2013-2014 Stanford University Application Thread

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nemo123 said:
Congrats!! (Also on your other acceptances)



Who knows. What has happened to all the SDNers? And one post SDNers too?
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RIGHT! I miss the continuous updates... I feel like MDApps has been pretty quiet too
 
willas01 said:
Congrats!!! So next Friday will be for applicants interviewed 10/16, or not since it is Thanksgiving!?
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Thanks! I doubt it works that way, though it seems logical. SDN is a small world after all.

Incidentally, I'll get a chance to meet the famous Nicco if he decides to go Stanford's second look 🙂
 
apptempo said:
The point: now that it is late November, is it fair to assume something I don't know about (e.g., my letters) is causing problems, i.e., my application to not be regarded as highly? Any thoughts at all greatly appreciated -- thank you again!
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I'm going to apologize in advance, if this comes across as harsh, I really don't intend for it to be.

But to be as straightforward as possible: no, it is not fair to assume that at all.

Maybe if you didn't have ANY interviews, but 9 interviews of 18? For one, there are still people out there who don't have a single interview. That aside, if there was really a red flag in your letters (or in something else you "can't control"), you wouldn't have any interviews, not just no interviews at the schools you want to attend.

It is possible that though they lack red flags, your letters are pretty vanilla and are not putting you over the top for schools like Stanford. But is it fair to assume that that is what happened? Nope.

Its possible its because of subpar letters (or in something else you "can't control"), but more likely, its that you're simply not what they are looking for. Your stats are stellar, but there are still quite a few folks with those stats. It comes down to the rest, and unfortunately, what SDN has really taught me, is at the end of the day, no matter how impressive I may think my research is, or my clinical experiences are, someone has something equally as amazing on their resume. And maybe that guy spoke about it with more passion/detail/whatever, than I did.

But you're right. At the end of the day, there's a "luck of the draw" element to this whole process, and maybe you just got unlucky.
 
apptempo said:
Hello all, I'm hoping for advice and just signed up for SDN (after many months of use) only to make this post. Thank you in advance for any help!

Simply, I am not receiving the interview invites I hoped to -- including to Stanford -- though am still doing reasonably well (9 invites from 18 secondaries, 1 acceptance). I know so much goes into schools' assessment of applicants and feel silly for having a "problem" with how things are going. I am definitely grateful for the opportunities I've been given. In all honesty, though, I am also becoming disappointed that my top choices have remained silent.

I completed secondaries mid-August with the following: MCAT 40, GPA 3.97, lots of research, volunteering, leadership etc; non-traditional applicant; not URM. The point: now that it is late November, is it fair to assume something I don't know about (e.g., my letters) is causing problems, i.e., my application to not be regarded as highly? Any thoughts at all greatly appreciated -- thank you again!
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dude, you posted this in the Harvard and Stanford thread.

lol @ anybody who expects to get interviews at Harvard or Stanford Universities, no.. make that Harvard / Stanford medical schools.
 
apptempo said:
Hello all, I'm hoping for advice and just signed up for SDN (after many months of use) only to make this post. Thank you in advance for any help!

Simply, I am not receiving the interview invites I hoped to -- including to Stanford -- though am still doing reasonably well (9 invites from 18 secondaries, 1 acceptance). I know so much goes into schools' assessment of applicants and feel silly for having a "problem" with how things are going. I am definitely grateful for the opportunities I've been given. In all honesty, though, I am also becoming disappointed that my top choices have remained silent.

I completed secondaries mid-August with the following: MCAT 40, GPA 3.97, lots of research, volunteering, leadership etc; non-traditional applicant; not URM. The point: now that it is late November, is it fair to assume something I don't know about (e.g., my letters) is causing problems, i.e., my application to not be regarded as highly? Any thoughts at all greatly appreciated -- thank you again!
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Don't you guys love it when random people make accounts just to ask what they want to ask without having contributed one thing to the forums themselves?
 
Speaking of contribution, I might as well add my thoughts on Stanford.

1. Stanford wants to be a leader (if not already) in academic medicine. They invest heavy on research and would probably want to attract people going into academic medicine. This doesn't mean just MD/PhD, but also those (like me) who wants to do research and clinical work in the future, possibly with just an MD.

2. Stanford MMI is tough. The interviewers were semi-cold and very confrontational. To raise the hopes of those who are waiting for decisions in Dec, I felt I did pretty crappy on the MMI. Unlike at SD where I think I rocked the MMI (and got in), I really couldn't evaluate my performance at Stanford, other than feeling I bombed it.

3. MMI at any school is only a portion of your application, sometimes only a small portion.

Hope this helps a little 🙂
 
Techerguy,

UCSD and Stanford are both research powerhouses. I am assuming you want to go into academic medicine and do research during and after medical school. Are you leaning towards one or the other? If so, why?
 
solitarius said:
Techerguy,

UCSD and Stanford are both research powerhouses. I am assuming you want to go into academic medicine and do research during and after medical school. Are you leaning towards one or the other? If so, why?
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You are right. Stanford itself is very strong in research, and UCSD has Salk and Scripps so together they are also very strong. At this point I can't say. I'm close enough to both institutions so I'll just go to second look and figure out. Stanford definitely rewards people a lot better for doing research in medical school, if you haven't heard about the Medscholar program already.
 
Techerguy said:
You are right. Stanford itself is very strong in research, and UCSD has Salk and Scripps so together they are also very strong. At this point I can't say. I'm close enough to both institutions so I'll just go to second look and figure out. Stanford definitely rewards people a lot better for doing research in medical school, if you haven't heard about the Medscholar program already.
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Good luck to you. Those are both great options to have. It's also good to hear you didn't automatically choose Stanford just becasue.
 
lall said:
I'm going to apologize in advance, if this comes across as harsh, I really don't intend for it to be.

But to be as straightforward as possible: no, it is not fair to assume that at all.

Maybe if you didn't have ANY interviews, but 9 interviews of 18? For one, there are still people out there who don't have a single interview. That aside, if there was really a red flag in your letters (or in something else you "can't control"), you wouldn't have any interviews, not just no interviews at the schools you want to attend.

It is possible that though they lack red flags, your letters are pretty vanilla and are not putting you over the top for schools like Stanford. But is it fair to assume that that is what happened? Nope.

Its possible its because of subpar letters (or in something else you "can't control"), but more likely, its that you're simply not what they are looking for. Your stats are stellar, but there are still quite a few folks with those stats. It comes down to the rest, and unfortunately, what SDN has really taught me, is at the end of the day, no matter how impressive I may think my research is, or my clinical experiences are, someone has something equally as amazing on their resume. And maybe that guy spoke about it with more passion/detail/whatever, than I did.

But you're right. At the end of the day, there's a "luck of the draw" element to this whole process, and maybe you just got unlucky.
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No need to apologize -- that's exactly the honest perspective I was looking for. Your response was very thoughtful and makes a lot of sense -- I don't interact with a lot of other current applicants and so remain a bit clueless. Thank you for the reality check!

Re other responses, my post was probably ill-considered. I choose this specific forum because I thought other applicants with comparable numbers might have appropriate perspective. Yet, I didn’t think about how it might offend other applicants who are (also) working very hard but have not been as lucky. I suppose my post was a result of being cloistered from other applicants and insufficient consideration. Anyways, I deleted it (possibly incorrectly). No intention to offend anyone -- good luck to you all.
 
nemo123 said:
Don't you guys love it when random people make accounts just to ask what they want to ask without having contributed one thing to the forums themselves?
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You know, I hadn't thought of it that way before and can understand where you're coming from. If I thought I could've helped someone prior to now, I would've done so -- hadn't happened. That said, now that I am signed up, I will make an effort to comment when it might be helpful. I'm glad there are students like you who have done so thus far.

In part, honestly, it's also comments like yours that made me avoid signing up so long -- SDN can be pretty judgemental and ruthless. Good luck to you though. My response to other comments is above.
 
apptempo said:
In part, honestly, it's also comments like yours that made me avoid signing up so long -- SDN can be pretty judgemental and ruthless. Good luck to you though. My response to other comments is above.
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As you know, this process is rough. Despite our flaws, triumphs, disappointments, and fears, we try to help each other out. I know I do.

There's a lot of idiocy on here, and those who visit this site deal with it a lot. Let me ask you: would you think twice about how your friends IRL & classmates would react to your comments about expecting interviews at Harvard / Stanford? Are we supposed to be more empathetic b/c we're on a forum?
 
solitarius said:
As you know, this process is rough. Despite our flaws, triumphs, disappointments, and fears, we try to help each other out. I know I do.

There's a lot of idiocy on here, and those who visit this site deal with it a lot. Let me ask you: would you think twice about how your friends IRL & classmates would react to your comments about expecting interviews at Harvard / Stanford? Are we supposed to be more empathetic b/c we're on a forum?
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I would be fine talking to my friends about this, though -- I realize now -- it is unreasonable to expect people on this forum to understand that. Not an excuse, but an apology and explanation. Exactly as explained above and in accordance with my deleting my comment, etc. I just responded to your post on the other thread and would refer you to that again here -- doubly so this time. Good luck.
 
apptempo said:
You know, I hadn't thought of it that way before and can understand where you're coming from. If I thought I could've helped someone prior to now, I would've done so -- hadn't happened. That said, now that I am signed up, I will make an effort to comment when it might be helpful. I'm glad there are students like you who have done so thus far.

In part, honestly, it's also comments like yours that made me avoid signing up so long -- SDN can be pretty judgemental and ruthless. Good luck to you though. My response to other comments is above.
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I'm sorry if my comment came off that way. It wasn't directed at you exactly; it was more a general comment that I was making. To be honest, how would you feel about someone using you all the time and not given you anything in return? That's what it feels like on SDN sometimes. I remember the first couple days after October 15th when schools were releasing decisions. Some of threads were literally exploding with SDNers and SDN lurkers looking at the school specific threads here (>100 people sometimes viewing one thread at a time). And do you know how many of those >100 people were lurkers? More than 60-70%. See my point? I'm normally not a very active person on other forums, but I decided to become more active during the application season because I wanted to share info with everyone who views these threads. These threads and other SDNers who are very active here and on MDApps have been very helpful to me in this process so I wanted to do the same for people applying this cycle and in the future.

In terms of your main post, we can't really give you an answer on your situation anyway. We're applying to this cycle too, and we don't have any knowledge on how this admissions process works. The only way to describe it is that it's a crapshoot. We know just as much as you do about why 9 schools have given you IIs while the other have been silent.
 
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Has anyone tried to send an in the area email/out of the country email? I'm going out the country soon and have heard nothing but crickets from Stanford, so I was thinking of sending them an email...
 
nemo123 said:
Has anyone tried to send an in the area email/out of the country email? I'm going out the country soon and have heard nothing but crickets from Stanford, so I was thinking of sending them an email...
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From the Stanford Admissions website:

"Updates to an application will be accepted only after an applicant has been invited to interview. Interview decisions are made based on information submitted in the AMCAS application, Stanford Supplemental Application, and letters of recommendation.

It is important that we maintain a consistent and equitable standard for all applications to be considered with the same basis of information. If applicable, additional information can be submitted after the day of your interview."
 
Hipocrates said:
From the Stanford Admissions website:

"Updates to an application will be accepted only after an applicant has been invited to interview. Interview decisions are made based on information submitted in the AMCAS application, Stanford Supplemental Application, and letters of recommendation.

It is important that we maintain a consistent and equitable standard for all applications to be considered with the same basis of information. If applicable, additional information can be submitted after the day of your interview.

Updates to an application will be accepted only after an applicant has been invited to interview. Interview decisions are made based on information submitted in the AMCAS application, Stanford Supplemental Application, and letters of recommendation.

It is important that we maintain a consistent and equitable standard for all applications to be considered with the same basis of information. If applicable, additional information can be submitted after the day of your interview."
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But I don't think that applies to in the area emails though. Some people in the past have sent in the area emails to Stanford and have gotten IIs within a week. Things might be different this year with the new director though.
 
nemo123 said:
But I don't think that applies to in the area emails though. Some people in the past have sent in the area emails to Stanford and have gotten IIs within a week. Things might be different this year with the new director though.
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See post #158 in this thread:

"I sent Stanford an update notice about the fact that I was going to present at a research conference.

I got a response that said that they only accept additional information after an interview invitation which I'm guessing is a nice way of saying that I prolly won't get one... Was this policy officially stated anywhere?"
 
Hipocrates said:
See post #158 in this thread:

"I sent Stanford an update notice about the fact that I was going to present at a research conference.

I got a response that said that they only accept additional information after an interview invitation which I'm guessing is a nice way of saying that I prolly won't get one... Was this policy officially stated anywhere?"
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Yeah, but that's an update letter, not an in the area email. Stanford has always had this policy of not accepting pre-interview updates in the past, but they have always been receptive to in the area emails. However, that was under the old director of admissions. Things could be different with the new one.
 
nemo123 said:
Has anyone tried to send an in the area email/out of the country email? I'm going out the country soon and have heard nothing but crickets from Stanford, so I was thinking of sending them an email...
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I get what you're saying. You aren't trying to submit additional information, so in that aspect, I don't think that the statement provided from the website applies to your circumstances. On the other hand, the line about fairness to others makes me think that they might not be open to it, but it's worth a shot! They aren't going to reject you because you're concerned about missing an interview being out of the country. You could also argue with those saying not to do it that you are supposed to keep them up-to-date on your current location and contact information. That may even be the best way to approach it with the school.
 
EODWalt said:
I get what you're saying. You aren't trying to submit additional information, so in that aspect, I don't think that the statement provided from the website applies to your circumstances. On the other hand, the line about fairness to others makes me think that they might not be open to it, but it's worth a shot! They aren't going to reject you because you're concerned about missing an interview being out of the country. You could also argue with those saying not to do it that you are supposed to keep them up-to-date on your current location and contact information. That may even be the best way to approach it with the school.
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Well I'll try anyways and will let everyone know what the results are!
 
does anyone know when Stanford starts sending pre-int. rejections?
 
So no one really knows because of the new admissions director, but my (uneducated) guess is that they're almost finished cherry-picking for superstars (deadline was Nov. 15) and will soon start a second pass through applications, during which we'll see another wave of invites and a wave of pre-interview rejections.
 
Ebrithill said:
does anyone know when Stanford starts sending pre-int. rejections?
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I've tried to call them to ask, but they make it impossible to talk to someone from the office on the phone. 😡 Some people from last year's thread were able to talk with someone, but I have no clue how they did it.
 
Anyone get an interview invite this morning? They seem to like to send them on Monday mornings at 4 in the morning it seems...
 
smarts1 said:
Anyone get an interview invite this morning? They seem to like to send them on Monday mornings at 4 in the morning it seems...
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Nothing here. Sent an in the area/out of country email last week, so:xf:.
 
I think there are more crickets at Stanford this year... I'm pretty sure they would have sent some more interview invites by now (particularly yesterday).
 
Okay I finally got a chance to get a hold of someone in the admissions office today, and basically the person on the phone told me that they've reviewed a lot of applicants and many of them have been rejected them pre-interview. I inquired further and asked her if any of those applicants know they've been rejected and obviously from the thread we know the answer is no. I then asked her when Stanford would start sending those pre-interview rejection letters, and she told me that she's not allowed to give that info. (Ugh why are schools not transparent at all?)

She also told me that Stanford IS receptive to in-the-area/out-of-the-country emails, so if any of you guys have that, they say to email them.

On another note, she added that Stanford still has "thousands of applications awaiting review" and that they're "trying to get through them as quickly as possible." I'm surprised it's still thousands by this point... It's December.
 
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nemo123 said:
Okay I finally got a chance to get a hold of someone in the admissions office today, and basically the person on the phone told me that they've reviewed a lot of applicants and many of them have been rejected them pre-interview. I inquired further and asked her if any of those applicants know they've been rejected and obviously from the thread we know the answer is no. I then asked her when Stanford would start sending those pre-interview rejection letters, and she told me that she's not allowed to give that info. (Ugh why are schools not transparent at all?)

She also told me that Stanford IS receptive to in-the-area/out-of-the-country emails, so if any of you guys have that, they say to email them.

On another note, she added that Stanford still has "thousands of applications awaiting review" and that they're "trying to get through them as quickly as possible." I'm surprised it's still thousands by this point... It's December.
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Ugh really, they can't let us know when to expect any sort of feedback? Thanks for this update, at least I know I can give my mailbox a break from compulsively checking for that letter...
 
Every time someone posts in this thread (or my phone rings), my stomach does back flips. I know the holiday makes things slower, but being on week seven of the the two - six weeks til we let you know the outcome of your interview is not a fun ride.

Congratulations to everyone who is winning at patience and consolation to the rest of us. 😉
 
DR MOM said:
Every time someone posts in this thread (or my phone rings), my stomach does back flips. I know the holiday makes things slower, but being on week seven of the the two - six weeks til we let you know the outcome of your interview is not a fun ride.

Congratulations to everyone who is winning at patience and consolation to the rest of us. 😉
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Lol you have some amazing interview invites... And you have Mayo.
 
nemo123 said:
Okay I finally got a chance to get a hold of someone in the admissions office today, and basically the person on the phone told me that they've reviewed a lot of applicants and many of them have been rejected them pre-interview. I inquired further and asked her if any of those applicants know they've been rejected and obviously from the thread we know the answer is no. I then asked her when Stanford would start sending those pre-interview rejection letters, and she told me that she's not allowed to give that info. (Ugh why are schools not transparent at all?)

She also told me that Stanford IS receptive to in-the-area/out-of-the-country emails, so if any of you guys have that, they say to email them.

On another note, she added that Stanford still has "thousands of applications awaiting review" and that they're "trying to get through them as quickly as possible." I'm surprised it's still thousands by this point... It's December.
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Ugh. Why are they so slow this year compared to previous ones? And what about the dearth of IIs?
 
Idk about the rest of the people waiting, but I find myself thinkingsuch things as:

"I wonder what time Dean Garcia gets up. How long is his drive to work? When would he start making acceptance calls? hmmmmmmm"
 
rickalkine said:
10/25 myself...finals next week. If I get a call before a final, I might just fail it. Wouldn't be able to focus out of excitement. 😛
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They had a 10/25 date too? So what were the dates in October for interviewing then?!?! 10/2, 10/11, 10/16, 10/25, and 10/30... Dang, that's 150 interviewees right there... Wonder what that means for everyone else right who hasn't gotten an interview...
 
How many applicants does Stanford interview o.o I don't have access to MSAR 🙁
 
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