After applying to 25 allopathic schools this cycle, I received one interview invitation and was ultimately accepted to the program (whew!). I am absolutely thrilled that I'll have the opportunity to become a physician. That said, I recently came across some information which might offer a partial explanation for why I received relatively few interview invites. The following article is probably well-known on SDN, but perhaps more so in the allopathic forums:
"A Program Director's Guide to the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (Former Dean's Letter) With a Database"
http://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440(13)00767-9/abstract
One of my recommenders was kind enough to send me a copy of her letter (after having submitted it to AMCAS), and now months later I realize it contains a particular phrase which also happens to describe roughly the bottom quintile of medical students at that particular school (according to the supplementary materials from the above article). Granted, the code used in MSPEs is for evaluating medical students, but it doesn't seem at all a stretch to imagine that similar wording would be used in recommendations for medical school applicants. My GPA and MCAT were both at the 90th percentile of last year's accepted applicants for the school that did take an interest in me.
At this point, I'm trying to figure out what the likelihood is that I am in fact reading this situation correctly, and my recommender wrote me a "bad" letter. There are plenty of other possibilities. It's particularly troublesome because I still work in this person's lab and interact with her on a near daily basis.
"A Program Director's Guide to the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (Former Dean's Letter) With a Database"
http://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440(13)00767-9/abstract
One of my recommenders was kind enough to send me a copy of her letter (after having submitted it to AMCAS), and now months later I realize it contains a particular phrase which also happens to describe roughly the bottom quintile of medical students at that particular school (according to the supplementary materials from the above article). Granted, the code used in MSPEs is for evaluating medical students, but it doesn't seem at all a stretch to imagine that similar wording would be used in recommendations for medical school applicants. My GPA and MCAT were both at the 90th percentile of last year's accepted applicants for the school that did take an interest in me.
At this point, I'm trying to figure out what the likelihood is that I am in fact reading this situation correctly, and my recommender wrote me a "bad" letter. There are plenty of other possibilities. It's particularly troublesome because I still work in this person's lab and interact with her on a near daily basis.
