<p>Plumazul, At some institutes, you may need to pledge to them implicitly or explicitly (and more importantly, you need to persuade them) at some critical time during the application cycle that that medical school is your top love before they are willing to take a risk on you. Some very top research medical schools just do not care very much though.</p>
<p>As regard to the “match” factor, I tend to believe that, except for a public school that admits a relatively larger class, this is a factor. (In this sense, the admission of public medical school is a little bit more like the admission of UC universities (not UC medical schools) – except that the URM issue need to be carefully taken into consideration in order to avoid any potential percussion/retaliation from some powerful political entities: the worst could be the cut of the medical school funding significantly, which they can not afford. Some professional schools might have managed this issue “improperly” in the past – remember the case of UM and its law school? How dare they put a number on it as this is supposedly to be done in a harder-to-be-caught way. The result could be not pretty which could take them years before they climbed up the hole again.)</p>
<p>There must be a reason why many CCers suggested in the past that an applicant have the MCAT scores in hand before the application cycle. Otherwise, they may not be able to select the optimal list of schools based on their stats.</p>
<p>Besides the ones with stats below requirement for any US Med. School, it is still a good idea to apply to schools that match your stats. For example, my D. did not get accepted to 50% of schools that she applied. What if her list was compiled of only schools like the ones in this 50%? Then she would not get into any despite of her very qualifying stats that allowed her to get accepted to couple top 20.</p>
<p>We witnessed it first hand. Since we live in Texas S applied to all the in state schools. His MCAT was 99.9 percentile with a 3.8/3.8. His ONLY two interviews offered by the in state publics were from the two highest rated, UTSW and UT-H. </p>
<p>During his UT-H interview he was asked numerous times if he really had serious interest in them since their typical matriculant did not have stats like his and the interviewers said they would recommend an offer if he was really serious about attending.</p>
<p>He also had it happen with private schools where his profile was significantly above their average enrolled student.</p>
<p>plumazul, another two schools come to mind: Georgetown and Tufts. As a matter of fact, in the North East we joke all the time about the “Tufts Syndrome”. If your profile is significantly above their average enrolled student, Tufts will likely reject you, especially if you are coming from the ivies (the school feels you are using them as a “safety”, and that you will likely get into one of the other top schools in the area and eventually matriculate elsewhere).</p>
<p>I think Georgetown is one of the schools that gets the most applications, and they also screen very harshly and early. Not too many students from my undergrad end up matriculating at Georgetown, and those who do usually have some type of connection with the school (research, etc). Even though I was giving the school a very serious consideration, I was rejected outright without the benefit of an interview (I was accepted to several top 5 med schools). They protect their resources and yield very much, and I would say they have learned to play the game very well.</p>