The second part of this sentence doesn’t follow logically from the first part.
I think it’s entirely possible that a student with excellent academic credentials who has completed all the requirements for admission to medical school and has applied to medical school could get admitted, even if the student really doesn’t want to become a doctor and is applying because of parental pressure.
The people who did not succeed in getting admitted didn’t get left out because their desire wasn’t strong enough. They got left out because their credentials weren’t strong enough.
Marian,
You told the story of my kid in your post #47 with one exception, mine did not consider any Elite colleges, she applied only to those that would offer a substantial Merit award. The focus of this strategy is not exactly to have no debt at all, but rather to minimize it as much as possible. Nobody has huge money laying around, well maybe with the exception of few who have no reason to be here on CC anyway. Most people are paying from the paychecks as much as they could and supplement from whatever they have at some acceptable level. For some lucky ones, it will cover 100% of medical school tuition, for others who are still very lucky, it will cover 50% of the cost, even 25% is better than nothing. We went open minded, that is why we filled FASFA every single year, then D. would decline the loans. Who knew, one of us could have lost the job, both of us could have lost our jobs, we could have gotten into some other financial trouble. You cannot predict anything in this process, so you better prepare for the worst. We simply got lucky. But there are about 16% of medical students who graduate without debt and I bet it could be brought to higher levels only if the HS kids choose colleges a bit wiser.
“I think it’s entirely possible that a student with excellent academic credentials who has completed all the requirements for admission to medical school and has applied to medical school could get admitted, even if the student really doesn’t want to become a doctor and is applying because of parental pressure.”
Not just possible, but I know someone this happened to. Huge parental pressure, it was truly awful. The student later dropped out of med school, presumably with a huge amount of debt to pay off, not sure how…
@Marian: I’ll clarify.
It’s so easy not to make it into medical school, that even if you try to get it all right your odds of making it aren’t high. Therefore, it’s easy to find one or two things that’ll derail the application.
Take the survey organic chemistry class instead of the full throttle two semester sequence. Get a C in Physics 1&2. Regularly pass out at the sight of blood or dissections. Do everything that won’t jeopardize your CS major while following the premed requirements for all to see, but sabotage a couple premed reqs. It’s very easy not to get into med school, much easier than to get in.
The problem with above is that an interview(s) will be involved in the process and if an applicant received IIs, he/she could intentionally do poorly (or go to interview location, but not actually attend), get rejected, and his/her parents wouldn’t be any the wiser. On the one hand it would be an awful thing to do on part of applicant, but on the other hand, it is the applicant’s future.
^^Jugulator is right. There are so many hoops to jump through beside just getting the academic credential and test scores. There are essays and interviews that are to filter out those who don’t have the “right” answers for the “Why medicine?” question all med school applicants are expected to answer. (And answer over and over and over again. Ad nauseam.) Med school applicants can and do get rejected if their answers sound insincere or canned or rehearsed or shallow or immature.
It’s really easy to intentionally blow an interview. One med school admissions officer over on SDN likes to tell stories about interviewees coming in and actually saying “I don’t want to be a doctor, please reject me.” Which, of course, the med school will happily do. Since a reason for the rejection is never given (or, if given, is incredibly vague–something like “not a good fit” ), the parents will never know why their child didn’t get into med school.
