<p>I was quoting from the link above. I believe that a 35 is a 97 percentile on AMCAS graph and at some point in the high 30’s it’s all 99 percentile since there are not many with those scores. Acceptances to medical school has an element of luck even if everything is in place (may not be so for the applicants who are 3.9+ and 37+ with the normal EC’s). From what we’ve learned, the state of residency matters a lot.</p>
<p>^Yes, correct list of Med. Schools that one applies is absolute must. Then the good question is to ask yourself about your personal goal for acceptance rate. The list will be different if you aim at 25%, 50% or 75%. Do not rely too much on luck, it is a factor but you cannot control it. You are in full control of the list of your schools, not your advisors, not parents, nobody can make you to apply to schools outside of your personal comfort zone, whatever criteria you use. Well, reaching for the stars work for some and at the same time do not work for most.</p>
<p>D had some surprises this season (interview invites at some reach schools but not at some match schools). What I mean by the element of luck is after some initial cutoff point, I think that it’s dependent on who reads your application or who your interviewer is (some personalities may click better with each other) as to whether or not you have an acceptance.</p>
<p>^Very true!</p>
<p><a href=“interview%20invites%20at%20some%20reach%20schools%20but%20not%20at%20some%20match%20schools”>quote</a>
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<p>This may not be that uncommon. I have read references to it on CC before. </p>
<p>My daughter was not invited to interview at a local school (where her stats were above the norm). It is mid-range in terms of selectivity but because of its location gets a disproportionately large number of applications.</p>
<p>Friends who are involved in admissions and on the board of the affiliated hospital said that they wanted to know that people like DD would attend if accepted. They were happy to arrange an interview but by that time she was already in at a preferred school. If January had rolled around and she had not heard from anywhere you can bet that she would have taken them up on it!</p>
<p>This is a practice that is puzzling to me. Why wouldn’t a school want to woo a qualified student that has ties to the community? So what if she doesn’t accept them. Medical schools don’t care about yield since they all have an abundance of qualified applicants to choose from and always have a wait list that is too long. We were surprised after D’s visits and interviews which schools she likes (and so was she). You just never know what catches the fancy of an applicant, may be it’s the tour of the school, may be it’s the city, a particularly enthusiastic med student, a great speaker from the admission office, etc…</p>
<p>Med school DO care about yield. A good deal. (It’s a rankings thing.)</p>
<p>I had thought that it’s mostly MCAT, grades, peer assessment, etc… Yield may play a role, but I think it must be minor. Last year, I believe that the highest schools with yield were nowhere near the top 20. </p>
<p>[10</a> Most Popular Medical Schools - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/the-short-list-grad-school/articles/2012/06/19/10-most-popular-medical-schools]10”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/the-short-list-grad-school/articles/2012/06/19/10-most-popular-medical-schools)</p>
<p>“And if medical school enrollment was a popularity contest, the Center for Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University and the University of Kansas Medical Center would split the top prize. Both schools achieved a yield—the percentage of accepted students who opt to enroll—of 85.7 percent in 2011 and increased their enrollments over the previous year.”</p>
<p>^All above may and may not be true. D’s invites/acceptances were more predictable than not and follow Med. School ranking very closely.
All is pretty much speculation. So, our estimated goal was 50% based on a stats/Med. school match and that is how it happened exactly. But D. did lots of research and also considered location as it was her criteria #1. She also had an application that showed very wide range of various interests and experiences that could easily be utilized. And, yes, she is using all her (non-academic) skills currently at her Med. School, I guess, they do look at that also.</p>
<p>In addition to the ranking thing, the small size of the admission staff, the small size of med school class, and the limited time they have to compose the class could play a role also.</p>
<p>In recent years, two med schools (both public schools) in our state ended up admitting too many students. This gave a lot of headaches to both the med school and the admitted students. At least one school needed to shell out money to ask some students to postphone their enrollment by one year.</p>
<p>If you are an admission officer, will you then pay attention to yield, unless you are willing to deal with this unpleasant consequence in the last minute?</p>
<p>It is no coincidence that, unlike the college admission, most applicants (unless they are those highly sought-after applicants - few are such students) who are admited to at least one school do not receive many acceptances even though many applicants apply to many med schools – at least many med schools try hard NOT to let this happen (as this will further drive down their already not high yield and give many med schools a lot of headache at the last minute.) This is also a reason why quite many qualified applicants fall through the crack just because they are not lucky.</p>
<p>^Also, there are others that do opposite. If applicant is accepted to certain Med. School, they hurry up, sent the invite and most likely than not WILL also accept this applicant. It has happened to my D. with very well known for their constant “duel” competing schools and her decision took her awhile to make.</p>
<p>^ There are also some nitty-gritty details in the application process that I heard of before: If you can somehow (however indirect it may be) influence the timing/order of interview invites or acceptances in some “optimal” way, it could do you good.</p>
<p>Some schools may ask you, during the inyterview, or probe by other means after a certain date:
- What schools you have applied.
- What other schools you have interviewed.
- What other schools you have received invites.
- What schools you have received their acceptances.</p>
<p>You had better not lie, but the answer you provide to them may have some consequences to you.</p>
<p>An SDNer who started a school specific tead for a certain med school posted that, the dean of the admission office at her med school would often ask interviewee the question 1) above. If the list of applied schools includes too many of the schools this dean is not particularly fond of, he has the tedency to give the interviewee a lengthy lecture on why he should not apply to those schools. She claims she heard of the incidents from many sources (including herself.) – To be sure, this did not happen to DS in his application cycle.</p>
<p>Toward the later stage of the admission cycle, one of DS’s friends received an email from school X, in which the school X specifically asks him to choose between school X or school Y as soon as possible. There is some info about by when the med schools may know what about your application/admission status, but I can not remember the details.</p>
<p>Some CCer posted that, she/he suspected that, right after she had received an invite from a certain school, or the invites from schools of a certain type, he would not receive invites from other comparable or lower-ranked schools.</p>
<p>So, is it better to hear from the match/reach schools first, or the super-reach ones first?!</p>
<p>That USnews rank of popular schools would be misleading to the uninformed public, except for #10 Harvard, they are all in state schools in states rarely take an OOS student, of course their yield is high. They, no doubt, know what percentage of students accepted will also attend and they keep the acceptances low to avoid over-enrollment.</p>
<p>^it can happen eiher way, unpredictable.</p>
<p>However, we can start the list on both sides.
Here I go with my knowledge.</p>
<p>I you apply to Northwestern, make sure to apply to Case, they tend to accept the same applicants. And might as well apply to OSU (maybe more applicable to OH residents?)
If you are in OH, again, chance of getting invite from U of M are slim
Chance of getting an invite from U of Chicago are very slim for everybody.
California applicants seem to have higher chances everywhere, they are flooding the rest of USA and getting accepted in disproportional numbers.</p>
<p>@mcat,
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<p>From the AMCAS Instruction Manual</p>
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<p>^Interesting that Pitt changed their rolling (but heavy on WL) admissions to non-rolling with decisions in Jan. Wouldn’t it have benefited them more for decisions to come out in Feb, after they are able to see where the applicants they are interested in have been accepted? However, even though they’re now non-rolling they might still use WLing extensively…</p>
<p>^ I think the Feb. date wouldn’t help them much since they must first accept the candidate before they can see the other acceptances. I’m really surprised many more schools don’t use the WL more. It’s a safe strategy. </p>
<p>I just took AAMC3 and now must scurry on over to SDN to see how I did. It seemed too easy. (perhaps it’s the easy one?)</p>
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<p>Aha, I see now.</p>
<p>plumazul,</p>
<p>Thanks for digging out the info and posting it in post #516.</p>
<p>
It is rumored that Texas applicants seem to have higher chances in their home state, but less chances everywhere else unless the school’s rank is higher than UT-SW or BCM.</p>