Yeah, as Milkman said, that's not correct. They offer a few in-state spots in December (10-12 normally, I've heard), a few in-state (same) in January, and then everyone else hears word in February. They will have offered acceptances to every available space on the February mail date, and waitlisted a certain number (normally around 60) more. There are only a few people that do the rural practice thing, and certainly not enough to fill all spots above 50 from. There is a lot of waitlist movement on the in-state side since some IS applicants will go elsewhere (although quite a few of them will have already informed UAMS of this before acceptances are offered) and quite a few more will choose to defer admission a year for one reason or another. If you're interested in doing the rural practice thing and you get waitlisted- make sure you apply for that program. You get moved to the top of the waitlist and your odds of getting in are exceptionally good at that point (keep in mind you do have to do rural practice if you apply to the program... 😀). There's also a lot of movement on the OOS side, but it may just seem like a lot since it's not as many spots too. At any rate, the majority of my OOS friends were waitlisted at some point it seems.
To break it down into statistics based off interviews... 324 in-state applicants were expected to interview, and between 104 (legal minimum)-151 will be accepted (normally closer to that 145-150 mark). Those are excessively good odds when it comes to med school admissions, so be happy about that. OOSers- 80 of you ended up interviewing, and probably around 30 of you (23 or more, anyway) will end up being accepted. Once again, excessively good odds if you were invited to interview.
I'm puzzled by them interviewing less OOSers this year if that's the case since overall OOS applications were up a decent amount, but I'm sure they have their reasons.
Feb 20th isn't that far away guys, so try not to stress any more than necessary. I kept myself insanely busy the month of February and it helped put it out of my mind until the letter actually showed up. I was driving a group from Dallas to Fayetteville for work when my parents called and said a letter had come in (they hadn't opened it) and I told them I'd call them back and hung up, I didn't want to hear bad news in a rental SUV full of prospective students and cause a wreck or something. Apparently I looked like I was having a heart attack or something after I hung up because one of the kids asked if I was alright 😀. I was of course thrilled when I called them back and they opened and read the first sentence of the letter, but I didn't totally believe it until I met them (that night, since I was leaving again for work in a couple days) halfway between Fayetteville and home to get the letter and see it with my own eyes. I made damn good time driving to meet them that night too. At any rate, keep your mind busy and come February maybe you can have your own crazy letter-opening experience.
