Got into med school, but don't love the school

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JMB22

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so i applied to med school last summer and got into 1 school, my local med school, but i have absolutely no desire to move back to my hometown. i am repulsed at the thought of living here again, almost to the point of wanting to withdraw and reapply elsewhere later. i know now that i should not have applied to this school if i am so opposed to living here. but i was wondering, does this happen to other people too? am i just being too picky? should i be grateful that i got into any med school at all?
fwiw, i applied somewhat late, and i have added a decent amount to my resume since i applied last summer. so if i were to reapply later, i would have a somewhat stronger application.
in short, should i settle for this med school even though i hate the location?
 
also, here is some of my info:
34 / 3.76 / plenty of volunteering, shadowing, teaching experience / 2.5 years of lab research / graduated with honors / thesis research is now being drafted for publication
 
You might not get in next cycle. Or you might get into your local school again.

Is it worth the $$, time, and sanity to you?

If yes, do it.
 
I dont believe its ever a good idea to turn it down and i believe on the amcas it asks if you were ever accepted to another school (maybe it was just matriculated i forget), but if they found out that you turned it down it probably wouldnt be good. I mean lets face it every one SDN and every pre med wants a top 20 school, we all want mt sinai, JH, ucla, ucsf, duke, etc etc to come calling to us but often that doesnt happen. You have decent paper stats but who knows if you will get in next time. I dont think its ever worth it to turn down an acceptance, if you really hated the school you shouldnt have wasted time applying. A safety is useless if you wont actually matriculate there if given no choice. Suck it up, graduate in 4 years, then run off far away to residency somewhere.
 
JMB22 said:
also, here is some of my info:
34 / 3.76 / plenty of volunteering, shadowing, teaching experience / 2.5 years of lab research / graduated with honors / thesis research is now being drafted for publication
Click to expand...

Pretty good numbers, I wonder why you only got 1 acceptance.
 
go to med school. it's a year of your life + a lot of stress and money to apply again. your next application will need to be significantly better and nothing is guaranteed! you won't have enough time to get bored in med school and hate the city
 
Be careful turning down a school to reapply next year. Schools will see this next year on your AMCAS (there's a question about it), and if you don't have a good reason for doing so, it may show up as a lack of commitment towards being a doctor.

Don't apply to schools you don't want to go to. Of course, sometimes you may not know when applying, but at least withdraw after the interview but before a decision is made on your application.
 
thanks for all of your input.

part of me thinks its stupid to reapply.

but the other part of me thinks that i could do better. i applied late (mid- september, actually), and after i submitted my amcas, i noticed a typo in it. i also have added more to my resume and brought up my gpa since i applied. therefore, i don't feel that i put my best foot forward in this last application round and think it may be worth it to try again.
also, i guess its worth mentioning that i was waitlisted at my top choice school, so maybe if i reapplied with a stronger app, it would help.

thoughts??
 
JMB22 said:
so i applied to med school last summer and got into 1 school, my local med school, but i have absolutely no desire to move back to my hometown. i am repulsed at the thought of living here again, almost to the point of wanting to withdraw and reapply elsewhere later. i know now that i should not have applied to this school if i am so opposed to living here. but i was wondering, does this happen to other people too? am i just being too picky? should i be grateful that i got into any med school at all?
fwiw, i applied somewhat late, and i have added a decent amount to my resume since i applied last summer. so if i were to reapply later, i would have a somewhat stronger application.
in short, should i settle for this med school even though i hate the location?
Click to expand...


Why did you apply to a school that you had no interest in attending? Medical school is maximally 3 years of being in specific location after which, you can do residency in another location. You are not signing you life away to a particular school only entering a building that provides a means to an end. If you can't stand entering that building on a daily basis, then stay home and use the note service.

Finally: Don't be an idiot as, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". Attend medical school and stop believing that you are actually better than you are. You are fortunate to have gotten in anywhere. If you don't believe this, ask those folks who are sitting here in June with no acceptance.
 
JMB22 said:
thanks for all of your input.

part of me thinks its stupid to reapply.

but the other part of me thinks that i could do better. i applied late (mid- september, actually), and after i submitted my amcas, i noticed a typo in it. i also have added more to my resume and brought up my gpa since i applied. therefore, i don't feel that i put my best foot forward in this last application round and think it may be worth it to try again.
also, i guess its worth mentioning that i was waitlisted at my top choice school, so maybe if i reapplied with a stronger app, it would help.

thoughts??
Click to expand...
First, everybody blames the timing of their apps if they don't get great news by the end of their cycle. It's the easiest external factor to blame.

Second, a typo did not tank your application. If it did, you're the unluckiest person in the world and must've had a stellar app otherwise for such a little thing to affect you.

Third, nearly everybody's app is continuously improving. Most of us are in school/have jobs and aren't idling.

None of those reasons are enough to make me think your odds are so much greater the next time around that it's worth tossing an acceptance.
 
life and everything in it is what you think of it. happy thoughts. at least 100 students will be attending your medical school, you will find tons of friends to relate to and people to bone, so let's go home.
 
witness23 said:
life and everything in it is what you think of it. happy thoughts. at least 100 students will be attending your medical school, you will find tons of friends to relate to and people to bone, so let's go home.
Click to expand...
serious. Its not the school that matters as much as the class imo. Everywhere you go you will make friends and have random one night stands. Just go to school and then be done with it. Every year there are many applicants like youself, very few applicants are very different or stand out. 3.7 and 34mcats are a dime a dozen, as are all the ecs youve done. Dont think that next year you will necesarilly do better.
 
Once you start med school, you'll be too busy to be repulsed by the city you live in.
 
NEVER TURN DOWN AN ACCEPTANCE TO MED-SCHOOL!

I hated the city where I went to med-school (Houston). But since I spent 120 hours a week for ten months concerned with med-school issues and the other hours sleeping, I never saw the city! You can leave town for a while between years...
 
How many schools did you apply too? and how many interviews did you get? Are you from California?
 
Is your hometown really that bad that you would spend one year of your life reapplying for medical school?
 
go 2 med school, if you really think its worth your time,stress and money to reapply then do it I guess....but why put yourself through that?
 
anbuitachi said:
summer ends in september, is that THAT late to cause him to get 1 acceptance?
Click to expand...
he applied to only a very small amount of schools, he may have applied to many top schools, he may suck at interviewing, etc etc...point is there are many factors, is applying that late bad? sure but there are many reasons for the number of acceptances or not. I wouldnt freak out about it. He got 4 interviews out of 10 schools, thats not bad at all. consider that most of us apply to 20-30 schools.
 
In a year, even if you are sitting on a better acceptance than this one, you'll wish you were about to start MS-II instead of getting ready for MS-I. Trust me.
 
Danbo1957 said:
NEVER TURN DOWN AN ACCEPTANCE TO MED-SCHOOL!

I hated the city where I went to med-school (Houston). But since I spent 120 hours a week for ten months concerned with med-school issues and the other hours sleeping, I never saw the city! You can leave town for a while between years...
Click to expand...

👍👍👍
 
JMB22 said:
so i applied to med school last summer and got into 1 school, my local med school, but i have absolutely no desire to move back to my hometown. i am repulsed at the thought of living here again, almost to the point of wanting to withdraw and reapply elsewhere later. i know now that i should not have applied to this school if i am so opposed to living here. but i was wondering, does this happen to other people too? am i just being too picky? should i be grateful that i got into any med school at all?
fwiw, i applied somewhat late, and i have added a decent amount to my resume since i applied last summer. so if i were to reapply later, i would have a somewhat stronger application.
in short, should i settle for this med school even though i hate the location?
Click to expand...

I know how you can feel much better about your lot in life. Get your passport renewed and buy a plane ticket for Paris. Rent a car and drive to Normandy. Go to the cemetery at Omaha Beach.

As you walk through that cemetery ask yourself if the young men buried there would like to trade places with you. Many of the people buried there had not reached the age of 22. You will feel much better about your situation.
 
i know there are people who applied after being accepted on this site. where they at? let's hear them out for kicks
 
Bacchus said:
This is not a political debate thread... do not make it one.
Click to expand...

This person needs to grow up. He or she needs to count his/her blessings and get on with things. Think of all of the people in the world who would happily trade places with this whiner. It makes me ill.
 
Obnoxious Dad said:
This person needs to grow up. He or she needs to count his/her blessings and get on with things. Think of all of the people in the world who would happily trade places with this whiner. It makes me ill.
Click to expand...
That's a red herring argument at best. The fact that someone is suffering more than the OP or had tougher choices in life does not make the OP's decision any less personally troubling.

Obnoxious, indeed.
 
I wonder why everyone encourages people to not turn the schools down. If the OP doesn't like the school enough to attend (and is stupid enough to turn it down), by all means reapply and give that spot to someone dying to go there.
 
JMB22 said:
so i applied to med school last summer and got into 1 school, my local med school, but i have absolutely no desire to move back to my hometown. i am repulsed at the thought of living here again, almost to the point of wanting to withdraw and reapply elsewhere later. i know now that i should not have applied to this school if i am so opposed to living here. but i was wondering, does this happen to other people too? am i just being too picky? should i be grateful that i got into any med school at all?
fwiw, i applied somewhat late, and i have added a decent amount to my resume since i applied last summer. so if i were to reapply later, i would have a somewhat stronger application.
in short, should i settle for this med school even though i hate the location?
Click to expand...

Yep be thankful for your acceptance, you can go anywhere from any med school. Just depends on how much effort you put into the experience. Congratulate yourself on getting in!!! And move on with your life.
 
Obnoxious Dad said:
I know how you can feel much better about your lot in life. Get your passport renewed and buy a plane ticket for Paris. Rent a car and drive to Normandy. Go to the cemetery at Omaha Beach.

As you walk through that cemetery ask yourself if the young men buried there would like to trade places with you. Many of the people buried there had not reached the age of 22. You will feel much better about your situation.
Click to expand...
I like your point!😎Yes, we should treasure what we already have instead of complainting about what we don't have...
 
you applied to a school you didn't really want to go to (from the beginning) and it ended up being your only acceptance...now you can

a) own up to your responsibilities and attend this medical school and be happy you got in

or

b) whine on SDN about how much better you could have done, then drop the acceptance, hit your daddy up for another $2-3k for another round of applications, get a handful of interviews (probably around 2 or 3), at those interviews explain why you thought you were too good for the other medical school (cause for any other reason you could have just asked for deferment of matriculation), get laughed at by a bunch of adcoms, get rejected from everywhere, and then return to SDN to whine about how much better you could have done.
 
Obnoxious Dad said:
I know how you can feel much better about your lot in life. Get your passport renewed and buy a plane ticket for Paris. Rent a car and drive to Normandy. Go to the cemetery at Omaha Beach.

As you walk through that cemetery ask yourself if the young men buried there would like to trade places with you. Many of the people buried there had not reached the age of 22. You will feel much better about your situation.
Click to expand...

I feel like this is a non-sequitur.
Would it be foolish to turn down an acceptance and re-apply next year? Imo... yes. But I can also sympathize with the OP's reluctance to stay in his hometown for another 4 years.

Is that dilemma minor in the "grand scheme" of things? Sure, it might be. But the existence of "bigger problems" faced by others doesn't negate this particular dilemma. All the OP is doing is seeking a solution for his particular situation. I don't see it as whining. Whining would be if the OP had already decided to go to the school, but posts on here about not liking the school and not wanting to go. That's not the case here.

While I appreciate your point that we should all be grateful for our lives and the opportunities we have, that point is really irrelevant to the OP's dilemma.
 
unsung said:
I feel like this is a non-sequitur.
Would it be foolish to turn down an acceptance and re-apply next year? Imo... yes. But I can also sympathize with the OP's reluctance to stay in his hometown for another 4 years.

Is that dilemma minor in the "grand scheme" of things? Sure, it might be. But the existence of "bigger problems" faced by others doesn't negate this particular dilemma. All the OP is doing is seeking a solution for his particular situation. I don't see it as whining. Whining would be if the OP had already decided to go to the school, but posts on here about not liking the school and not wanting to go. That's not the case here.

While I appreciate your point that we should all be grateful for our lives and the opportunities we have, that point is really irrelevant to the OP's dilemma.
Click to expand...

yea true telling the OP he should be grateful doesn't really solve his dilemma....

Well rank the pros and cons of living in your hometown. OP is probably already aware of the minuses.

Some pluses I can think of.... close to support system, no adjustment period to new location, no distractions of being somewhere special - no need to go out haha, it just might motivate you to study a lot and do super on your exams and clerkships so you can have your pick of residency ...
 
why not try it for a year at least? you might love it... and if you really want to be a doctor you need to at least give it a try. you might not make it in again in the next running
 
Transferring medical schools is not unheard of or impossible, although I think it is easier after M-II. If you still hate it after being there a year, you will quite possibly be able to move. Unlike the scenario of reapplying, you will not jeopardize your ability to get ANY med education at all, and you won't lose a year to applications.
 
Dont do it dude, just bust ass and do well onthe Step 1.
 
I think the question I would ask myself is... "why do
I hate this place?" If the answer is something I can change, than I would stay and attend. But if the answer is something that will impair your ability to succeed, you might be better off to reapply. But there's also the option to transfer as others have mentioned. What about rotations? Do you do them locally?
 
chocolaterie said:
I think the question I would ask myself is... "why do
I hate this place?" If the answer is something I can change, than I would stay and attend. But if the answer is something that will impair your ability to succeed, you might be better off to reapply. But there's also the option to transfer as others have mentioned. What about rotations? Do you do them locally?
Click to expand...


I wonder about that too. Why is he so obstinate about going back to his hometown. Did he break up with an ex-gf recently and he's trying to avoid her at all cost. Or is he wanted by the local police department for some violations? I wouldn't turn down a medical school acceptance for any reason, no matter how much I hated the environment - there's probably more to this.
 
witness23 said:
i know there are people who applied after being accepted on this site. where they at? let's hear them out for kicks
Click to expand...


I guess I'm one of the ones you mention, though I didn't make the decision because I didn't like the town or anything lame like that. I applied super late in the cycle (I took the last paper MCAT in Aug 2006, didn't have scores until Nov.) and had no interviews by the beginning of march. In the meantime I was accepted to one of the top chem grad programs in the country, and the deadline came up before I could interview. I accepted their offer, but was subsequently accepted at the U of MN (at the end of April!?).

I'm in the process of re-applying now, but the situation is somewhat different I suppose.
 
I don't see what's wrong with reapplying.

Reapplying does not mean that the OP is thinking he's too good for that particular school or it doesn't mean he's arrogant or something..

If the person hates the place so much he'll be miserable for the 4 year of med school and probably the rest of his life for making a decision to go to that school.

OP might end up in the same school or he might end up in top 10 schools. You never know and you live only once. You should definitely do whatever feels right to you OP.
 
Homoochan said:
I don't see what's wrong with reapplying.

Reapplying does not mean that the OP is thinking he's too good for that particular school or it doesn't mean he's arrogant or something..

If the person hates the place so much he'll be miserable for the 4 year of med school and probably the rest of his life for making a decision to go to that school.

OP might end up in the same school or he might end up in top 10 schools. You never know and you live only once. You should definitely do whatever feels right to you OP.
Click to expand...


... though I would say he's probably an idiot if he reapplies and ends up in the same school. Why would he reapply to the same school he didn't like to begin with?

That being said, reapplying != end of the world. You have to do what makes you happy, no matter what anybody else says. The "what if?" thing can really destroy some people, and if you're one of them then don't let a bunch of SDNers destroy your future by convincing you to make a decision you won't be happy with.
 
i mean this in the nicest way possible:

just stfu and go to school.
 
JMB22 said:
so i applied to med school last summer and got into 1 school, my local med school, but i have absolutely no desire to move back to my hometown. i am repulsed at the thought of living here again, almost to the point of wanting to withdraw and reapply elsewhere later. i know now that i should not have applied to this school if i am so opposed to living here. but i was wondering, does this happen to other people too? am i just being too picky? should i be grateful that i got into any med school at all?
fwiw, i applied somewhat late, and i have added a decent amount to my resume since i applied last summer. so if i were to reapply later, i would have a somewhat stronger application.
in short, should i settle for this med school even though i hate the location?
Click to expand...

You should definitely drop your acceptance and reapply. If you get in somewhere better, great. If not, I won't have to worry about having yet another whiny, shortsighted colleague. I'm tired of trying to save you little baskets from yourselves.
 
Obnoxious Dad said:
I know how you can feel much better about your lot in life. Get your passport renewed and buy a plane ticket for Paris. Rent a car and drive to Normandy. Go to the cemetery at Omaha Beach.

As you walk through that cemetery ask yourself if the young men buried there would like to trade places with you. Many of the people buried there had not reached the age of 22. You will feel much better about your situation.
Click to expand...

It's a strange coincidence that you mention it, because thats exactly one of the things I am doing this summer (before beginning medical school). I was planning on going beccause I love history (particularly WWII history) but I was thinking about that today, how that will probably give me a unique perspective.


-Roy
 
pietachok said:
Transferring medical schools is not unheard of or impossible, although I think it is easier after M-II. If you still hate it after being there a year, you will quite possibly be able to move. Unlike the scenario of reapplying, you will not jeopardize your ability to get ANY med education at all, and you won't lose a year to applications.
Click to expand...


Transferring from one medical school to another is rare and there must be a compelling reason. Hating the location of your current med school, or just generally hating your current med school is not a compelling reason. The OP would not be able to transfer.

That said, the OP is nuts to turn down the acceptance. But I am with "the quit whining and get on with it" school of thought.
 
I'd go with whatever made me happy. If taking my shot at getting into a better (happier place) medical school would make me happy, then i'd go for it.
 
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