<p>There was an interesting incident about California college in my family.</p>
<p>When DS was applying to colleges, he was urged by us to apply anywhere except California.</p>
<p>After he had accepted into med school, I casually mentioned that because California kids have it rough for getting admitted into med school, the atmosphere of being in a premed class at many top California colleges may be very unpleasant.</p>
<p>At that moment, DS all of a sudden remembered that we did not want him to go to any California college back then and said: “You had a secret agenda of having me go to medicine when I was even in high school!”</p>
<p>We got caught red handed! It was true but we thought we had hidden our “wish” very well for all these years, keeping insisting that he does not have to be a premed. You could say we are somewhat hypocricy (sp?).</p>
<p>texaspg, I believe that kid from Baylor U. was also looking for money. I think he did get some at Chicago. He deserved it. But my point is that just because an applicant has the stats, the med school at some desirable locations and with a variety of missions will roll the carpet for him/her. (This may be even more true in the residency application cycle. The pleasant personality may be more important than the grades, esp., the preclinical years grades. A CCer once said the more prestigious places he had an interview, the better “look” of those interviewees. Wonder if there is some truth in it.)</p>
<p>Baylor College of Medicine used to be ranked at number 6 in one year. BCM does come out as a med school like Caltech for engineering student. Some may call their students a tad bit nerdy. Some med schools would rather recruit more “leadership, outgoing” types of the students, like those who have the personalities of those heading to ibanking/consulting or very active in high profile volunteering clubs or even political movement type clubs. They more likely “lead/shake the world” in the future, for better or worse.</p>
<p>texaspg, I do not know if you would agree at this: In Texas, there are much more 3.7 and up kids, than 33 and up kids.</p>
<p>Sorry about some typo in my previous post. I meant to type: “my point is that it is not true that …” instread of “my point is …” Somehow when I use my smartphone, I am not allowed to go back to correct my typo."</p>
<p>Ha, stats not close to eleveneleven texaspg. D had a well rounded app from a tippy top school and was hooked, yet she wanted to make sure she was one and done. Of course in hindsight she WAY over applied, but in the moment it seemed like a good idea’ ;)</p>
<p>Mcat2 - There are still some students (finished 5th year recently) at Baylor who are whining about coming here because the school was in top 10. I do agree 33 might be a bit high for the bottom numbers. I think Curm had someone that got in with a 3.7/31 this year? I am worried that the number of OPEN seats are going down in Texas since they have opened up several combined programs in the last two years which means starting 2015, we may have lost about 60+ seats. This year there were two students choosing UTD+UTSW over Stanford.</p>
<p>"A CCer once said the more prestigious places he had an interview, the better “look” of those interviewees. "</p>
<p>Must be those third gen medical family kids (I am channeling “someone” from CC for some reason. :D).</p>
<p>Gamom - I started following this forum only in the last few months. When does your D graduate? I have no right to say much about 32 apps since I went overboard in 2011 making D apply to more than 20 undergrad schools. :D</p>
<p>^ If she applied to >20 colleges (unless she looks for the money also), it is quite likely that she would apply to >30 med schools in the future :)</p>
<p>You know, the applicants (and their parents ) to med schools will naturally feel insecure due to the smaller classes at most med schools. I think both curm’s and my S applied to over 20 med schools. In DS’s case, it is likely he had completed only 60% of his applications in the end due to slightly late application, tardy in turning in secondaries, and an early acceptance to BCM (the time between the interview and the acceptance is quite short for him for this one, like slightly more than 2 weeks!) I think he received 10 or 11 IIs and declined several of them.</p>
<p>Application completion e-mails are trickling in for my son - 4 so far. A lot of the schools he applied to use the same application processing system called AMP. That thing doesn’t seem to be very agile. As a result his status at several of his schools is still ‘incomplete’ while waiting for LORs. Hope things change next week, in time for him to get into the big batches of interview invitations that usually go out early in September.</p>
<p>As an aside, I was just reading an update on Kevin Kuritzky - the guy who got expelled from Emory Medical school 41 days before graduation for trying to blow the whistle on Emory and Grady. The guy’s life seems to have completely unraveled in the years after he lost his case against Emory. Sad.</p>
<p>"If she applied to >20 colleges (unless she looks for the money also), it is quite likely that she would apply to >30 med schools in the future "</p>
<p>Quite possible. She wants to go to a top school and we promised only a Texas school budget since we have a second kid entering college in 3 years. So we need to start finding out which ones give out FA or merit money and apply to all. Right now there is no GPA (only one year) or MCAT and we can’t predict what the future holds. </p>
<p>D withdrew from 3 schools because the combined apps didn’t pan out. I see a lot of that going on with med school apps where people get into schools and dropping out of the process for many towards the end?</p>
When my son was struggling decide on schools to cut from his list, I suggested that he could keep the list intact and let the process decide. I told him to fill the secondary apps in the order of the importance of the schools and asked him to stop when he got tired. It turns out, he ended up filling the secondaries based on the similarities in the essay prompts and the number of essay prompts. He actually ended up adding 2 more schools to his list. Now we are going to let the process decide from here on and see how that goes :D</p>
<p>If the “Texas school budget” includes the budget of Rice, it covers most schools everywhere, unless the school gives out merit or need based scholarship.</p>
<p>We thought all along that the budget and the “kind” of the school (as college) DS might go to were Rice. It was the only college he had visited before application. It was the only school that waitlisted him! (He did not apply to many top/large research schools though, but applied to many LACs.)</p>
<p>It was rumored back then that the difficulty of getting into Rice (the class size was only like 740) is inversely proportional to the distance of your high school and Rice. Wonder if this is just a rumor.</p>
<p>^ I have misread and thought you were talking about college budget instead of med school budget.</p>
<p>You are a more generous parent than us. We even did not promise Texas medical school budget. We only promised to pay UG tuition and expenses. After college, we would pay whatever we can. So far, we have only paid “parents contribution” as decided by the med school and the loan interests. Of course, we co-signed his institution loans. One of the parents occasionally “promises” that his total loan amount at the graduation would be about 100k whenever the following topic comes up: whether he should eat ramen everyday in order to reduce the total loan amount.</p>
<p>Only two secondaries left so far, and both are for schools with ridiculously low acceptance rates. I’ll fill them out on a whim, but I’m not holding out much hope in terms of possible IIs from either. To save the money or not?</p>
<p>In other news, my final year as an undergraduate is now in full swing. Balancing courses, a senior thesis, and interviews (hopefully) should be fun.</p>
<p>Belated congrats to plum, kal’s S, wowmom’s D, mcatflow, and anyone else that I missed on the interviews!</p>
She wants to go to a top school and we promised only a Texas school budget since we have a second kid entering college in 3 years. So we need to start finding out which ones give out FA or merit money and apply to all. Right now there is no GPA (only one year) or MCAT and we can’t predict what the future holds. </p>