Let us all bow our heads

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>:eek: Let us all bow our heads in a moment of respectful silence for (what appears to be ) a "deadman walking". MDapplicants.com</a> - View Profile</p>

<p>
[quote]
Application Year: 2008
MCAT Score: VR 10, PS 13, BS 14, Q
BCPM GPA: 4.00
Overall GPA: 4.00</p>

<p>Brief Profile:
Major: Biomedical Engineering </p>

<p>2 summers of NIH funded research at Northwestern University Medical School
1 year and 1 additonal summer of internship at Northwestern University Medical School
1 summer of research at UCSF Medical School
1 year of research in CWRU Department of Biomedical Engineering
1 Publication </p>

<p>100 hours of volunteering at the Cleveland Clinic
150 hours of volunteering at University Hospitals
150 hours of volunteering at the Free Clinic </p>

<p>2 semesters of being a supplemental instructor for biology </p>

<p>Honorable Mention in Poster Presentation at NIH
The Outstanding Junior Award of The Case School of Engineering
The Outstanding Sophomore Award of The Case School of Engineering
Dean's High Honors 7 semesters
Case Alumni Association Senior Scholarship
U.S. Cellular - Scholarship America Scholarship
Provost Scholarship </p>

<p>Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society
Social Coordinator - Residential Hall Association
Golden Key International Honor Society</p>

<p>Overview of Applications:
Rejected Pre-Secondary
University of California, San Francisco - "OOS, not happening"</p>

<p>Rejected Post-Secondary
Albert Einstein of Yeshiva University - "they rejected me before i sent my withdraw letter"
Boston University - "a little disappointing"
Brown University - "not surprised"
Cornell University - "not surprised"
Harvard University - "not surprised"
Mount Sinai School of Medicine - "at this point, it's not going to happen"
Stanford University - "not surprised"
University of Pennsylvania - "no surprise here"
University of Rochester - "a little disappointing"</p>

<p>Invited for Interview/Awaiting Decision
Dartmouth College - "interviewer wasn't interested"</p>

<p>Rejected Post-Interview
Case Western Reserve University - "Interviewer told me to take a year off and apply MDPHD"</p>

<p>Withdrew Post-Interview/Declined Interview
University of Cincinnati - "Didn't like the school, grading system"</p>

<p>Waitlisted, Awaiting Outcome
Emory University - "alternate status"
New York University - "i'll take it, waitlist >> rejection"
Vanderbilt University - "love the place, but no love back"
Washington University in St. Louis - "i'm very grateful for this waitlist"</p>

<p>Summary of Application Process:
it has been rough, i'm thinking about taking a year off and reapplying if (edit:crap) doesn't work out

[/quote]
</p>

<p>He does say he applied late and that's pretty ambitious list......... but jumping jiminy, that truly sucks. It does go to show though that what we hear on CC is true, the soft factors cannot be ignored. (What did he do, show up drunk at his interviews in a metallica t-shirt reeking of pot?)</p>

2

<p>1.) Don’t forget that medical schools are extremely yield conscious, much more than undergrad. He’ll almost certainly get off the waitlists at NYU and Emory. Half of WUSTL’s eventual class gets in off the waitlist.</p>

<p>2.) Again, softs really do matter – essays and interviews.</p>

<p>3.) How late are we talking? If he’s really that late, he might well have been interviewing for spots on the waitlist to begin with. He seems to imply that he sent his applications in in late October, which is comically late.</p>

<p>4.) There’s really no excuse for withdrawing from any school before your first admission.</p>

<p>5.) There’s really no excuse for not blanketing the schools in your state, especially your state schools. (His excuse for not applying to Northwestern: “They only gave me two weeks.”)</p>

<p>6.) His MCAT score is excellent no matter how you look at it, but don’t forget that it’s very important to keep a balanced score. </p>

<p>7.) He’s 20 years old. This is a big, big deal and is sufficient to explain all this on its own. Bluntly, I’m surprised he’s done as well as he has. Will elaborate later; have my infectious disease final in about an hour.</p>

3

<p>He’s actually a poster on SDN. Seems like a nice guy but unfortunately has run into some bad luck. </p>

<p>These things sometimes come in bunches. My last 4 post-interview decisions have been waitlists. But, the difference between me and him is that I’ve had enough interviews to allow for a long acceptance streak and a long waitlist/rejection streak. And I STILL have 2 more decisions to go.</p>

<p>And, keep in mind, med school admissions has become substantially harder even from the BRM/BDM days. Compare the data on Cornell applicants from 2002 and 2007:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.career.cornell.edu/downloads/Health/accapp02.pdf[/url]”>http://www.career.cornell.edu/downloads/Health/accapp02.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.career.cornell.edu/downloads/AaChart2007ForWeb.pdf[/url]”>http://www.career.cornell.edu/downloads/AaChart2007ForWeb.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The 2007 bunch did much better on the MCAT. 73 out of 208 scored 35+ while only 38 scored below a 30. In 2002, only 36 out of 167 scored 35+ with 50 students scoring below a 30. </p>

<p>But, notice the acceptance rates? Yep, the 2007 group did much much worse. Obviously, I don’t know the non-numerical qualifications of the 2007 group but there’s no reason to think they would be worse than the 2002 group. The main difference is that there are now 50% more applicants than there were even just 5 years ago. That’s why you should apply to some mid and low tier schools no matter how good you think your app is.</p>

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<p>10-13-14 isn’t too unbalanaced is it? b/c everything’s at least double digits</p>

5

<p>wwwwwwwwwwoooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww…
I still have another 3-4 yrs to go…I can’t imagine how bad it will be by then.
:(</p>

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<p>It’s cyclical. It’s not steadily getting worse; it’s just gotten worse over the past few years. It’ll get better again.</p>

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<p>To demonstrate how much worse it’s gotten…just because it’s impressive (sorry to exacerbate any anxiety attacks)</p>

<p>One of my best friends is finishing up his first year of residency. When he applied in 2002-2003 to the state medical school we attend, there were barely 700 applications. This most recent application cycle…over 2000. (It’s a small population state that people aren’t really dieing to move to, but still, that’s impressive growth).</p>

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<p>Also, the director of admissions of Michigan said that if the current M4’s were to apply today, most of them wouldn’t get into Umich. Ouch.</p>

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<p>The more competition, the better. Competition RULES.</p>

10

<p>I am never going to get into medical school</p>

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<p>Over the past few months, I’ve become convinced that young applicants harm themselves very seriously in the application process.</p>

<p>It’s hard to notice this process in medical school admissions, but it becomes much more obvious if you pay close attention to law school admissions. Law schools are extremely numbers-oriented, which makes it easy to detect very important soft factors. Race is one of them; it’s much harder for law schools to disguise the magnitude to which they practice affirmative action.</p>

<p>The other stunning example is the extent to which applying young and/or finishing college quickly harms candidates. It’s a big, big deal. Candidates who are well above the 75th percentiles at schools get rejected very quickly., something otherwise unheard of in law school admissions.</p>

<p>For premeds, SDN (another pre-med website) has long been bubbling with similar rumors. (“I have never heard of a student who finished college fast get into a top-ten school,” one poster commented.) Usually, of course, the sorts of students who finish quickly are the sorts of students who only apply to highly selective schools, as you see here in this thread.</p>

<p>The questions are multiplefold: maturity, why the rush?, and the shorter transcript time, and depth of coursework.</p>

<p>Of these, shorter transcript time is the easiest to explain and probably the least important. The reality is that if you are applying after your second year in college, everybody else has 50% more data – “track record” – than you do. They’re much more of a sure thing. (On top of that, they have usually taken more in-depth coursework, too, or at the very least signed up for it.)</p>

<p>The second most important factor is his youth, in and of itself. The average medical student is 25 at matriculation. Sure, most of the schools in question are younger than that (23.5?), but 20 is still a very large age gap. There are going to be a lot of questions about his maturity that he’s going to have to answer. There’s a limited amount of information that medical schools have about him, and if there’s any kind of maturity question – like his age – they’re going to err strongly on the side of caution. It’s not like Harvard can’t find another 37 to take his place.</p>

<p>The most important question, of course, will be: why the rush? Did he not enjoy undergrad? Couldn’t he find interesting things to do, interesting classes to take, interesting people to meet and spend time with? (Yes, I know there are cost concerns, but socially normal people find a way to make it work.) Many students who accelerate through will express an attitude of, “Why waste time?” Your undergraduate years are not a waste of time, and if a student openly considers them to be such, that’s a major warning flag. It tells you about his intellectual curiousity (low), his social bonding at that school (low), his involvement with the community (low), and his capacity to learn humbly and appreciate his place as a student (low). Of course, not all accelerated students feel this way! But enough do that this causes a problem.</p>

<p>This is why, over the past cycle, I’ve seen that our previous advice simply isn’t working out. We’ve always told students that it’s okay to rush through undergrad, so long as they take a year off afterwards and gain some experience. This made sense to us, but the problem is that it’s bad advice because it simply hasn’t been working. So don’t finish college early. And if you do, then at least don’t apply young. I’m sorry that this seems to be working out this way, but that is what I’ve been seeing in graduate school admissions in general, medical school included.</p>

<p>Moral of the story: Spend all four years in undergrad. Apply at a normal age. And, of course, the previous morals all remain: apply early. Apply broadly. Don’t withdraw from anywhere until you’ve actually gotten an admission. And balance your MCAT, if you can. This kid, I’m sure, is smart enough for medical school, but he’s botched his application process in several very obvious ways. And very avoidable ways, too.</p>

<p>Thanks for the “horror story,” curm. I think exploring this is one of the best things we can do for our premeds here. I’ve linked to it from the Horror Story thread.</p>

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<p>

I could have written this. But I didn’t. Now I don’t have to. ;)</p>

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<p>Man, college is awesome. Greatest time of your life. Why people are in such a rush to get through it, I’ll never understand…</p>

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<p>I have a similar question about being rejected due to age: I’ve been two years ahead since grade school, and I’ll be a freshman in college next year. When I apply to medical school barely 21 years old, will my age be an issue? Also, I’m planning to do an MD/PhD, so will that be influential in the decision? I’m attending WashU next year, and want to go to WashU’s medical school as well, if that’s relevant.</p>

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<p>Most med school applicants are 21 at application time so it won’t be an issue.</p>

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<p>Sorry, I meant to say 20! (I’m going to turn 17 right after undergrad starts this fall)</p>

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<p>The vast majority of MD/PhD applicants do not come straight from undergrad anyway, so your age is likely to be at least 22 at that time. I don’t think it’d be too much of a concern.</p>

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<p>I don’t understand. Do you mean I should get a master’s before applying for MD/PhD?</p>

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<p>… no. I mean, most MD/PhD applicants do research for a couple years (as a job, not as a degree) before applying.</p>

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<p>Ah, OK. I’ll have to think about that then. I do have a while though :D</p>