<p>After many conversations & emails with UW Med school Admissions and the Residency office, we seem to have finally figured out how UWs state residency requirements & timing work for the Med school. </p>
<p>While IS vs. OOS cost is a factor, the biggest concern is admission, since UW takes so few OOS applicants. Note, D1 does merit consideration as an OOS applicant under their non-WWAMI policy and was financially independent last year and will be this year.</p>
<p>Here's the scenario assuming that she takes a job and moves to WA in April:</p>
<p>She applies on her Primary as a WA resident and receives a Secondary from UW. However, she must wait six months before she can apply to the Residency office to establish her resident status (ie. May 1 - Nov 1). The Residency office takes 2 weeks to review and approve her status, so the Med school then considers her application in mid-Nov (they moved their deadline for their Secondary to Dec 1 this cycle).</p>
<p>So, although she has gained IS status, how will this delay affect her admissions prospects at UW? While the acceptance rate is considerably lower as an OOS applicant, would she be better off completing her Secondary and being considered in mid-summer? Pros and cons?</p>
<p>Just to clarify, AMCAS is sent in June, so application to all other schools will not be affected. The Secondary will be sent to UW early also, but Admissions will not consider it until the Residency office acknowledges that she has met the requirement of 6 mo. as a resident in WA, which won’t be until mid-Nov.</p>
<p>November is way too late. If your child could get in with a November applicant they would probably be strong enough to get in oos.</p>
<p>At that point, some acceptances will have been handed out and most of the interview spots will be gone before the application is even looked at.</p>
<p>My gut feeling is the same as i<em>wanna</em>be_brown, but “somemom” may know about that school better than me. For example, some schools may be kind of like “rolling admission” even if they do not claim so. Is U. of Wash. one of these schools? (I remember somemom’s D was admitted quite early.)</p>
<p>Why is she so much interested in getting into U. of Wash? The first rule of applying to med schools is: Try not to favor any school until you are accepted by that school. Otherwise, you will go insane :)</p>
<p>Another thought: If she is really interested in going there, could she delay one year so she will be in-state at the beginning of the application cycle?</p>
<p>Thanks Brown and mcat for the input. That was our concern, that she’d be getting IS status, but at the cost of diminishing her overall chances due to timing.</p>
<p>She really likes the UW program (she did a summer program there) and would like to get back to the West eventually. It’s not so much that she has her ‘heart set on UW’, but rather she is trying to determine what state of residency would be the best for her overall and for med school admissions. Our state offers 1 med school, with one of the highest IS tuitions of all publics, so it wouldn’t mean giving up too much to gain WA residency. She likes the Med school, Seattle and the IS cost better at UW than our current IS. It looks like it might not work, but I’m one for knowing all the possible scenarios before making a choice :).</p>
<p>She’s already going to have a 2 yr gap and doesn’t want to take more time off. She had tried getting a position in WA this last year, but it came down to passing up other offers waiting for a ‘possible’ offer in WA.</p>
<p>1) All her apps to private schools will be complete ASAP (July? August?)
2) If she’s a strong enough applicant to be accepted IS to udub in Nov, she’ll almost certainly have interviews to private schools by then
3) If she doesn’t apply IS to udub, and instead applies OOS (and applies IS to your home state?), she’ll be “using” her IS status for a school she’s less interested in
4) November is late, that’s for sure. But is it the end of the road? Probably not. I know my school’s no udub, but we interview up clear through Feb (and there are kids in my class who were accepted outright who interviewed late Jan). What’s wait list movement like? There’s a chance applying late will mean she’s more a candidate for wait list spots, so knowing how the wait list works is worth it.</p>
<p>If her heart’s not set on udub, but udub would be better than your home state’s med school in her mind, I’d personally apply early to all other schools and apply as early as possible to udub too. Even though they told you over the phone that waiting for residency verification is their policy, it might change when her app is actually on their desk.</p>
<p>Thanks for responding kristin, so much food for thought!</p>
<p>Yes, all of her other apps would be in early and hopefully would result in some early interviews.</p>
<p>D1 is trying to contact a current UW med student now, and hopefully will gain more specific information on their interview schedule, acceptance timing and WL use.</p>
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<p>This is pretty much where she’s at. The things that are keeping her from jumping at going for WA residency are the application timing issue and the opportunity for better jobs for the next year in other parts of the country (she’s currently doing some interviews as her Americorps job ends in July).</p>
<p>I suggested that OP read SDN from last year to see the timing for interview invites. DD submitted AMCAS in June, was complete maybe early July. She had interviews set up in August, September, October, November, December, January.</p>
<p>When DD interviewed and was admitted in early November, she had the impression that only a small percentage of applicants were admitted then, and a small percentage denied, the rest were continued until spring decisions. SDN reading seemed to verify that. I don’t think a November/December/January interview is a bad thing, but I am not sure how quickly those interview slots fill up. That would be the question to determine from UWSOM resources.</p>
<p>I haven’t ventured into SDN territory for a long time, but I agree they’re a great resource for this type of information, thanks somemom for the tip!</p>
<p>I think it’s also worth taking into account the type of people you encounter on CC. As far as I can tell, this is a pretty select group in that applicants here tend to have success at many schools. Among most of the med students I know in real life, I had a pretty impressive/blissful application season–and I am FAR from the most successful applicant around this board. And if you take a look back to my year’s application thread, I was certainly on the late side of the applications (late May MCAT, mid July AMCAS, mid Sept secondaries), I applied to very few schools relative to most of my contemporaries (13, half of them reaches), and I had some of the lowest stats (30/3.8 state school).</p>
<p>The advice you find here, by and large, is very good as far as I can tell. Heck, I’d trust this over my big state school’s premed advisors without question. But sometimes I think it’s a little too good, in that it’s probably not feasible for every applicant to have >3.7 from an Ivy league school (or a “good school” with a full ride) with >33 on the MCAT, a publication, lots of shadowing, interesting hobbies (eg proficient with multiple instruments, has traveled extensively/done peace corps, plays a varsity sport), extensive leadership experience, and meaningful volunteer experience AND have the foresight to complete applications within a week of their release.</p>
<p>CC does a great job of setting applicants up to be in the best position to apply (and seems to attract very qualified applicants) by encouraging them to apply early, apply broadly, and cultivate an impressive set of experiences and statistics. This is great advice! By CC standards, she’s probably not in the most ideal situation to apply–the most ideal situation would be if she were an official WA resident by like, now. But should that prevent her from applying altogether? I don’t think so. Sounds like she has plenty going for her, and who knows–she might end up somewhere other than udub anyway, and if that’s the case, waiting a year to have a better position for udub will have been a total waste.</p>
I think kristin has brought up a very good point. In our case, we failed to meet many of the high standards set by these high achieving CCers. But we were still doing fine in the end. I think OP’s D will be doing fine in the end also.</achieve></p>
<p>Talking about coming up with the list of schools to apply to, DS likely did not give any thought to his AMCAS list until after he had submitted his TMDSAS application in July, which was not that early for TMDSAS as everything related to TDSAS tend to happen one month earlier than AMCAS! What kind of tortured me at that time was that, I had learned from these high achieving CCers that you should do this and that by what time, but I was not in a position to nag him to do anything (because I did not want to be such a nagging parent.)</p>
<p>^^It’s not nagging mcat2, it’s being supportive :D.</p>
<p>kat, </p>
<p>She has a the first cut of a list. And that’s another reason for considering this change of residence, being IS in WA would bring UW from a far reach to a more of a match. And since she likes it so much more than our current IS, I think that she might be able to cut down her list from 15-20 to 10-15 schools.</p>
<p>She had a job offer in WA that she just lost yesterday due to not grabbing it right away, it was as an administrative assistant for a low income clinic in Seattle. While it was still in health care, it had no patient contact, so she would have had to do that on her own. We didn’t know all of the ins and outs of residency, so she wasn’t able to commit. There’s another job at the same clinic now, it’s a better position as a care coordinator, but it’s temporary, only for a couple of months while someone is on maternity leave; there’s the possibility of something after that, but no guarantee so I can’t see her relocating for such a short time (she’s on the east coast now). </p>
<p>In about a week she has a second interview for a clinical research position in DC, which she feels is a much more interesting job.</p>
<p>I read all 15 pages the UW admissions thread on SDN last night, and that lead me to this webpage by the UW Med school Dean:</p>
<p>A couple of the FAQs addressed the application timing question (note that the secondary deadline has changed this year):</p>
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<p>Since we’re at that March midpoint right now, I’m going to track down last year’s UW thread and count acceptances to see what the distribution over time looks like. It’s not precise, but might give some idea if they really do still have half the spots left in March.</p>