Any benefit to applying ED ?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

Hi there! Just looking for advice on why or why not to apply ED to a certain med school.

A little background info, my daughter is a current junior at the University of Maryland majoring in bioengineering in one of their honors colleges. Her GPA is 3.82, sGPA 3.79, and MCAT 518 (one sitting). She has had 3 different research interships, has over 100 shadowing hours with various primary care doctors, many ECs that show leadership/working with lower income communities and 100s of hours with patient care and volunteering in the health care setting. Her med school advisor says that she has a very strong application. That being said, we know that med school is a reach and dream for just about everybody who applies. Her med school advisor had mentioned considering applying ED to the University of Maryland. We are residents of Maryland and one of my daughter’s summer research internship was at the University of Maryland Medical School and she really enjoyed it. So my questions is what are the benefits and risks of applying ED? I have read that you shuld apply to at least 15 medicals schools. Does applying ED to one school risk your opportunities at others and if so why would you apply ED? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

2

In sum, if you apply ED and get accepted, you agree to attend:
“Individuals who apply through the Early Decision Program cannot apply to any other medical school until they are notified that they have not been accepted through this program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.”
https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/admissions/MD-Application/Early-Decision-Program/

Having been through the process a couple of times, there’s a lot that goes into applying to medical school. Basically, there are no guarantees no matter how qualified an applicant appears to be.

There’s a ton of helpful information here about the process of applying to medical school:
https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/applying-medical-school-process/applying-medical-school-amcas/

and data on applicants/admittees:
https://www.aamc.org/

A couple of things:

  1. Would you daughter be happy attending UMD medical school? Most applicants are happy attending any US medical school, but there are many who want to attend only Ivy League/other "top" ranked medical school. N.B.: all US medical schools are excellent, and all are tough to get into.
  2. If you go the full medical school application route, it is a good idea to apply to at least 10 medical schools-usually more. So that's a ton of applications to fill out, with (hopefully) secondaries coming her way, then interviews. There can be a lot of travel, so spending thousands of dollars on the process is routine(can be up to $10,000 or more, depending on how many and location of interviews). And there's no guarantee of any acceptances.

But a sure thing acceptance to a well respected medical school-and save the aggravation and $$$ of the application process: yes, absolutely seems like a good idea.
And if she’s not accepted into the ED program, she is then able to follow the usual route of applying to various medical schools.

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@oldlaw Thank you so much for your advice!

My daughter realizes that it will be very hard to get into any med school, so she would be thrilled to get accepted into any. The University of Maryland is her top choice and that is why her advisor had mentioned applying ED. My daughter’s concern is that she can’t apply to other med schools until she hears from UMD. She isn’t sure if this would put her at a big disadvantage with other med schools since she would be applying so much later than her peers. Any thoughts? Her advisor seems to think UMD is a sure thing, but my daughter and I are not as optimistic as her advisor.

4

Wow, that’s tough. After a careful reading of the UMD ED page, it’s still a tough decision

Your daughter’s numbers are frankly awesome, and based on numbers alone, she’s at the top of the applicant class(based on the 2019 AAMC table for gpa/mcat). Based on those numbers and your description of your daughter’s additional qualifications, I can understand her adviser’s optimism.

The conventional wisdom-to which I also subscribe-is that you want to apply early and often to medical school-in other words, get the applications in the first day or very soon thereafter. And that makes sense, since virtually all medical schools have rolling admissions, and each applicant wants to get interviews as early as possible in the application cycle. It appears that transcripts can be submitted to AMCAS as early as May, with applications submitted at the end of the month.

And the UMD ED program makes that pretty much impossible to do, since interviews don’t take place until mid-September and decisions aren’t announced until(“by”) 1 Oct. As a practical matter, she’d need to have everything else prepared to send immediately if she weren’t accepted, and even then her application would be submitted months after others.

So I’m getting significantly more lukewarm about ED; in many ways it seems to be a program where an applicant has decided pretty much to apply to UMD and that’s all, since the applicant would be at a considerable disadvantage if denied admission because her apps would be submitted several months after many if not most of the other applicants.

I realize that I’m probably not being much help; the applications I am privy to didn’t involve this sort of decision. It was a straight-up application process, with everything prepared(as much as possible) and submitted at or near the first day available with AMCAS.

The only other advice would be for you to purchase a copy of the MSAR. The information it contains can be very helpful in comparing schools.
https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/applying-medical-school-process/medical-school-admission-requirements/

5

@“UMD2021&2023”
Applying EDP will put your daughter at a significant disadvantage if she is not accepted to UMD and needs to apply to other med schools.

She won’t be able to apply until after UMD decisions are announced --and that will be on or after Oct 1. (AMCAS rules prohibit med schools from announcing EDP decisions earlier than Oct 1.) This means she will be a applying fairly near the end of the application period for most medical schools. Most schools stop accepting applications between Oct 31-Nov 15. This leaves your D very little time to apply, receive secondary applications, write essays and return them. Also by mid October more than half of IIs have already been tendered and many schools have announced their first wave of RD admissions decisions.

Maryland is very difficult state for in-state med school admissions. Only 10% of in-state applicants are accepted to a Maryland med school. (JHU, UMD, UHUHS)

https://www.aamc.org/system/files/2019-11/2019_FACTS_Table_A-5.pdf

I only recommend applying EDP if your D has very significant reasons why she needs to attend a particular school–a spouse with a non-relocatable job, children attending local schools, sole caretaker of ill or elderly parent, or some equally serious responsibility.

6

@oldlaw

“I realize that I’m probably not being much help; the applications I am privy to didn’t involve this sort of decision.”

On the contrary, you have been very helpful and thanks so much for your detailed response and advice! Being new to this process my daughter and I also felt very lukewarm to the whole ED application, but we just wanted to make sure there wasn’t something we were missing since her advisor made it sound so good.

@wayoutwestmom Thank you so much for your very detailed response too! I was really hoping you would have a minute to chime in and give me your thoughts. My daughter and I have been following alot of your advice on this forum over the past several years on this journey and most of the things she has done has been due to the advice you have given to others in regard to pre med and med school. So once again, thank you!!

My daughter and I both really felt that the ED would put her at a disadvantage too but it is nice to have it confirmed by others who have been through this process.

My daughter is just very glad that she took the MCAT in January and has submitted all of her initial paper work to her health care advising office at UMD. She plans to start on the application as soon as it open on May 4th and plans to submitted it by May 28th. She will stick to her original plan of applying to at least 10-15 schools.

If you have any other advice or thoughts on the whole process, we would love to here them!

7

@“UMD2021&2023” Good luck to your D!

I think the biggest issue applicants in the upcoming cycle may face is:
a) getting their transcripts sent to AMCAS since many college have closed their bursar’s and registrar’s offices
b) getting committee letters from their undergrad HP office/ from individual professors

I also think AMCAS may slower to process applications this year since AMCAS’s offices are closed and employees are all working remotely.

I suggest that both you and your daughter gather large reserves of patience for this cycle. It’s going to be chaotic.

(And to you as a parent of student going thru the cycle, I recommend you lay in a supply of the adult beverage of your choice. Take EtOH PRN.)

8

Some advice:

First, review the websites above(have to pay for the MSAR) carefully as you pick your schools. And have everything ready to go on the first day the portal is open. The sooner the applications are filed, the better, as it’s a rolling admissions process, and very soon after secondaries are filed, the interview invites go out.

Second: Be very aware of in-state preference, even for some private schools, and be aware that some publics take virtually no one from OOS, so don’t waste your money. And conversely, some public schools are OOS friendly. It’s worth noting which are which as you go to apply.

Third: Make sure your daughter has a credit card in her name. She may be traveling on short notice, and may need to make short notice travel arrangements. My applicants had debit cards, so we added them to our credit card so there would be no glitches.

Fourth: Have a travel bag ready and packed, and pick out the “interview uniform” and have it(or several) ready to go.

Fifth: Many-but not all- medical schools offer a day before the interview meet-and-greet/tour. If possible, try to attend these. Applicants sometimes meet the interviewers at these, and that relieves a lot of stress since she won’t be meeting them for the first time.

Also, some but not all medical schools offer the opportunity to spend the night before the interviews with a current student at that medical school. This was also very helpful. Some medical schools offer advice-or even have their own hotels-while others leave it to you to make hotel arrangements.

There will no doubt be advice from others.
Here’s hoping her application cycle is very short, and she gets an acceptance very early on.

9

  1. Med schools are making plans to do virtual interviews with candidates in case “stay at home” orders are still in force or if public transportation becomes problematic or spotty.

  2. I think there is a non-zero chance that the entire upcoming application cycle may be cancelled.

Why? There is bottleneck building in medical education.

Current MS4 will graduate (assuming they’ve accumulated sufficient clinical hours to meet graduation requirements) and move on to residencies since the Match has occurred and contracts have been signed.

However, as of right now, all away rotations for students have been cancelled. This means current MS3 will not have a chance to do audition rotations at programs they hope to Match to. It also means that students who hope to enter competitive specialties or specialties that require LORs from programs other than their home programs have a big problem. Step scores may become even MORE important, as will school reputation. Also many students will not be able to do a sub-I in their anticipated specialties–another huge disadvantage since almost every specialty expects/requires a sub-I LOR from applicants.

Additionally, since all MS3s were removed from clinical rotations in mid-March, they are short clinical hours. Many schools have already pushed required MS3 rotations into the MS4 year. This means even less time for electives and sub-Is, not to mention mandatory MS4 rotations.

I think it’s quite possible if this epidemic continues, students may not have enough mandated clinical hours to qualify for graduation. The LCME has already announced it will not ease the number of clinical hours/rotations for graduation since doing so is a disservice to students, their future residencies [which cannot accommodate students who lack basic clinical skills and experiences] and their future patients.

With the continuing closure of clinical rotations to med students, current MS2s cannot advance to MS3 (which is nothing but clinical rotations.)

Current MS1 probably the least affected since at most schools since they have another year of didactic instruction.

Incoming med students have already been informed they may be attending med school via online instruction. This means certain foundational, hands-on courses (e.g. anatomy & physiology) will need to pushed into the MS2 year and that will in turn delay the beginning of the actually MS2 curriculum by 8 weeks, which in turn delays the start of MS3 by 8 weeks, and so forth. There just isn’t that much flex built into the medical curriculum.

So this bottleneck plus the expected difficulties applicants will face getting their transcripts and LORs and the cancellations of MCAT dates (NY & CA testing sites are now closed through the end of May) --all totaled together means it’s quite possible med schools will simply cancel a year.

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@oldlaw Thanks again!! There are so many things that you mentioned that we hadn’t even considered. I really appreciate you taking the time to help us out.

@wayoutwestmom Thanks again for the wonderful advice!! Wow, we hadn’t even thought about there not being an application cycle this year, but it would make sense with all of the bottlenecking the current med students are facing. We did figure that it was going to be pretty chaotic, that is why she is trying to get as much done as early as possible, but it sounds like we will definitely need to reach deep into our “patience reserve” and I will have to buy a few more bottles of wine :wink: Lucky for me our local beer and wine store is considered an “essential business”

Also, good luck to both of you if you have current children that are in med schools. I know they have been facing alot of challeneges with their current situations too and I wish them the best!

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@“UMD2021&2023”

I don’t have a child in med school right now. Both of mine have graduated.

My older D is an EM attending at an academic hospital in a New England state that the coronavirus has hit very hard. I worry about her constantly since she doesn’t have the proper PPEs to do her job and she’s pregnant (and thus at high risk for complications should she become ill with CV-19.) She is only being issued one n95 mask per week–which is ridiculous and dangerous for her, for her fetus and for every single patient she encounters during the week.

My younger D is a second year resident (R2) in a western state where the coronavirus infection rate is just starting to climb. She and every other resident at her program have been required to attend extra sim lab classes to learn how to intubate patients and are being given instruction in how to manage vented patients. D2 is not in a specialty that would under normal circumstances never ever in her whole career need to intubate a patient. I worry about her because she’s a recent cancer survivor and considered to be at high risk of complications should she contract CV-19. Her hospital is also critically short of PPEs.

12

Thanks for your kind words: they’re out of school and well into their residencies. These are turbulent times, though, as the pathologist in training is being told she may be needed in the ER to help with triage/treatment.

Best to you and your daughter; stay safe and well!

13

@WayOutWestMom and @oldlaw

Congratulations to you both on having several children graduate from medical school! These turbulent times have definitely been putting a strain on health care workers and unfortunately the low supply/high demand of needed medical supplies doesn’t help the situation one bit. I’m a nurse in a PICU and our unit isn’t seeing alot of children with the virus, but we are often getting pulled to help out in other units. I hope your children stay safe and well! (even though they are now adults, we still will always think of them as our babies :wink: