Mind me asking if you had above average stats for unc (33/3.7) which are also above avg for national matriculants why are you reapplying? I would have thought you'd get in somewhere. Did you only app to unc?
Haha, I recently received a phone call from my pre-med adviser because she was "shocked and appalled" to see that I was reapplying after applying to 11 schools last year. I think my lack of success boiled down to three things; not applying to a sufficiently broad range of schools, not trying hard enough on secondaries, and, honestly, plain bad luck.
First of all, though I applied to 11 schools, they were mostly schools where my stats were slightly below average. Second, I could have done a better job on my secondaries by A.) being more school specific and B.) turning them around more quickly (some I didn't get to for a month, which, based on some speculative discussions I've read, might negatively impact the ADCOM's view of your application).
As a result of these two things, I ended up with only three interviews, one of which was at UNC, where I had a pretty solid shot at acceptance (from a statistical standpoint at least). Unfortunately, my interview at UNC was straight up
bad. My interviewer and I had bad chemistry and I was feeling too nervous. My subsequent interviews at other schools were great, but unfortunately those interviewers were less influential in the admissions process (one interviewer told me she thought I would be a great student at her institution and that she sincerely hoped I'd get in...didn't seem to matter to the ADCOM). Ultimately I ended up waitlisted at one "Top 30" school in New York City, but I withdrew recently since I had already invested so much money in re-applying, and because UNC seems pretty friendly to re-applicants.
So lessons learned:
1.) Apply to a broad range of schools
2.) Work
really hard on your secondaries and make sure they are as school-specific as possible.
3.) There is a significant amount of luck in this process; who interviews you, who reads your secondary,
when that person reads your secondary, specific schools' ADCOM procedures, etc... There are so many intelligent and well-qualified people applying to medical school that, to some extent, it's a crapshoot. At all three of my interviews last year, my fellow applicants and I could not figure out who would make the cut and who would be rejected. Whatever the case, don't be like me and let failure deflate your self esteem. Just do your best and be persistent and it will work out eventually!
