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Thank you. So, I should be hearing back in about one week. Let the panic and neurotically checking of email begin..
2012-2013 Case Western Reserve University Application Thread
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Actually the last batch was after an adcom's review from a whole bunch of dates, as far as 3 weeks back. They've been posting their review dates on twitter though so you can check that to see when they'll meet to discuss your interview group.
No email, not sure we'll get one?
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You can leave a little early if you need to. If you're going directly from CCF, I recommend taking the Health Line to Tower City, then taking the Rapid (Red Line) to the airport. Both Tower City and the airport are at the end of their respective lines, so you can't possibly get lost. For those who are leaving from the Case campus, the Health Line goes right by Case as well. So you can either do the same thing (take the Health Line and then the Red Line), or you can get directly onto the Red Line. If you're staying at Glidden House or anywhere else around Euclid Ave, it's easiest to get on the Health Line. If you're near Cedar Road, which is all the way on the opposite side of campus, then get straight onto the Rapid. The Case med school is kind of halfway between both lines, so if you're leaving straight from your UP interview, pick whichever one you want.
You can see a map and timetables for the buses and trains on the RTA website.
No, you are never interviewing for the waitlist at CCLCM. The class is not completely filled until after the last interview day.
This is correct. Beyond the initial 32 acceptances, everyone else is accepted off the waitlist whenever a spot opens up. And the acceptances do come in batches.
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CCLCMer or any other current/previous Case student:
I was wondering if someone could shed some insight about the "hold" list for post-interviewees. I get the feeling that it's kinda a death sentence unless you have a substantial update letter (which I'm trying my darnedest to work towards :/). In the past do you know if UP pulls a lot of people off that list? Do they actually review those applicants throughout the process or not to your understanding?
Thanks!
I was wondering if someone could shed some insight about the "hold" list for post-interviewees. I get the feeling that it's kinda a death sentence unless you have a substantial update letter (which I'm trying my darnedest to work towards :/). In the past do you know if UP pulls a lot of people off that list? Do they actually review those applicants throughout the process or not to your understanding?
Thanks!
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Missed this before, but here's my take as someone who has gone through both med school and 1.5 years of residency: follow the money. Case is an awesome school. I loved CCLCM, and I would happily recommend it to anyone who is interested in an academic career. I really liked the UP too when I interviewed there. But as awesome as Case is, if you can go to OSU for half the cost, then do it. The education you'd get at Case is not twice as good as what you'd get at OSU where it's worth taking out twice as many loans just to go to Case. I guarantee that whichever school you choose, you will come back in 5+ years to tell future pre-meds to pick the cheaper school just like I'm coming back to tell you to do this.
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+1 I'd like to know this as well. From the Hold e-mail it seems as if they review periodically before the end of the interview season. Does that mean it's possible to also get accepted directly from the Hold list, or is it that some of the Hold list interviewees get put on the waitlist at the end of the interview season and it's only possible at this point to get in off the waitlist? Also, any numbers/statistics from past years?
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Thanks for your suggestions. I think I could walk to the RTA station of university/cedar after interview, it's only half a mile on the map.
BTW, your blog is amazing, I learned a lot about CCLCM from that 👍
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I'll buy that, money is a big concern of mine. However, I have to say, comparing the 2012 residency match lists for OSU and Case was no competition. Case had seriously awesome matching. This of course begs the question, does Case look better when it comes time to match?
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I've always thought that it's hard to distinguish between the effects of student and school when looking at a match list. Does Case make students more likely to match well, or are the students who choose Case already more likely to match well?
Also, the Case match list includes CCLCM students, I think.
Also, the Case match list includes CCLCM students, I think.
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I've wondered that myself, but I would like to assume what is in my opinion the most logical explanation; that it is a combination of institutional reputation and a self-selected student body. It most likely is not an either-or scenario.
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Also, be wary of trying to compare private schools, like Case, against publics, like OSU. Most often students are choosing the "best fit" for residencies, and not necessarily the "most regarded program" (honestly how it should be). Often the best fit for people is at their undergrad institution, current medical school, or back at their home state. Case has a ton of Cali students, so hence their very high number of residency matches at Cali schools (which are mostly all top programs, too). It's hard to definitely claim that they match better than a public school simply because of all the demographic and geographic discrepancies.
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Someone PMed me a question that I thought would be interesting to a lot of the rest of you, so I'm posting an anonymized version of it with my answer here. I'll get back to the match list question in just a second.
Regarding the class size, I liked it. You really get to know everyone, and it's more like a family (or a small town), with all the pros and cons of that. The biggest pro is that CCLCM is like Cheers, where everybody knows your name. But sometimes, that's also the biggest con. Similarly, everyone knows everyone's business. Though I think even at Case the same thing happens, because it's just the nature of people to gossip. Plus, even CCLCM classes are "huge" compared to most residency classes. I'm at an average sized program in my specialty, and there are only 36 people total in the entire residency program, along with maybe half a dozen fellows. So again, you have a limited pool of people that you tend to hang out with out of convenience, although many of us also have friends from other programs.
I think people also tend to overestimate how much time (and energy) you have to go out and party during med school. Sure, first year (and even second year to some degree) is like college on steroids, with plenty of parties. The UP students can even show up to class (if they show up at all) in sweats and a t-shirt. But the further along you get in your training, the more it starts feeling like a "real" job, and the less you feel like a college student. Plus, your priorities start to change as you get older. While you're in med school, you might buy a house, or get engaged/married, or even have a child. It's hard to imagine that kind of life when you're still in college, but in your mid-twenties, all of a sudden you'll start getting the wedding and baby shower invites. One of my female med school classmates actually had TWO kids during med school.
So, there's my take on the subject. Hope it helps.
I can't speak to how the relationship between UP and CCLCM students is now, since I graduated 1.5 years ago. However, I never felt like there was any animosity between us. My two best friends in med school were UP students, and if anything, it made me sad that they both graduated the year before me and went off to another city for residency. A lot of my classmates had UP roommates, and a lot of us participated in interest groups or activities like Doc Opera that were open to people from both programs. That being said, it is true that it can be hard to coordinate schedules sometimes (like to attend meetings) since their class schedule is different than ours. But that was a logistical thing, not an animosity thing.
Regarding the class size, I liked it. You really get to know everyone, and it's more like a family (or a small town), with all the pros and cons of that. The biggest pro is that CCLCM is like Cheers, where everybody knows your name. But sometimes, that's also the biggest con. Similarly, everyone knows everyone's business. Though I think even at Case the same thing happens, because it's just the nature of people to gossip. Plus, even CCLCM classes are "huge" compared to most residency classes. I'm at an average sized program in my specialty, and there are only 36 people total in the entire residency program, along with maybe half a dozen fellows. So again, you have a limited pool of people that you tend to hang out with out of convenience, although many of us also have friends from other programs.
I think people also tend to overestimate how much time (and energy) you have to go out and party during med school. Sure, first year (and even second year to some degree) is like college on steroids, with plenty of parties. The UP students can even show up to class (if they show up at all) in sweats and a t-shirt. But the further along you get in your training, the more it starts feeling like a "real" job, and the less you feel like a college student. Plus, your priorities start to change as you get older. While you're in med school, you might buy a house, or get engaged/married, or even have a child. It's hard to imagine that kind of life when you're still in college, but in your mid-twenties, all of a sudden you'll start getting the wedding and baby shower invites. One of my female med school classmates actually had TWO kids during med school.
So, there's my take on the subject. Hope it helps.
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Be very careful about reading too much into match lists. There are at least three problems with doing this.
First, you have no idea when you read a match list what the students actually wanted. So, if I'm from CA and wanting to go back to CA, but I match at one of the big East Coast hospitals, that looks great on paper, but I'm going to be unhappy. Similarly, if that big East Coast school was seventh on my match list, and that's where I ended up, I'm going to be unhappy. You have no idea when you read a match list whether that program was first or last on each student's list.
Second, not only do you not know how far down their match lists various students went, you also don't know if they even matched into the specialty they wanted. So, if I wanted to go into ortho, but I wound up scrambling into anesthesia because I didn't match in ortho, then again, I'm not happy even though my match may look good on paper.
Finally, you have to consider that students who are at state schools are much more likely to be people from that state, and are also much more likely to want to stay in their home state, compared to people who come to a private school from OOS. So the issue is not that the students at OSU aren't as "good" as the students from Case, or that Case looks "better" on an app than OSU does. There is a ton of self-selection and non-academic considerations that come into play when people make up their rank lists. For example, I mentioned in the post before that many people get engaged/married in med school. If that happens to you, and your spouse has a job/family in OH, you may rank the local programs first, even if you're not from OH yourself. Even if you do go OOS, you may rank programs in certain cities based on where your spouse can get a job, or where your spouse will be happy. If your spouse hates Baltimore, guess what, you aren't going to be ranking Johns Hopkins high on your list (at least, not if you want to stay married.
)Student effects are infinitely more important than school effects. The things that matter most to residency PDs are Step 1 scores (completely student-driven), third year rotation grades (heavily influenced by student effort), and LORs (also heavily influenced by student effort). Some PDs may care a little about school name, but you're still way better off coming from a lower ranked school with a 260 Step 1 than you are coming from a higher ranked school with a barely passing score.
Correct. We have our own match list, and we are also included in the overall Case match list, as are the MSTP grads.
Correct.
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Complete since 9/4 and no news...not even pre-interview hold
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Be very careful about reading too much into match lists. There are at least three problems with doing this.
First, you have no idea when you read a match list what the students actually wanted. So, if I'm from CA and wanting to go back to CA, but I match at one of the big East Coast hospitals, that looks great on paper, but I'm going to be unhappy. Similarly, if that big East Coast school was seventh on my match list, and that's where I ended up, I'm going to be unhappy. You have no idea when you read a match list whether that program was first or last on each student's list.
Second, not only do you not know how far down their match lists various students went, you also don't know if they even matched into the specialty they wanted. So, if I wanted to go into ortho, but I wound up scrambling into anesthesia because I didn't match in ortho, then again, I'm not happy even though my match may look good on paper.
Finally, you have to consider that students who are at state schools are much more likely to be people from that state, and are also much more likely to want to stay in their home state, compared to people who come to a private school from OOS. So the issue is not that the students at OSU aren't as "good" as the students from Case, or that Case looks "better" on an app than OSU does. There is a ton of self-selection and non-academic considerations that come into play when people make up their rank lists. For example, I mentioned in the post before that many people get engaged/married in med school. If that happens to you, and your spouse has a job/family in OH, you may rank the local programs first, even if you're not from OH yourself. Even if you do go OOS, you may rank programs in certain cities based on where your spouse can get a job, or where your spouse will be happy. If your spouse hates Baltimore, guess what, you aren't going to be ranking Johns Hopkins high on your list (at least, not if you want to stay married.
Student effects are infinitely more important than school effects. The things that matter most to residency PDs are Step 1 scores (completely student-driven), third year rotation grades (heavily influenced by student effort), and LORs (also heavily influenced by student effort). Some PDs may care a little about school name, but you're still way better off coming from a lower ranked school with a 260 Step 1 than you are coming from a higher ranked school with a barely passing score.
Thanks for all the insight! Definitely helpful in decision-making. 👍
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Be very careful about reading too much into match lists. There are at least three problems with doing this.
First, you have no idea when you read a match list what the students actually wanted. So, if I'm from CA and wanting to go back to CA, but I match at one of the big East Coast hospitals, that looks great on paper, but I'm going to be unhappy. Similarly, if that big East Coast school was seventh on my match list, and that's where I ended up, I'm going to be unhappy. You have no idea when you read a match list whether that program was first or last on each student's list.
Second, not only do you not know how far down their match lists various students went, you also don't know if they even matched into the specialty they wanted. So, if I wanted to go into ortho, but I wound up scrambling into anesthesia because I didn't match in ortho, then again, I'm not happy even though my match may look good on paper.
Finally, you have to consider that students who are at state schools are much more likely to be people from that state, and are also much more likely to want to stay in their home state, compared to people who come to a private school from OOS. So the issue is not that the students at OSU aren't as "good" as the students from Case, or that Case looks "better" on an app than OSU does. There is a ton of self-selection and non-academic considerations that come into play when people make up their rank lists. For example, I mentioned in the post before that many people get engaged/married in med school. If that happens to you, and your spouse has a job/family in OH, you may rank the local programs first, even if you're not from OH yourself. Even if you do go OOS, you may rank programs in certain cities based on where your spouse can get a job, or where your spouse will be happy. If your spouse hates Baltimore, guess what, you aren't going to be ranking Johns Hopkins high on your list (at least, not if you want to stay married.
Student effects are infinitely more important than school effects. The things that matter most to residency PDs are Step 1 scores (completely student-driven), third year rotation grades (heavily influenced by student effort), and LORs (also heavily influenced by student effort). Some PDs may care a little about school name, but you're still way better off coming from a lower ranked school with a 260 Step 1 than you are coming from a higher ranked school with a barely passing score.
Correct. We have our own match list, and we are also included in the overall Case match list, as are the MSTP grads.
Correct.
I wasn't referring to the residency programs locations quite so much as specialty choice ratios when I said Case's matching was good - i.e. only 4 of the 2012 Case grads went into family medicine, none had transitional years, etc.. Sure, it may have been a naive, assumption-ridden approach but I have to base my decision on something after all! I guess that I just really liked Case when I interviewed there and I'm looking for reasons to justify the extra cost if it comes down to it! Don't give me such a hard time 😉
That said I never doubted for a minute the weight of individual effort in finding success in medicine.
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You're welcome.
I'm not giving you a hard time. I'm trying to help you avoid basing your decision on something not very relevant (match lists) instead of something very relevant (COA). The problem with being a pre-med is that you have a very limited view of what is ultimately going to matter, and so you focus on the wrong things when you look at med schools. (It's not just you - most of us have the same problem.) Four years from now when you go to apply for residency, you won't care whether you did PBL vs lecture vs self study your first year of med school. You'll only care about whether your Step 1 score and your clerkship grades will get you into the specialty/program that you want. Five years from now, you won't care about how many of your classmates went into FM. You'll care about how much your loans are stressing you out and decreasing your standard of living.
Speaking of curriculums, besides comparing COA when you pick a school, I also recommend ignoring the learning style of the first two years and looking at the third year curriculum. Remember, after your Step 1 score, your third year clerkship grades are the most important thing to PDs. So make sure you get a good sense of how strong clerkships are at each school and how they're graded, and maybe how they select members of AOA (medical honor society) too. Those are the things that will make you more competitive for residency. (For those considering CCLCM, we don't have AOA. The UP does, and most other med schools do too. If you go to a school that has AOA and you are selected, it is a big boost to your residency app.)
On a side note, it's not possible that no Case grads had transition years. Anyone going into one of the competitive specialties (derm, anesthesia, rad onc, etc.) is required to do a transition or prelim year first prior to starting their specialty training. Since they're typically more laid back, transition years are often competitive, while surgery prelim years in particular are often looking for warm bodies to fill them. Even the thought of being a surgery prelim intern makes me....shudder.
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Rejected from Case CP program yesterday. I was complete the same date as the UP program when I posted last. Oh well...maybe residency. Good luck everyone else! At least I have an acceptance at my state school and keeping my fingers crossed for UTMB.
What do you consider to be important when looking at the clerkship years? Schedule...location....# of other students on your rotation? Also what about clerkship grading--is it better to be mostly evaluated by faculty or residents? Large vs. small portion of your grade based on shelf? Thanks
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deleted127837
Visited Case recently and had a great time. 🙂
Was really pleasantly surprised, def. one of my top schools. Trying to figure out how to best thank everyone for making the day so great 🙂👍
Was really pleasantly surprised, def. one of my top schools. Trying to figure out how to best thank everyone for making the day so great 🙂👍
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For an interview? Hope it went well!
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I am interviewing at UP and CP in January. I know that CP is essentially non-rolling, but will it be really late in the game for UP too - as in, will I be interviewing for the waitlist?
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I got an interview here a week or two ago and the only open date for me was in February, so ... maybe I'm lower on their priority list somehow? So you probably aren't interviewing for the waitlist 🙂
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.........
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deleted127837
Idealistically, I would say that schools know how many applicants they have when their applicant window ends, and so can pace their acceptances throughout that window. Realistically, though, you may be interviewing for a waitlist in a sense, in that around February/March/etc. people start withdrawing from a lot of their schools and some people may be accepted to spaces that weeks ago were already given away.
I don't think any school explicitly interviews for the waitlist, though. That would seem to show poor time/application management on their part - accepting earlier probably only improves matriculant ratios for a small population of applicants (and likely not the most competitive applicants), and a 42/4.0/saved China from the Huns applicant may apply the day of the deadline.
...
...I'd write them an email and mention it - if nothing else, it draws attention to the letter so that they don't miss it, and if you need to send in a separate copy, you'll know for certain and they'll be expecting it.
It was fun 🙂 I'll find out how well it went in a few week(s), haha
My research advisor's letter was only included in a committee letter packet, and I got an interview last week, so I think just packet itself should be fine. Doesn't hurt to check with admissions though.
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anyone know when the next round of decisions come out? 😉
Around 250
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It's closer to 20% if you account for the fact that a small # of additional students are accepted off of the waitlist. So the total # of acceptances would be around 45-50.
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was put on hold for the college track, pre-interview today. does anyone know how often they do this? is there a large pre-interview hold group, or are they pretty good about rejecting kids straight off the bat if they don't really have a chance at all? does anyone know how many kids get put into the pre-interview hold group, and how many people make it off the hold and get an interview?
thanks!
edit: complete on 8/30, applied for UT as well but haven't heard a thing from them yet.
thanks!
edit: complete on 8/30, applied for UT as well but haven't heard a thing from them yet.
Yeah I think that last year the ended up accepting 52. Pretty crazy that 20 people turned down an offer to go to school for free at the cleveland clinic.
Yeah I think that last year the ended up accepting 52. Pretty crazy that 20 people turned down an offer to go to school at the cleveland clinic for free.
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So it's been about a week since I got my II from CCLCM (via status update), but I still don't have anything in my email yet from them. I double checked my spam folder and there's nothing in there either. Is it normal to not get an email from Case/CCLCM after status updates ?
I got an email, but I wouldn't worry about it because all it says is that you have been offered an interview. All the important stuff is on the iapply page.
If things are the same as last year then your file will not be reviewed again until the alternate list is made. They say this occurs in March, but last year it was not done until April. Basically, they go through all the holds and reject some of the people, whoever is left gets on the alternate list. No one is accepted at this point. Hence, to my knowledge it is impossible to get accepted directly from the "hold list". The waitlist will start moving at the beginning of may, as the deadline to accept an acceptance at Case is May 1st instead of the 15th.
Someone made a comment about not getting off the waitlist without an update letter. My personal anecdote supports this so I would focus on that since there is nothing else you can do at this point.
You will be forced to buy a laptop so wait to get one if you plan on attending Case. I can't remember the specific requirements but they were not typical. They are doing an ipad trial this year so that may be option for you guys. Our options were Mac or Dell.
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It is not impossible, but it is not especially likely. It did occur last year.
As to letters, if Case is where you want to be in July, you should probably tell someone.🙂
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I am especially curious given the windows 8 disaster of an OS, that will be forced on new pc buyers
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Administrative computing has been quite flexible in the past. I would wait until the builds are announced before getting too concerned about it.
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My understanding was the iPad trial wasn't going quite as they expected and it probably wouldn't be happening next year, but that's just what I heard on my interview day
Could anyone who has interviewed at the Uni Track and College Track comment on how much walking the tours are, especially outside? I am trying to figure out what to wear for a snowy interview next month and worried about heels and snow...
Thanks!
Thanks!
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The tour was about 45 minutes at a slow pace. We were outside for maybe like 20 seconds
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And the college track is all indoors. Everything is connected by bridges!
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I suspect that quite a few of those might've been people who were also accepted to MD/PhD programs.
Thanks!!
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