<p>I agree with lollybo. I think the time to send the update letters should be after january or so. At one of the schools I interviewed, they did not sound very enthusiastic at all about receiving update letters nor post-interview Thank You notes. In fact, we were told - …“and please, if you decide to send us a Thank You note, do not write “thank you for the interview”, we do not appreciate that”.</p>
<p>As far as “in the area” emails, I am not too sure how effective they are. If you have not been chosen to get an interview, “being in the area” is not going to trigger the school to give you one. On the other hand, if your file is “about to be reviewed”, maybe they will pull it out to take a look at it, and if you were going to be interviewed anyway the invite could be expedited. I am just speculating here, of course.</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s all along the lines of what I was thinking. I purposely do not ever venture into SDN land (and thanks for the PM re Northwestern to prevent even one trip over there, MyO!) because I think they are absolutely nuts/total psycho/need to get lives/etc. </p>
<p>I have a feeling that the source of all this anxiety about lack of interview offers is just an overall lack of knowledge about the process in general–for example, is it typical to have interviews in January? February? March? Or are most interviews completed before that? I think with all the emphasis on “early! early! early!” it’s easy to also expect the schools to be timely–when it seems like that’s just not the case. </p>
<p>Anywho, I’ll keep operating under the guise that no news is good news and will keep my fingers crossed for more interview invites! Good luck to the rest of you too.</p>
<p>PS: Lolly, it’s a bummer you haven’t heard from those schools…but it’s pretty freaking amazing you have already been accepted! Another congraulations</p>
<p>I heard a statistic that 1/3 of spots have been given away by october 15. But that is only 33 percent of all seats, there are still 66 left to give away. Furthermore, a lot of those seats given away are help by people with multiple acceptances, and I bet seats will open up as more people withdraw, especially closer to May.</p>
<p>I think there are merits to applying early, but I think it is still very early in the process. Many people don’t find out until next semester, and seats are given out even up until matriculation. I wouldn’t worry until at least 3 more months, in late January.</p>
<p>lollybo, You were talking about the interview spots here, right?! (Please do not give us a heart attack by saying it is the acceptance slots you referred to in your previous post.) One school, as I heard, actually gives out 1/3 of acceptance spots on the magic date, Oct. 15. Many “late” applicants to that school complained a lot about this aspect of the application. (BTW, DS is going to that school for interview soon, even though the interview invite came almost two months (at least 1.5 months) ago. It is said the interview date is decided by how soon the applicant completes his/per AMCAS primary, and DS did not apply very early, as compared to those very early applicants.)</p>
<p>I also heard that many schools, even private ones, show preference to students from their region, at least not from a region that is far away from the medical school – unless the applicant is from California and his/her stats are not too high and ECs are too good – This is because the adcoms in other area (east coast?) may think high stat California kids may have a good chance to stay in a equally good California private/public medical school.</p>
<p>Oh, my bad, I think I got that from SDN, which creates yet another reason to not visit there. In that case, it is even earlier than what I predicted.</p>
<p>Yep, mcat2, D. has noticed flood of California applicants as well as unusually high number of past acceptances everywhere that D. applied. The gap is huge. For example, one school last year accepted 22 from CA, smaller numbers from ohers and 4 kids from 5 states that listed together and this last group of 5 includes our state. How it even possible to have accepted 4 from 5 states? Basically, this one is almost no hope, it has 135 invites to be sent out as of now, which will be depleted in some 6 weeks. No negative feelings though, it is OK.</p>
<p>^^^ Are these schools texas schools, because Texas schools open up apps earlier than AMCAS. I have noticed a lot of my friends who are seniors in Texas have already gotten a couple of acceptances, to UTMB-Gal, Texas A&M, and UTMB-Houston.</p>
<p>^ bigreddawgie is right, except for BCM, which started to send out acceptances on the magic day, Oct. 15 (Likely Oct. 16 this year.) But BCM did not send out a huge number of acceptances like some other early schools did.</p>
<p>Maybe tufts, michigan, uva, case, dartmouth are early schools. I am not sure which one besides michigan sent out 1/3 of acceptances on or near the magic day.</p>
<p>UTSW will send out a lot of acceptances shortly after 11/15 though. They build their class almost exclusively with prematch offers and essentially no match. (unlike UT-H.)</p>
<p>curm, DS is going to be on the road interviewing again this week.</p>
<p>I remember that you PMed me to ask DS to add two schools. In the end, he received the invites from both schools. All I can say is “curm knows the best.” Thanks! I do not know how much he talked about his “cooking” hobby though :)</p>
<p>BTW, Congrats to your D for her doing great at her medical school!</p>
<p>Thanks boys, appreciate the support. I am certainly excited and have had lots of fun updating my family this morning. Looks like I’ll be in the last set of interviews though–they’re finished interviewing on December 10, and the only dates available are December 3 (my Northwestern interview), December 6, and December 7. </p>
<p>I’m a little concerned because with Northwestern and Mayo back to back, I’ll miss about a week of classes right before finals. OBVIOUSLY I am going to go to both of these interviews because I definitely prioritize both of them higher than any of my classes this semester (I purposely picked classes that would allow me to do this). </p>
<p>Would it be inappropriate to call and ask if I could have an earlier date with either of them? I did not anticipate back to back interviews like this.</p>