Did you apply "disadvantaged"?

I would disagree with njbmd and suggest that "Applying disadvantaged does not affect your application other than in a statistical manner. The AMCAS can use your status for generating statistics." may be true for his school, but not every school. Still, I don't know this for certain, and I've been unable to become a student adcom myself. Still, I think it's silly to say "who shows promise of being able to complete our curriculum". How many students fail out of your school anyway? Does it correlate nicely with GPA and MCAT scores before they started? (Psst, I already know the answer to this nationally. It doesn't.)

I applied as disadvantaged, and most people do tell me I was very justified in doing so. It's hard to say whether specifically checking the disadvantaged box and writing the disadvantaged essay meant anything, but the topics I discussed in my personal statement and disadvantaged essay came up in almost every interview. Many wanted to see if it was true, others wondered how it was possible.

It's true that many people who interviewed me paid little attention to my application. I did end up getting accepted at one school where they admitted they usually didn't even read things like personal statements. Still, at my second interview, my interviewer was so impressed with my essays and my interview that they offered me a rare early acceptance.

I encourage pre-meds who have a unique and challenging background to apply disadvantaged for whatever it's worth. Some adcoms do appreciate diverse backgrounds among their students. The vast majority of pre-meds come from middle to upper class families and as a result medical school classes feel homogenous. It irks some of us, including some adcoms. If some adcom somewhere is trying to produce the future leaders of medicine by selecting those who have come from a place that gives them the drive to do something about the problems in medicine, kudos to them. That's how I got into Penn when all the other top-10 schools rejected me. The adcom who selected my application brought me in to interview with him. He told me "I wouldn't have interviewed you, but I wanted to see if your application was real." Had my application been reviewed by with a different adcom, it's likely I wouldn't be here.

njbmd said:

AMCAS statistics have nothing to do with individual schools yours or mine.

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Agreed. I felt as though you were speaking in general terms. I provided some evidence to say that applying disadvantaged may indeed help at some schools if you are truly disadvantaged. While I may wonder why your school does not give extra kudos to disadvantaged or nontraditional students, this is a personal opinion of my own.

I am not a "he", I am a "she" and have been since my conception.

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Apologies.

If checking a box on an application gives you some feeling that you are somehow going to be evaluated differently and thus an "advantage" then you may be in for a disappointment when you are not selected be a member of the incoming medical class.

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Applying disadvantaged is not simply checking a box. There is an essay and a number of questions that go along with it. It is the combination of all those factors that may draw adcoms to pay special attention to your application. It probably played a role in my application at some schools, as evidenced by my prior post. How much boost it gives to your personal statement is hard to say, but it does give you extra space to elaborate on your particular situation.

If you have a competitive application, whether you grew up disadvantaged or not, you are likely to gain admission to medical school.

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Of course, though having the fortitude to work through hardship may knock you a tier higher than you otherwise may have been. It also might get you into med school if you're otherwise borderline. I know for certain my application was much stronger thanks to my personal statement and disadvantaged essays. It gave me the nudge to get into this top tier MD/PhD school. I know this is what happened in my case due to several conversations with adcoms here since coming in.

To believe otherwise in 2006, is to live in a "dream world".

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I think it is silly to speak so strongly about your position. Maybe at your school, this is true. You cannot speak for every school. That was the point of my earlier post.