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Location definitely, specifically, what hospitals you rotate through. All Case students (including CCLCM) can rotate at multiple sites that give a broad picture of medicine, from the typical tertiary/quaternary hospital (UH) to a huge and specialized group practice (CCF) to a hard core county hospital (Metro) to a government run hospital (VA) and now apparently also to a more suburban type of hospital from what I've heard (Kaiser). There's way more to medicine than what you see at the typical tertiary care center, and I think it's important to be exposed to multiple rotation sites.
Other important things:
- How are MS3 grades determined? Most med schools use some combo of evaluations and shelf exams. But on one extreme, you have CCLCM, which doesn't count (or even require) the shelf exams at all, and on the other extreme, you have schools that weight shelf exams heavily and don't count the narrative evals for much. Based on your own strengths and weaknesses, it's worth taking that into account.
- What do students get to do? You might hear rumors sometimes that students don't get to do much at CCF, but in my experience as both a student at CCF and as a resident (not at CCF), what you get to do is highly dependent on who you're working with. I got to do a lot on most of my CCF rotations with the exception of peds. Still, some hospitals are more hands on overall than others, and some specialties are more hands on than others. You will typically get to do a lot more when you're on more procedural specialties like surgery, gyn, anesthesia, or EM, so pay attention to what students get to do.
- How are students treated? At the Case affiliated hospitals, students are under the same work hour restrictions as residents, and beating down of students is not tolerated. They're not supposed to be scutted either (i.e., asked to do a lot of busy work that does not contribute to student learning). Try to avoid places that scut students a lot or where students get belittled in the name of "teaching."
It's hard to ask about some of these things on your interview day without coming across like a jerk, so it's probably a good idea to wait to contact students for some straight talk until after you are already accepted to a given school. Second looks are also a good time to check out hospitals and talk to upper level students. Not that the gung ho MS1s you meet at your interview days aren't giving you their honest perspectives about what life at their med schools is like, but they obviously don't know what rotations or residency apps are like since they haven't gotten that far yet. Try to talk to MS3s or MS4s, or even recent alums, if at all possible.
It should be fine as long as a research letter is included somewhere.
You can't come up with an acceptance chance like that, because all applicants aren't equally likely to be accepted. There are some applicants who are so awesome on paper that the interview is almost just a formality unless they do something awful on their interview day. Obviously they have a much higher chance of acceptance than average. There are some applicants who make everyone they meet on interview day hate them, or who are "courtesy invites" that wouldn't have gotten an invite otherwise, and they have little to no chance of getting accepted. And then there is a large group in the middle who could be good students but who don't particularly stand out one way or the other. So, the average odds of acceptance may be 13%, but an individual applicant's odds of acceptance may be much higher or lower than that.
Don't know how many people get pre-interview holds or who ultimately end up with invites after being on pre-interview hold, but it's pretty common to have your app put on hold. They do also reject quite a few people without invites-there are already several people who posted about rejections in this thread.
Call or email the office if you're concerned.
Bring a pair of flats to wear during the tours. CCF in particular is like a small city. Trust me, you do not want to be walking around there for an hour wearing heels.
Very likely, or else they could be people who can afford to pay tuition at other schools or got scholarships at other schools.
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