<p>If someone is admitted to a MS, how long is the typical period before you must answer with a yes/no? Do they require $ at that time? Do some attempt to make this acceptance binding? What if a better offer comes later? Will they demand that you withdraw all other applications?</p>
<p>Med schools allow candidates to hold multiple acceptances until May 15th. On or before May 15th, you must choose just one school and withdraw from all your other acceptances. Your choice will be reported on the AMCAS site that all medical schools access. If you hold multiple acceptances after May 15th, all your acceptances get revoked.</p>
<p>You can remain on waitlists without those counting as acceptances on AMCAS.</p>
<p>You do have to pay a deposit to hold an acceptance, though you usually will get some portion of your deposit refunded if you decide withdraw your acceptance before May 15th. If you withdraw after May 15th, you may lose your entire deposit.</p>
<p>How long you are given to make a yay or nay decision about a school depends on the time of year. I think it’s usually about 2 weeks during most of the cycle. Decision time allowed for waitlisted candidates is much shorter and can be as little as 24 hours if it’s getting close to the start of classes.</p>
<p>DS’s experience is similar to what WOWM just described.</p>
<p>Not knowing the process very well, DS naively asked the admission dean for more days before he says yay or nay when he was offered an acceptance over the phone call. (And this happened in May!) I hope he has the EQ so that he would not say “I need the blessing from my parents before I can give you an answer.” It is just not cool to say so. (We are really not such “bad” parents.)</p>
<p>Another potentially funny conversation between him and an adcoms was that, when he was notified of an interview invite some time in Oct/Nov, he called the adcom in order to reschedule the interview date. He really did not want to go to this school (in west texas) if he had other choice in the end. (He was very stressed because many interviews happened around that time of year.) So he requested to schedule the interview date to be 2+ months later (in late Jan.) The adcom, being such a gentleman, said to him: Why not we do not schedule the date now. In January, if you are still interested in interviewing here, you call me again at that time to schedule an interview. And he gave him his name and contact phone number.</p>
<p>One of DS’s friends who were admitted to several schools was contacted by email around the beginning of May in order to urge him to make a quick decision on whether he are really interesting in attending their school, instead of some other medical schools he had been accepted. In that email, all the schools he had been admitted were specifically mentioned.</p>
<p>This is understandable because, unlike UG admissions, medical school admissions in general make use of WL more extensively and they have very limited time to complete the messy, time-consuming and labor-intensive WL business. I heard it is often the case that 30-40% of matriculated students are from WL. (My guess is that the reliance of WL to recruit students is less for the public medical school. This is because an IS student is more likely to attend an IS medical school? To some extent the following is true: (almost) By definition, a public medical school is a school which only or mostly admits IS students because their residents pay the tax to fund the public medical school – The practical concern about the yield management is exactly the reason why both private and public schools prefer to admit students who have some ties with the area the school is at.)</p>
<p>mcat–not sure that public med school use the waitlist LESS than privates. D1’s state school takes about 1/3 of its entering class off the waitlist every year–and it’s a school that is upfront about not accepting OOS applicants.</p>
<p>Of course that could be because it’s lower mid-ranked school and many of the higher achieving candidates in the end decide to go elsewhere despite the school’s very affordable COA and decent residency placements. </p>
<p>Med school admissions are so very strange and unpredictable. Calculating yield must drive admission offices completely around the bend…</p>
<p>Yield is also much more serious for medical schools. If SLAC aiming for 500 students ends up with 550, it’s not that big a deal. Maybe a few forced triples, Freshman English is 12 students instead of 11, some extra planning for events and accommodations. If a medical school has 100 spots and matriculates 110, then two years down the line it needs to be able to guarantee each and every one of those students a spot in every single clerkship. Not a huge deal for, say, Columbia and NewYork-Presbyterian, but it might be a bigger deal to those schools who don’t have a major enough academic medical center and have to work with county or local hospitals.</p>
<p>OP: <a href=“https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/recommendations/62826/policies_admissionofficers.html[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/recommendations/62826/policies_admissionofficers.html</a></p>
<p>DO schools work differently, I believe. They ask for large (1-2k) nonrefundable deposits within a few weeks of admission, but also don’t have a deadline for withdrawing one’s application and don’t have a policy against holding multiple acceptance at once.</p>
<p>^WOWM, The reason I guess so is due to the following: One of the public medical schools specifically informed all applicants NOT to give them any update after (likely) January, while many private medical schools very much encouraged constant updates (mostly because they want to make sure you are still very in love with that school, and even very apparently hints during the interview that an applicant should inform the school specifically that the school is your first choice in order to increase your chance of being admitted.</p>
<p>I agree with you that med school admissions are very strange and unpredictable.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. I was on my way to NYU to sit for an “MCAT” and started to worry about how multiple acceptances were handled. I just finished and now must wait till tomorrow until it is scored 
@mcat2, I guess it would be ok to make it clear that a certain MSTP was my number one choice from the start? I am in love with Cornell/Rock/Sloan. I BELONG here. Any other program would be a second choice. But then again, I still have a few years :)</p>
<p>@TuftsStudent, great link, thanks. That answers everything.</p>