Who do schools send some people silent rejections yet inform others?

[physiologist]

Since I did the September MCAT, I was only complete in October for most schools. I heard back from 14 schools so far (4II, rest rejections) and have yet to hear from a whopping 13! The odd thing is, I know others who applied at the same time or later and they have already heard back from those schools (with IIs OR rejections), except for the 4 or so known for silent rejections.

Do you have any clue why some get silent rejections and others get rejection letters from the same school? Do you really think schools might have not looked at my app at all yet? Are silent rejections from schools that normally give paper rejections a sign that you were borderline and that they are waiting to have read all their applications before they make a decision about you or do they think your app is so awful that its not even worth their time they'd take to send a rejection letter?

Some insight would be nice, especially from med students who know how their school works.

Look, it's late in the cycle. Oakland only has 20 interviews left to hand out. It would be stupid not to assume by now that at least 3/4 of these are gonna be silent or at least "first day of class" rejections. I'm starting to wonder if every school even has the intention to read my app.

Note that these late schools are mostly low-tier, with a bit of upper tier mixed in and a couple middle (3 middle, 4 upper, rest are lower/unranked).

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[cinamin]

Since I did the September MCAT, I was only complete in October for most schools. I heard back from 14 schools so far (4II, rest rejections) and have yet to hear from a whopping 13! The odd thing is, I know others who applied at the same time or later and they have already heard back from those schools (with IIs OR rejections), except for the 4 or so known for silent rejections.

Do you have any clue why some get silent rejections and others get rejection letters from the same school? Do you really think schools might have not looked at my app at all yet? Are silent rejections from schools that normally give paper rejections a sign that you were borderline and that they are waiting to have read all their applications before they make a decision about you or do they think your app is so awful that its not even worth their time they'd take to send a rejection letter?

Some insight would be nice, especially from med students who know how their school works.

Look, it's late in the cycle. Oakland only has 20 interviews left to hand out. It would be stupid not to assume by now that at least 3/4 of these are gonna be silent or at least "first day of class" rejections. I'm starting to wonder if every school even has the intention to read my app.

Note that these late schools are mostly low-tier, with a bit of upper tier mixed in and a couple middle (3 middle, 4 upper, rest are lower/unranked).

I'm more or less in the same boat... I am waiting to hear back from 18 schools, 9 or so have already sent out rejections to others. I think some schools like to hold onto some applicants just in case. I feel like 2-3 of these schools would consider my app not even good enough to review and not even good enough to send correspondence to, just my opinion.

 

[MedPR]

Since I did the September MCAT, I was only complete in October for most schools. I heard back from 14 schools so far (4II, rest rejections) and have yet to hear from a whopping 13! The odd thing is, I know others who applied at the same time or later and they have already heard back from those schools (with IIs OR rejections), except for the 4 or so known for silent rejections.

Do you have any clue why some get silent rejections and others get rejection letters from the same school? Do you really think schools might have not looked at my app at all yet? Are silent rejections from schools that normally give paper rejections a sign that you were borderline and that they are waiting to have read all their applications before they make a decision about you or do they think your app is so awful that its not even worth their time they'd take to send a rejection letter?

Some insight would be nice, especially from med students who know how their school works.

Look, it's late in the cycle. Oakland only has 20 interviews left to hand out. It would be stupid not to assume by now that at least 3/4 of these are gonna be silent or at least "first day of class" rejections. I'm starting to wonder if every school even has the intention to read my app.

Note that these late schools are mostly low-tier, with a bit of upper tier mixed in and a couple middle (3 middle, 4 upper, rest are lower/unranked).

 

[113]

http://i.qkme.me/3sqjnh.jpg

I feel like this meme requires an animated gif to get the full impact.

 

[Euxox]

Colleges were nice enough to send letters (or at least emails) when we were applying for undergrad, so why do med school adcoms find this to be so difficult? The number of medical applicants for any given university is an order of magnitude less than the number of undergrad applicants.

 

[MedPR]

Colleges were nice enough to send letters (or at least emails) when we were applying for undergrad, so why do med school adcoms find this to be so difficult? The number of medical applicants for any given university is an order of magnitude less than the number of undergrad applicants.

I don't think you understand what "an order of magnitude" is. Many med schools get 10^4 applicants. Do you think any college gets 10^5 (100,000) applicants?

Also, med schools are presumably looking more closely at applications than undergrads do. Would you prefer a quick notification of rejection to a silent rejection at the risk of getting a less thorough review? I wouldn't.

 

[487806]

I don't think you understand what "an order of magnitude" is. Many med schools get 10^4 applicants. Do you think any college gets 10^5 (100,000) applicants?

Also, med schools are presumably looking more closely at applications than undergrads do. Would you prefer a quick notification of rejection to a silent rejection at the risk of getting a less thorough review? I wouldn't.

Or take a moderate approach: add a pre-interview hold sometime in October/November and reject in December/January (like few of the top schools). Silent rejections are cruel.

 

[TangoDown]

I don't think you understand what "an order of magnitude" is. Many med schools get 10^4 applicants. Do you think any college gets 10^5 (100,000) applicants?

Also, med schools are presumably looking more closely at applications than undergrads do. Would you prefer a quick notification of rejection to a silent rejection at the risk of getting a less thorough review? I wouldn't.

Became curious, so I googled.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-receives-record-number-of-221695.aspx

UCLA had 90k+ applicants last year. Obviously not COMPLETELY ordinary, but it can happen.

 

[Euxox]

I don't think you understand what "an order of magnitude" is. Many med schools get 10^4 applicants. Do you think any college gets 10^5 (100,000) applicants?

That's completely unfair; it's easy to pick outliers that break any pattern. Only six med schools had 10,000 or more applicants last year out of ~120 allopathic medical schools in the US. Most schools get 2,000 to 3,000. 20,000 to 30,000 undergrad applicants is not unusual for a state school.

 

[MedPR]

That's completely unfair; it's easy to pick outliers that break any pattern. Only six med schools had 10,000 or more applicants last year out of ~120 allopathic medical schools in the US. Most schools get 2,000 to 3,000. 20,000 to 30,000 undergrad applicants is not unusual for a state school.

.
I doubt "most" schools get 2-3k applications. I'm pretty sure there are way more in the 7-8k range than the 2-3k range.

Edit: That USNews list isn't accurate. MSAR says Loyola got 9834 verified applications, yet it isn't on the USNews list. The majority of schools are probably in the 5-6k range.

 

[TipToad]

.
I doubt "most" schools get 2-3k applications. I'm pretty sure there are way more in the 7-8k range than the 2-3k range.

Not sure which list you're looking at, but the link posted lists BU as #4 with 11,408 applications.

Ugh. You edited your post after I posted mine.

Anyway, let's compare that list with the same list but for undergrads.

http://www.usnews.com/education/bes...08/10-colleges-that-get-the-most-applications

 

[Euxox]

.
I doubt "most" schools get 2-3k applications. I'm pretty sure there are way more in the 7-8k range than the 2-3k range.

Well, according to the medical school matriculants spreadsheet, the average number of applicants is 4,513. So I was a bit off, but there are still plenty of schools that get 40k undergrad applicants per year, including... you guessed it... BU. And BU is a private school.

Anyway, regardless of the exact math, my point still stands. Most universities handle much larger batches of undergrad applicants than med school applicants and those undergrad admissions offices must have some kind of system that works. I do hope that med school adcoms look at our applications more carefully than undergrad admissions offices, but we live in a world of computer screening of GPA and MCAT cutoffs.

 

[ShenanigansMD]

Well, according to the medical school matriculants spreadsheet, the average number of applicants is 4,513. So I was a bit off, but there are still plenty of schools that get 40k undergrad applicants per year, including... you guessed it... BU. And BU is a private school.

Anyway, regardless of the exact math, my point still stands. Most universities handle much larger batches of undergrad applicants than med school applicants and those undergrad admissions offices must have some kind of system that works. I do hope that med school adcoms look at our applications more carefully than undergrad admissions offices, but we live in a world of computer screening of GPA and MCAT cutoffs.

Yeah but BU understands that after a month, they reject you since there are 10k applicants. I still don't understand how other schools stay with 5k and just don't say anything.

 

[physiologist]

(Double post due to faulty Internet)

 

[physiologist]

My question is not why schools send silent rejections, but why schools send email/written rejections to some applicants but leave others hanging? Negligence? Maybe they were like screw it, TL;DR. but don't want to tell you? I find this inconsistency irritating because I bet they actually just didnt read my app because it was late but sent out all the invites and were like "oops!"

Also, for undergrad they process way more apps in a shorter window of time. My brother is applying to undergrad and med apps are just as long. So what's the deal?

 

[MilMD01]

I don't think there's an easy answer for your question Phys...

In my opinion, it's out of laziness. They don't want to take the time to individually reject everyone.

 

[physiologist]

I think it's because they didnt read my app but don't want to tell me haha

UPDATE: Sent all the schools letters of interest. Noticed Mount Sinai is possibly the least transparent admissions office ever in that they don't even have an email address o.0

I'm really hoping for more interviews! Though I'm really happy with what I have and would love to attend any of the schools I will interview at if they accept me. I just want to have more choices in case they don't.

 

[LizzyM]

I've been asked to comment on this thread but I have nothing to add given that the adcom itself doesn't have a say in when or how communications are sent to applicants who are not accepted (and particuarly those who are not interviewed).

It could be that med schools are more like hiring offices; you will rarely hear from an employer who has chosen not to interview you for a position.

I don't know if my school eventually sends rejection messages to the thousands who are not interviewed. I do know that it puts off sending rejections until the bitter end just in case something comes up that mandates an interview -- this is a phenomenon that most often happens after the holidays whereby an applicant with no IIs uses their 3 degrees of Kevin Bacon to get someone with a connection to the medical school to call on their behalf and inquire about the possibility of an interview for Mr. Almost Fabulous. Now if the call on Mr. Fabulous' behalf is coming from a VIP by way of someone very high up in the university administration, we just might end up interviewing Mr. Fabulous. This is one of those 1 in 10,000 situations but if poor Mr. Fabulous had been rejected in November ....

The Mr. Almost Fabulous in question almost never gets an offer of admission but as a courtesy to Mr. VIP, he will get an II.