Hey mmmcdowe. Long time reader, first time poster on this thread. This has been bubbling up for a while, and I thought as a student who's involved in admissions you might be someone who'd be good at relaying this to the committee.
I interviewed early in the cycle and was rejected post-interview. And, after thinking about it for a while... recently wrote Dean Frantz a letter about how dissatisfied with how I was treated on interview day. I know they told us not to communicate after this decision was made, but my interview day was just awful.
My interviewer showed up an hour late with no apology, which made me late for my lunch/tour (I had to catch up with the group). He buried himself in the interview room with my application for 30 minutes, then called me in to ask me one (yes, one!) question. He then told me he thought my application was great, that I seemed like a grounded, intelligent person, and I that I definitely would be either accepted or waitlisted. He then went into about a 30-45 minute lecture about why Columbia was excellent, especially trying to compare Columbia to another top medical school that I currently work at.
While I will say most of the students were very nice, I ended up eating lunch with a MS1 who largely ignored me (and other applicants as well). When asking about where each of went to college, she replied to my answer by saying, jokingly (but offensive to me), "Oh, Columbia doesn't accept people from small liberal arts colleges". She ended up spending the 30 minute lunch talking to a single applicant about how much they loved Yale undergrad, while virtually ignoring the rest of us.
Anyway, I know this isn't necessarily Dean Frantz's fault, and I know this will have no effect on my own application cycle. But, I do feel like Columbia should make a concerted effort to give each student a fair interview and treat each applicant with the same respect.
And, I was just wondering if any other applicants had a similar experience.
