Graduated in May from an OOS university, but is staying/living/working near the university and thought by doing so she would be establishing residency. Let’s call the state where her university is “XX”
Student applied in June and put down XX, where she currently lives, as her “home state” on AMCAS. By doing so, she naturally will be considered OOS by all of her parents’ state’s med schools (ugh).
But again, she’s only graduated in May, and therefore hasn’t been living there for a year after graduation.
So far, crickets from her application list (she has strong stats). I’m suspecting that she’s now an “applicant without a home state”. Am I wrong?
At this point, what would the med schools be looking at to determine whether she’s instate or OOS? Would they solely be looking at that she put XX as her home state? Would the public meds in XX assume that she’s a resident and have her app in the “instate pile”?
What questions are asked on AMCAS besides what is your home state?
I have no idea how state of residency is determined either by a state or by a medical school (since we did not had a need to change other than her real home state). But here is the cut and paste from AMCAS online application process. All that it will ask is in legal residence section and 2 inputs, county and state. It has this explicit info box.
Some medical schools are interested in your state and/or county of legal residence for consideration as part of their application review process. Each state has their own qualifications for determining legal residency; medical schools may request additional documentation. You are responsible for researching and understanding a state’s qualifications for legal residency before claiming it as your state of legal residence in your AMCAS application. It may be possible to qualify for multiple states of legal residency, but you may select only one in the AMCAS application.
If your state of legal residency changes after submitting your application, you may request that it be changed following the procedure outlined in the Applicant Guide. The updated information will be provided to all medical schools designated in your application.
First research the rules of a state and ensure the student meets that requirements before claiming that state as IS. For example, OH is easy to establish residency where as OK is hard / impossible to establish residency within certain time frame to get the benefits of IS vs OOS for application or tuition fees.
Check specifically the public school in that state to validate if any explicit requirements need to be met.
I read thru the “instate req’ts for the state meds in state XX.
There’s a list of req’ts and you only have to meet ONE.
It looks like she meets the one where you’re not in school, and you have ties to the state, and you’ll be in state XX for 12 months prior to starting med school.
So…my next question is…aside from asking a student what their home state is, would there be anything else on AMCAS that asks question(s) that would suggest that she’s not a resident of XX?
AMCAS isn’t in the business of determining state residency. It leaves that strictly up to each school.
But, yes AMCAS asks where an applicants was born and where the applicant’s primary childhood (to age 16) home was located (county, state). Both might suggest the applicant is resident of another state.
Some secondaries ask what high school an applicant graduated from.
It depends on what schools w’re talking about here.
Some schools (USC, Tulane and several others) have already filled all their interview dates through Feb-March. Others haven’t even started reviewing RD applicants yet.
What date the application was verified and complete? (if some LOR is late, though applicant done his/her part, still it is not complete)? Is it at least 30+ days over for the medical school)
Though good stats, does the applicant do all the expected things (shadowing, clinical and non-clinical volunteering) (Surprised to see few posts in SDN, students apply though they have not done any or very low hours of shadowing / volunteering).
Yes, the student has the typical ECs, shadowing, research, volunteering, etc.
The student also was a 4year Division 1 athlete, so that took some time. JMHO, med schools seem to give some leeway to Div 1 athletes in the EC-area simply because the time demand of Div 1 sports leave far less time to do ECs.
Even with the Div 1 demands, the student still has a 3.89 GPA both science and cum.
Yes, of course. I wasn’t looking at it that way. I was wondering what questions on AMCAS might suggest to a med school that the student isn’t yet fully an instate resident for tuition purposes (or for bias for instate applicants).
The big question is: is this student’s app in the Instate pile or the OOS pile?
Ok, so the “to age 16” is a big question that might reveal that she’s not really a XX instate applicant. Ugh.
For her sake, I’m hoping that since it should be evident that she’s already graduated, and she’s living/working in XX, that they’ll consider her an XX applicant.
Rule of thumb–if no IIs by Thanksgiving, then the applicant probably isn’t going to get any.
The new traffic rules that went into effect last year require all med schools to have accepted enough students to completely fill all their seats by no later than March 15.
It would be best for that applicant to check with the state school. Typical establishing in-state residency are driver’s license, lease, utility bill, employment. Some state schools (NY, TX) do allow OOS student to change to in-state status after first few years so they can pay in-state tuition for remaining years.
Admission committees tend to take an applicant’s declaration of state residency on AMCAS at face value. After all, the applicant has signed a statement affirming all their information is correct.
Unless the applicant’s information is conflicting (current address in one state, permanent address in another; current address in one state, all ECs+college+HS in another; etc) OR the secondary asks qualifying questions about state residency (and many state schools do), admission offices don’t try to verify whether an applicant is a bona fide state resident or not.
Now there are some state med schools that disfavor (I was going to say discriminate against, but see below…) new state residents in favor of those who have lived here longer. And that is perfectly legal. There was a discrimination case filed that went to the federal appeals court (around 2011, IIRC) that upheld the right of state med schools to use length of state residency as a factor when making admissions decisions.
BTW, it’s the bursar’s office that makes the actual determination of whether an applicant is in-state or OOS, and that decision is made after admission. The bursar’s office will ask for documentation of residency status.
It may also matter how old the student is. In Colorado, if the student is under 22, he’d still qualify for instate tuition if a parent is a Colorado resident.
I talked to someone applying to Texas schools this cycle who went to school in Texas and then moved here recently. They were not qualified in Texas because the requirements state that they need to have lived here 10 months already at the time of application and not by the time of matriculation.
It appears each state has its own policy / requirements and student must do their due diligence before submitting app in AMCAS. From the above 2 posts it is clear TX and NY differ.
TX more stringent since all TX schools have the lowest tuition fees in the country.
But still folks do variety of things to fulfill, either moving to TX when the kid starts high school or some buy a house in addition to sending the kid to TX school for UG.
Remember that for medical school there is a difference between being in-state for application/admission purposes and in-state for tuition purposes.
The determination for tuition purposes is made by the bursar’s office and the qualification rules for in-state tuition are listed on the school’s website.
In-state for admission purposes is based upon where the applicant lists as their permanent address. This may be their parents’ address (for current college students) or it can be where a college grad has established their own independent domicile.
It’s quite possible to be resident of one state of admission purposes but not qualify for in-state tuition. Some states–MA, WA come immediately to mind-- require several years of in-state residency to qualify for in-state tuition.
However, med school admissions committee can legally favor longer term state residents over more recently established residents. So a new college grad who has recently moved to a state can be disadvantaged in admissions at a state med school. Especially true if the student has not lived in-state long enough to file state income taxes or has taken other actions that show they intend to make that state their long-time permanent domicile.
We moved during DD’s undergrad and I did a copious amount of research regarding this issue, not just generalities, but the school’s in DD’s state of undergrad and in our new state. She had two choices, remain a resident as an independent person in her state or be a resident of our state as our dependent. If she chose to remain a resident of her state, she would need to maintain DL, voting, banking, etc., plus file taxes (I think independent) etc. All the rules that her state’s form required. If she wanted to be a resident of our state, as a dependent, then she would have to change her DL, voting, taxes etc. to match the new states requirements.
It is actually possible to be a resident of no state for med school admissions if not careful in these situations.
Did your friend locate the resident form to be completed? DD had to decide a full year before her application which state she preferred and be certain she could, at application time (the summer before matriculation) that she could complete the form properly and honestly for her state university’s med schools to each declare her a real resident of that state.
IIR there were phone calls made by me/DD both a year before and also the summer of applications, to be sure all was processing properly.
There are some states which take very few OOS applicants, I think both of DD’s options were this way, with one being notoriously difficult. In that state she would need to complete the med school/university residency forms and be certified a resident before she could be granted an interview. It’s all extremely state specific.