Horror Stories and What We Can Learn

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>Recently I've been hearing a few "horror stories," meant to impress upon me just how brutal and random the application process is. Usually, though, there's an underlying error.</p>

<p>One kid I know thought a good interview answer for "Why do you want to go into medicine?" was, "To honor my parents and keep my family financially stable." Another kid insisted on only applying to research powerhouses despite hating research and never doing any. (And despite having a mom who was herself a researcher.) When these two kids got rejected from several medical schools, horrified gasps circled around their friends: Wow, these two are so smart! And they worked so hard! Medical school is really unfair! And I couldn't help but think: actually, that's pretty predictable. </p>

<p>Here's the most recent story I've heard, though. Once again, all his friends are up in arms, and once again the story makes perfect sense.</p>

<p>Edgar is a 3.6/36. He applied last year and didn't get in anywhere, so he retook the MCAT and is trying again this year. Out of frustration -- he has to reapply, after all -- he has decided he's going to apply to a ton of schools: 71, to be exact. Surely he'll get into several of them. In the end, Edgar gets two interviews. He hasn't heard back from one of them yet, but he's been rejected from the other. He is furious and frustrated and is calling all of his friends to complain about what a nightmare this process has been. His friends are all shocked, and one of them comes to me.</p>

<p>To me, this is all very obvious. Edgar has made at least five major mistakes, any two of which are sufficient to explain what happened.</p>

<p>1.) Don't retake the MCAT. Or, more accurately, wait until you're ready before you take it the first time. Edgar's telling all of his friends he has a 36, but in reality is a combination of a 30 and a 36. So he's not a 36 at all, and his friends shouldn't be so horrified that a 36 is getting rejected.</p>

<p>2.) Take the MCAT *early *-- or at least not horrifically late. Edgar got his 36 on a second retake the October of his application cycle. I was horrified enough to hear that he had contemplated an August exam, but an October is just going to sink you, period. For obvious reasons, schools aren't even going to look at your application until your MCAT score is in -- but by then you're already really very late in the process. Many schools had given away 1/3rd of their spots by the time Edgar took the MCAT.</p>

<p>3.) Reapplying is dangerous if you didn't take a school seriously the first time around. During his first cycle, Edgar had originally sent out 23 primaries but gotten bored and only done 4 of the secondaries. If you were one of those 19 schools seeing him the second time around, what would you think of him? Both schools that interviewed Edgar the second time around were among the 4 he had done originally. Not a coincidence.</p>

<p>4.) Write good essays. And listen to your friends. Edgar's personal statement is a disaster. Poor flow, no relevance to medicine, and numerous problems with basic word usage. One mistake in particular is so common that I have taken to calling it an "Edgar": using a very large word where a smaller one will do, but actually using the large word incorrectly. Edgar has had friends who have told him this, but he's disregarded everything they've told him.</p>

<p>5.) Don't bite off more than you can chew. *Secondaries are important, and it's important to take them seriously. * If you can't give a secondary your full attention, it's better not to have it in front of you. And nobody can handle 71. Think 20. At a maximum. If you're efficient and fast. Pick 20 schools and apply to those. Combine a rush with Edgar being a poor writer, and you can easily imagine some historically awful secondary essays.</p>

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<p>Poor guy. I wonder, is medicine really what he wants to do? And should I feel sorry that he applied so stupidly, or is it good riddance? =(</p>

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<p>Oh, I should mention: Edgar is not his real name.</p>

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<p>Poor Edgar… he really should have heeded that advice.</p>

<p>Anyway, thanks BDM, these tips will definitely come in handy for many of us when the time comes. It also makes the whole application process seem much more subjective and calculated, as opposed to “random”.</p>

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<p>BDM (or any1 else), if u re-apply the following yr or any time again to med schools, r u at a disadvantage for the schools that rejected u the first time? or would they look at u newly?</p>

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<p>… Are you planning on being rejected and applying a second time?</p>

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<p>@Entadus - considering that more than half of students will be rejected from every school they apply to in a given application cycle, it’s an appropriate question.</p>

<p>@ Sports - They’re going to look at you in context. I believe that BDM and I have slightly different views on the exact effect (which likely varies from school to school), but I know we can agree that if you’re reapplying, your application MUST improve over the course of a year off.</p>

<p>Off the top of my head I have at least 6 really close friends who reapplied and all were accepted at schools they had previously applied to…now, all of them attend state publics, so that might be a difference (compared to the people BDM knows). </p>

<p>Bottom line, if you don’t improve anything, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. It doesn’t look good if a school sees that you’ve done nothing to improve your previously sub-par application (what’s it called when you do the same thing over again and expect a different result?).</p>

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<p>BDM, I’m curious. Out of all the schools he applied to, were any of them DO schools?</p>

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<p>Schools will often retain your file from the previous year (along with reviewer comments). If you apply again, they will compare your new file with the previous file. What schools are looking for is improvement. If your files look the same, you are likely to get another rejection the second time. If your file is better the second time, then schools may or may not give you an interview.</p>

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<p>In my opinion, one of four things can happen with a reapplication.</p>

<p>Same school, previously admitted: If he didn’t come before, why should we jeopardize our yield now? Harm.
Same school, previously rejected, no improvement: We rejected him last time. Why is he wasting our time? Harm.
Same school, previously rejected, improvement: We’re biased against him, but let’s at least take another look. Mild harm.
New school: What, he got rejected from his preferred schools his first time around? We’re not interested in their leftovers. Moderate harm if totally new, severe harm if previous primary but no secondary or interview.</p>

<p>I don’t know if any were DO programs; knowing Edgar, probably not.</p>

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<p>Yeah, see, I’m not so doom and gloom. I wonder if there’s any data out there for acceptance rates when reapplying.</p>

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<p>nice thread mike</p>

<p>Even in undergrad there are a ton of “horror stories”, but a lot of them are just used to scare people/start up conversations.</p>

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<p>imo a 3.6/36 should have had multiple acceptances. and out of all the names, his happens to be edgar? poor kid.</p>

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<p>“Edgar is not his real name.”</p>

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<p>

If he handles the application process correctly, yes. The point is that you hear a 36 getting rejected from 70 schools and you think, wow that’s scary. And, really, it’s not so scary.</p>

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<p>i just wanna thank bdm for posting a thread like this..</p>

<p>very helpful for a pre-med hopeful like me</p>

<p>thanks!</p>

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<p>Thanks to curm for digging one up.</p>

<p>“Pete” is a 37/4.0 who got four waitlists and no admissions yet. He will probably get admitted somewhere, but as you can imagine, a feat like that means an application littered with mistakes: an October submission, horrible choices in picking schools, withdrawing from schools before he’s gotten in anywhere, skipping schools because they “only” gave him two weeks for a secondary. Most importantly, he’s 20 years old.</p>

<p>See discussion here. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/480362-let-us-all-bow-our-heads.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/480362-let-us-all-bow-our-heads.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>^^Personally, I do not believe that age is such an important factor and I disagree with you about the fact that 25 is the age that most premeds have when they matriculate. </p>

<p>Unless someone has fallen behind in school or taken more than the regular 4 years to finish a bachelor’s degree, most students should be applying during their junior year ( when they usually are 20 or 21) and matriculating the following year.</p>

<p>In the particular case that you illustrate above with the 20 year old applicant in question, what strike about his record is that it’s all medicine, science, medicine. His extracurriculars all revolved around the same stuff and he does not give the impression of being a well rounded individual. ( unless he neglected to mention that in his profile) </p>

<p>Medical schools want students that are well rounded, compassionate, have good interpersonal skills and care about the community. This is what will make you stand out in the crowd of very well achievers and high scoring testers. If you fail to show these qualities, there are plenty of other students out there with + or - numbers that will have them. It is crucial that one is a normal human being with interests, hobbies and compassion.</p>

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<p>24 years old. (My data was a year and a half old.)</p>

<p>[AAMC:</a> FACTS Table 6: Age of Applicants to U.S. Medical Schools at Anticipated Matriculation by Race and Ethnicity, and Sex](<a href=“http://aamc.org/data/facts/2007/age0307.htm]AAMC:”>http://aamc.org/data/facts/2007/age0307.htm)</p>

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<p>

For not knowing a whole lot about how admissions actually works, you sure talk like you do.</p>