Myths and Truths of ROLLING ADMISSION

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OneStrongBro

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As many of us are applying to med school this year, I thought it would be helpful if we shed some light into the Rolling Admission process.

I am thinking that everyone in the first batch is interviewed before October 15th. Than, these people are ranked from 1 to the last person. Next, I believe that the top 10 to 20 percent are accepted.

After, October 15th interviews are continued. Some Adcoms meet once, twice, four times a month. When they meet the newly interviewed students are ranked and everyone else is re-ranked. The top 10 to 20 percent of these people are than accepted.

I believe this is continued until April.

Does anyone else have any insight to further or debunk my theory?

All of the students on this board would appreciate any information gained from interviews or from talking to other students.

Thanks in advance

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Originally posted by OneStrongBro
I am thinking that everyone in the first batch is interviewed before October 15th. Than, these people are ranked from 1 to the last person. Next, I believe that the top 10 to 20 percent are accepted.

Lots of schools didn't interview so many people before October 15th though... So you're just making up this 10-20% thing? I mean, it seems like some schools are accepting more than that at the beginning of the process.
 
I have seen OneStrongBro and Bodybuilder on the forum. Who benches more?

Sorry couldn't resist.
 
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at my tulane interview, they said that those who are selected to interview are evaluated by 3 committee members (application, scores, interview reports) after the interview reports have been completed. these 3 reviewrs rank applicants from 1-10. those who average 6 and above are move into the "acceptable" pool. those below get rejected outright. from those w/ the highest averages, they choose whom to accept. the others get moved onto the next batch.
 
the 10-20% is arbitrary. I am in no way saying that it is rock solid 10-20%. What I am saying is that there is a specific cutoff compared to the total pool. It could be 50%.

The whole point is that the percentage comes into play after the application is complete i.e after the interview.

AS for the Oct 15th day. This is to further my point. The first day of acceptance varies from school to school. So this is also by convention. If you wish you can say November 15th. The point is that there is a 1st day of acceptance for most schools.

I truly believe rolling admission schools have a percentage cutoff after the interview. And new interviewees are thrown in the pool and ranked with the rest of the folks. That is my theory. The dates, and the exact percentage is a moot point.
 
I would also go as far as saying all schools are rolling, even if they don't notify you in a rolling manner (i.e. we'll tell you all in Jan/Feb/whatever). But that's not really what you're trying to say, just something I'm throwing in.

Originally posted by OneStrongBro
I truly believe rolling admission schools have a percentage cutoff after the interview. And new interviewees are thrown in the pool and ranked with the rest of the folks. That is my theory. The dates, and the exact percentage is a moot point.

Well I was disagreeing more on the fact that you think they accept the same percentage every time. I was thinking it's more exponential to an asymptote (i.e. fewer and fewer folks every time). I was thinking that they planned to accept more of the early folks since they were at the top of the pool.

The question about 10-20% was totally unrelated to the last sentence I wrote. The question was just to ask if you had any data to back that up, really.
 
Good point Random,
I don't have proof for my theory. However, the asymptote theory also seems to lack evidence.
I heard countless times that it is to one's advantage to turn in one's application as soon as possible to maximize one's chances. This would make sense with asymptote theory.
However, I figured another factor might be because of the late batch of Aug MCATers thrown into the pool i.e. greater amount of people with higher MCAT scores in the pool. Since students with low MCAT score are likely not to apply after the AUG MCAT.
 
RA and Bro--Can you please explain what asymptote means???? :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
Originally posted by galen
RA and Bro--Can you please explain what asymptote means???? :confused: :confused: :confused:

S'pose I can do that before going out... ;)

An asymptote is where something levels off. Technically, in mathematics, the graph doesn't actually reach the asymptote ever, just gets closer and closer to it. Think about walking a mile, but how you do it is that you go half the distance to the end each time. So you go half a mile, then a quarter (so you're at 3/4), etc. You never actually get to the end, mathematically, so you're asymptotic at one mile.

In the real world, you'll hit the asymptote. The asymptote for med schools is when the class is full. The reason I phrased it that way, is I was thinking that more people would get in earlier, but less later, so it's sort of exponential. Who knows if that's actually true?

-RA
 
Originally posted by Random Access
I would also go as far as saying all schools are rolling, even if they don't notify you in a rolling manner (i.e. we'll tell you all in Jan/Feb/whatever).

This is something that I've been wondering about myself. I was thinking that this might the case, but I have no evidence. Do you have some insider information, RA? :)
 
Originally posted by Curci
This is something that I've been wondering about myself. I was thinking that this might the case, but I have no evidence. Do you have some insider information, RA? :)

Just from observation, not really evidence. I mean they do offer interviews to the top of the applicant pool first, so one would naturally think that more acceptances go to that part of the pool. Furthermore, career services seemed to agree with my attitude, since there are so many applications, etc. to read, it'd be difficult to have the committee deliberate on hundreds of applicants at once in Jan/Feb/whenever. Again, just a conjecture...
 
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