was also complete right around the same time as you (after delays by the premed committee) and has an interview invite from one school. She’s heard nothing at all from any of the other 12 or so. I’m not sure if its good that there are no rejections, or bad that there are no invites. Maybe a little of both?</p>
<p>What is the magical date of Oct. 15th I keep hearing about? </p>
<p>My D just found out that her research project is going to be published later this fall, so she’s hoping to send some sort of update around about that. Do you think that’s good strategy? What do you plan to do after Nov. 1st?</p>
<p>^According to my D., Oct. 15th is the earliest when any school can send acceptances. One of her schools specifically mentioned during interview that its date is Nov. 15, month later. I do not know if it is correct, this is just my understanding. </p>
<p>D. has not recieved responses from 2 schools that I count as silent rejections. She has no plans to do anything about them. She has one real rejection before interview so far. She is driving today to her last interview which is between whole bunch of exams.</p>
Yeah. The first is not that helpful …but I can’t resist the urge to smack them.
I really think your school should get their act together.
It’s time to try something that gets somebody to look at your file. That could be an update (if there is something worthwhile to put in), an “in the area” email, a new rec letter, but something. </p>
<p>I’m still optimistic that you will crawl out of the hole the school dug for you (and you should be, too), but it’s time to be pro-active.</p>
<p>Getting that first interview invite! Mizzou here I come :)</p>
<p>And all it took was a call to the office to ask about the status of my application. You can bet your bottom dollar I’ll make some similar calls to other schools this week. </p>
<p>(PS: kschmidt, Miami, and Curm, as always, thanks for the thoughts)</p>
<p>But I have a feeling, that some schools might not like so much everybody calling them. In D’s case, I also hear that our neighbor to the north might not favor kids from our state too much.</p>
<p>kristin, Big congratulations!!! Now, about calling…if you have a specific question or concern about your file that can’t be answered from the website then yeah. Call. But general “what are my status” calls are usually frowned upon. (I would have said always…but it worked at Mizzou. ;)) Anyway…you can be more creative than that. ;)</p>
<p>To Curm & Miami: I only intend to call schools that don’t use online status updates, or tell you from the beginning that online status updates are usually weeks behind actual decisions–schools that come to mind are Mizzou (done & interview offered!), SLU, Creighton, and Harvard at least. Won’t “bother” the ones that seem to have reliable online systems. Thanks for the concern though!</p>
<p>kristin, Big congrats! From DS’s experience (in the past couple of months only), some schools tend to be more responsive and/or organized than others. If the school is not very responsive, the applicants naturally feel uncomfortable, worrying that their applications might get lost or something like that.</p>
<p>Kristin, one more thing: For one of the schools DS applied to, some applicants reported that they found the interview invite online only but they never received an invite by email; but most others received their invites by emails. Somebody might find the invite in his/her junk/spam mailbox. All kinds of variations.</p>
<p>Congrats kristin! You will see that other invites will follow now! You should not take the lack of news as a bad sign because some schools are notoriously slow. Several schools are inviting students now after 2 months (and a few days) of being complete and that is the norm for them (ex Boston U). I also found out about another school that only sends invites once a month, so as you can see they are all over the place.</p>
<p>As far as calling, I would probably wait until the 6 week mark if I dont receive a “complete email” from the school. I had not received anything from one particular school and I wrote an email which was soon followed by a reply.</p>
<p>Harvard, seems to be a big pain according to everyone in SDN.They will send you a complete email roughly at 30 days plus, and then just be patient. Everyone who has called the admissions office (just to ask about anything) states that they are rude as hell.</p>
<p>DS received a second interview invite today which is scheduled for Nov 15 (I get to do the logistics since involves plane travel). This was from one of the few schools who considered him complete before the PI letter arrived, namely he was complete at the end of August and received an interview invite today. </p>
<p>October 15 is the first date that schools are allowed to notify standard applicants that they have been accepted. Somewhere I read that it was actually midnight the 15th namely the 16th but not too sure about the reliability of that. DS should hear then although his IS school is sending their acceptances snail mail we believe so who knows when he will actually hear anything.</p>
<p>sharonohio, Contrats to your S for his second interview invite!</p>
<p>I do not expect DS will hear anything on October 15. He is more interested in knowing whether he could have any news from his two IS schools on November 15. (His third and fourth IS interviews have been rescheduled to some time in December or January.)</p>
<p>In his last interview, one of the interviewers seemed to be very interested in DS’s research. He asked about it extensively. This may be a good sign as the interviewer is so interested in what DS has been doing in his lab. The interviewer is an MD.</p>
<p>Two of his interviews involved with air travel, one with train travel, another “on foot” He will fly out to the midwest two times in the near future, one time toward the end of October and the other time the middle of November.</p>
He will fly out to the midwest two times in the near future, one time toward the end of October and the other time the middle of November.</p>