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Yes, I've met people with killer stats who haven't gotten into places, but you yourself say that med school is mostly a numbers game. And it is.
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<p>I never said that all of the process was mostly a numbers game. I said (or at least I meant) that the first initial screens (where most people get rejected) are a numbers game. </p>
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Besides, who says that clinical experience is more "well-rounded?" I know people who got into med school without the clinical experience, but had some killer research as an undergrad.
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<p>The med-schools say that. Like you have seen, there are people who have excellent grades and stats and research experience who nonetheless don't get into any MD schools. I suspect that they would have been more successful if they had applied to MD/PhD programs.</p>
<p>Again, take a look at molliebatmit. She herself admits that she would have great trouble getting into any top MD programs, mostly because she didn't play the "grade inflation game". But she probably could have gotten into some good MD/PhD programs. Her strong suit is research. Research matters far more for MD/PhD programs than for MD programs. </p>
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Qualifying for a program means they would pass the first round of admissions (at least), which also hinges on well-roundedness.
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<p>Absolutely wrong. Perhaps you should look up how the process works.</p>
<p>The first round has NOTHING to do with well-roundedness. After all, how could it? In the first round, the only information that the schools receive are your grades, your MCAT score, and what school you went to. They get all of this data from the AMCAS clearinghouse. Only then, might they invite you to submit a secondary app, in which NOW they can assess your well-roundedness. It is in the secondary app (the "real" app) in which you submit a personal statement, you submit all your essay questions, your rec's. etc. etc. But if you haven't even been invited to submit that secondary app, then you've basically already been rejected. Hence, the first round is not a 'well-roundedness' screen by any means. </p>
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Then the med school people have to like you in an interview, in addition to the PhD people. It doesn't mean they have the scores and research ability, hence, they only need to qualify for a PhD program. I think you misunderstand what they mean, as it is deliberately vague for the same reason all grad and med school stuff is deliberately vague (so when they accept or reject you, you don't really know why). If they med school people don't like you in your interview, you're not gettin' in - period. If you have great scores but write a crappy personal statement - you're not gettin' in, either. Etc. etc.
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<p>Again, this depends from school to school. At Johns Hopkins, you only interview with the MD/PhD committee. Nobody else. In other words, the MD committee does not have an opportunity to ding you for a bad interview. Neither does anybody from the PhD committee. </p>
<p>Look, I really don't understand why you don't see my basic point. Everything else is just quibbling. My basic point is that some people will have more success getting into an MD/PhD program than into a regular MD program. I'm not saying that there are a lot of people like this. But there are people like this. </p>
<p>I'll give you an analogy. I know one girl who got into Harvard for undergrad but not into any of the Ivies. Why? She admitted herself that it almost certainly had to do with field hockey. She was a star field hockey player and she applied in the year that the Harvard field hockey team was looking to replace their goalie, which was the position she played. Similarly, I know another person who got into the Harvard doctoral program in business (at Harvard Business School), but not into any of the other programs she applied to. Why? It's because she had been doing undergraduate research in economics and business that aligned exactly with what HBS was doing, but not with any of the other programs. </p>
<p>The point is, admissions are fickle and they all use different criteria. Whenever you have different adcoms, you are inevitably going to have differences in the weightings of various criteria. Some people who were denied by one adcom might have been admitted through a different adcom. Each program has different things it is trying to emphasize, and these emphases tend to vary from year to year. Hence, you may have the luck of having exactly the characteristics that one adcom happens to be looking for in a particular year. There is a lot of luck and randomness involved in admissions.</p>