I assumed so far that in a holistic review for a BS/MD, admission officers will look more at the ECs (shadowing/volunteering), community service, awards the student won (science fairs and other competitions) at various levels (international, national) and essays to differentiate between students in the selection process apart from GPA (say 3.5 or 3.7) and SAT I (>1500) and SAT II (>720). But it does not seem so. It is weighted heavily on GPA, SAT I and SAT II which reflects the student’s ability to perform on a given day but not the student’s depth on a long term basis. May be there are arguments to the contrary. Opaqueness of this process is really painful…
@rk2017 : Thanks for elaborating the selection uncertainties . The scenario is in my mind , but difficult to comprehend before it happened … Losing to a millisecond is depressing in olympaid game ( held every 4 years term :).
@NoviceDad : When the two students also happened to be TOP 20 nationwide 
Definitely not #21
@BSMD2020Tired : GPA is the daily monitor as heart beats, cannot be irregular. 4.0 means absolutely perfect performance everyday on every subject in high school , and same requirements in college during the 4 years interval for traditional applicants .
Since only one from each high school for BSMD, no matter how competitive your high school is , say "Stuyvesant " - the name brand public in NYC. NO excuse here…
SAT1 and subjects serve the purpose of stress test. MD license step 1 exam is 8 hours straight in a day. So SAT is just an appetizer …
So admission panel is indeed looking the the best candidate to fill requirements before offering the scarce offer.
Actually gpa is a long term indicator. At one of the college visits, child asked the admissions office regarding APs since their’s is a tough high school with AP teachers pulling down the grades of top students to A- s even as they knew the students were really good.
The question to the officer was, if a student gets a 5 on an AP exam but A- or even may be B+ on the class grade for the subject, which one will prevail in the impression of admissions committee? She said it is most probably the letter grade in the class since it reflects the year long performance than that on a single test of 2-3 hours. (Students attending tough schools will be at a disadvantage).
Some programs do mention on their websites that since the standards vary widely across schools, they don’t take gpa as major consideration (and hence may rely on the combination of SAT2s and AP testss which are standardized)
So since I didn’t get a GW interview by now does that mean I wasn’t a semifinalist?
Or does anyone know if they send them out in waves (the portal says by the end of January)?
@rk2017 : Child is in an academy offering all AP courses from 9th grade. It is easy to get a “5” in AP Bio, Chem , Physics which he did But scoring 95+ daily average is far more stressful , provided one that doesnt feel tired, get sick or burnout on top of 2+ hours daily school bus ride… One snow day, it took near to 4 hours to get home as traffic packed up . If he did not go for this option, he can walk home in 5 mins.
@chasingdreams21
Thank you for the reply! On the invitation it said plan to spend 5 hours at AMC and that seems quite intense to me, is a majority of that time spent in a very long interview?
top athletes applying to BS/MD program is news to me given that majority of BSMD candidates are ORMs 
Good to know. Some schools like child’s don’t even allow APs till sophomore year.
Getting 5 on AP Bio is very good, not many get it.
The problem with academies especially health care related ones is, most of the students will be applying to these programs unlike from a regular high school and may end up killing each other’s chances. Hope it won’t happen in your case.
Was speaking to a student who went to this top name academy, very selective to get into. I was surprised when was told only 4 or 5 students made it to the BS/MDs out of 70 in the batch. Even if half of them chose not to apply, the rest 35 must have, all with same top grades, ECs (the academy provides special opportunities), top SAT/ACT scores and subject SATs and APs. In fact the admissions folks of these programs must be going crazy deciding who to interview and sekect, if you look from their perspective
Lot of times top schools pick multiple candidates from same school. One year Stanford selected 9 candidates from our HS! My S and his chemistry partner both got into Penn and both got into special research program. Both will be competing for traditional path next year
There are plenty of ORMs who are top players of their schools, even at state levels in tennis and swimming. One of my ex colleague’s son is a fencer who even went for competitions abroad (though he has no interest in going to medicine as of now). Another friends son got into UChicago mostly because of being top level player in football.
Can’t disagree with that. Compete or loose. Agree also that not everyone is a warrior, hence always looking for easy route.
I can conquer that. 
Candidates are indeed best, not necessarily choices they have been offered.
Although these discussions are great, I am still struggling to understand where I went missing for rutgers. I had submitted 30 additional documents and had stellar recs from research professors and hospital directors. I am truly pissed to see that such hard work goes down the drain.
@rk2017 : My County level Health science academy covering 20 school districts similar to "other 21 " counties in 683 school districts . Noticed only 2-3 students total from ALL county academies attended TCNJ each year, or none. Glad son’s academy is not dedicated towards medical
Perhaps something better is waiting for you, don’t be upset.
what if every program does yield protection, then truly high performing candidates are left without anything
@BSMDGAL Yeah, you can expect a group interview that lasts for an hour, and then a tour and information session that takes about an hour and a half. The individual interviews will usually last anywhere from an hour to two hours.