2013-2014 Western Michigan University School of Medicine

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Withdrawing my application from here. Good luck to all on the wait-list!
 
Withdrew from the waitlist today. Best of luck to everyone!
 
Xenoblade said:
Sit tight.

I am sure there will be tons of waitlist movement once people realize that you have to pay off both private and government loans concurrently at the same time when you graduate. So people will be swimming up to their ears in debt and you have to pay it down faster since you have to pay both at once. This is a detail that a lot of people don't grasp until the 11th hour.

Source: FAD at other schools that were kind enough to explain this to me.
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I hope so, I guess I'm just getting anxious. 🙂
 
Has anybody heard anything on the financial aid front? I was going to withdraw because of the many reasons outlined above -- it's not a smart choice financially at all -- but then hesitated because my initial acceptance letter said I qualified for consideration for a merit scholarship. I'm not even sure if I want to pay for that financial aid application at this point, but I'm not sure if the amounts will be enough to sway students...
 
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sciencebooks said:
Has anybody heard anything on the financial aid front? I was going to withdraw because of the many reasons outlined above -- it's not a smart choice financially at all -- but then hesitated because my initial acceptance letter said I qualified for consideration for a merit scholarship. I'm not even sure if I want to pay for that financial aid application at this point, but
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I've heard other students say, and someone may have mentioned on interview day, that the scholarships are only small amounts, i would imagine only a few thousand, like 1000-3000, though I'm not sure about that.
 
shabbykidder said:
I've heard other students say, and someone may have mentioned on interview day, that the scholarships are only small amounts, i would imagine only a few thousand, like 1000-3000, though I'm not sure about that.
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Oh, wow! Thanks for that -- that's not much at all. I know they mentioned that they're going to try to give less money to more people but I was sort of expecting, with it being their first year AND the now public affiliation with Stryker, the amounts might be more substantial. Also, I realized that I hadn't finished my thought above, you knew what I was getting at, haha.
 
shabbykidder said:
I've heard other students say, and someone may have mentioned on interview day, that the scholarships are only small amounts, i would imagine only a few thousand, like 1000-3000, though I'm not sure about that.
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That makes sense, they probably do not have anywhere close to the 100 million left right now. http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/04/04/what-does-it-cost-to-start-a-medical-school-anyway/ This article estimated between 50 and 100 million to start a med school. Even if we went conservative and said 50 million left, thats really not a whole lot of money left to run the school on. Tuition alone for all 50 students would only bring in 2.5 million for the first year year, and tuition never covers all of the operating costs of a school. Even at full capacity, they will bring in only 15 million a year. But as the population increases, so too does the operating costs, and they probably need that 50 million to last a while till they graduate graduate their first class at least. If we assumed all 50 students get a full ride for all four years, that would cost them 10 million. At 3000, it would only cost about 600,000, still a substantial amount.
 
misswhatthe said:
That makes sense, they probably do not have anywhere close to the 100 million left right now. http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/04/04/what-does-it-cost-to-start-a-medical-school-anyway/ This article estimated between 50 and 100 million to start a med school. Even if we went conservative and said 50 million left, thats really not a whole lot of money left to run the school on. Tuition alone for all 50 students would only bring in 2.5 million for the first year year, and tuition never covers all of the operating costs of a school. Even at full capacity, they will bring in only 15 million a year. But as the population increases, so too does the operating costs, and they probably need that 50 million to last a while till they graduate graduate their first class at least. If we assumed all 50 students get a full ride for all four years, that would cost them 10 million. At 3000, it would only cost about 600,000, still a substantial amount.
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I also recall hearing that they were giving a small amount to many people as opposed to a large amount to a few. I would expect a few thousand dollars per person is what it will work out to. Basically, it will be an expensive medical education despite being a completely new school. Would that have dissuaded me from attending if I were interviewed/accepted? Probably not... but yikes. :greedy:
 
shabbykidder said:
I've heard other students say, and someone may have mentioned on interview day, that the scholarships are only small amounts, i would imagine only a few thousand, like 1000-3000, though I'm not sure about that.
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I got offered much, much more than that.
 
Xenoblade said:
Well, the waitlist movement is contingent on your future classmates realizing that they:

1) pay a premium for WMED since lots of students have horrible fico scores and thus have higher interest rates
2) cannot "erase" half of their debt through debt forgiveness programs
3) realize that you have to make 2 loan payments concurrently, which means you have to pay off a lot more at a faster rate, which is an issue when you are a broke resident.
4) understand that getting federal loans during the 3rd and 4th year isn't guaranteed since achieving the next level of accreditation isn't always guaranteed. No matter how likely it is, it isn't set in stone. So you could have to get 3-4 years of private loans. Ouch.

But I don't know how smart everyone is to make these connections. If people don't piece these things together, then there will be little to no waitlist movement.

Seriously, I feel this school is only for the rich. I don't know how everyone else who wasn't born with a silver spoon in their mouths can make ends meet here.
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There's no doubt it is an expensive place to go to medical school. However, let's not get carried away.
1) Using a co-signer on your loan can reduce your interest rate if you have bad credit.
2) Lack of loan forgiveness may affect some individuals, however these programs do not simply pay your entire tuition. At least with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, your remaining government loan balance may be forgiven after 10 years of payments while working for a qualified employer like a non-profit hospital. Depending on your income over those 10 years, however, your minimum payments over those 10 years may pay off most or all of your loan balance (meaning no loan forgiveness will be received).
3) You do not necessarily have to make 2 concurrent loan payments, at least not "when you are a broke resident." I know that at least the Wells Fargo program advertises a grace period of up to 60 months following graduation, in which you do not have to make payments on the loan. Yes, interest will accrue, but this would greatly enhance liquidity throughout the lean residency years.
4) Accreditation is technically not guaranteed at any medical school. It has to be applied for every 8 years. I'd say this is extremely unlikely. I've only heard of full accreditation being denied once after preliminary accreditation was granted: Florida State (accreditation was later granted). I could have missed some though.

If you have been admitted to 2 medical schools and the only distinguishing factor is financing, then pick the cheaper school. However, if you believe the more expensive school will offer you a better experience or better prepare you for your career as a physician, I suggest you choose the more expensive school. You'll earn plenty of money in your lifetime. You only get to experience one medical school. Choose carefully.

tellme_areyoufree said:
I got offered much, much more than that.
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Interesting... I got offered $5000. Perhaps there is a wider range than they suggested.
 
There definitely is a range of offers out there; I was offered a scholarship in the $3,000-6,000 range. Also note that the scholarship is only for the one year, you aren't guaranteed matching scholarships for all four years, as some schools do. I'm still weighing my options...
 
So it's been two weeks since placed on waitlist. Too early to panic but what do was the avg wait time for those of you who got accepted off waitlist?
 
Hey y'all,

I got accepted a while ago, but I withdrew last week, and it was very much a tough choice. WMED seems like nice school, and the staff seems nice, but I did not think it would be the best opportunity for me. Even though they gave me a nice amount of financial aid (over 15K), I really needed to think about my future. I’ve worked hard for the last four years, and I think that a school that is still going to be working out its kinks might make it unnecessarily tough for me as I prepare for the rest of my career. I’m not sure I necessarily want to go into the most competitive of specialties, but it makes it easier to go to a more established school. Not having a summer break after year 1 makes it hard to do some research to help with residencies, and I would think that it is better to go into Year 3 with my Step 1 score so I have a better idea of where I stand. And of course the private loan thing.

Again, it was a hard choice, and I enjoyed my interview day and it was a pretty campus. I wish everyone the best wherever they end up.

Cheers,

thenameissansa
 
thenameissansa said:
Hey y'all,

I got accepted a while ago, but I withdrew last week, and it was very much a tough choice. WMED seems like nice school, and the staff seems nice, but I did not think it would be the best opportunity for me. Even though they gave me a nice amount of financial aid (over 15K), I really needed to think about my future. I’ve worked hard for the last four years, and I think that a school that is still going to be working out its kinks might make it unnecessarily tough for me as I prepare for the rest of my career. I’m not sure I necessarily want to go into the most competitive of specialties, but it makes it easier to go to a more established school. Not having a summer break after year 1 makes it hard to do some research to help with residencies, and I would think that it is better to go into Year 3 with my Step 1 score so I have a better idea of where I stand. And of course the private loan thing.

Again, it was a hard choice, and I enjoyed my interview day and it was a pretty campus. I wish everyone the best wherever they end up.

Cheers,

thenameissansa
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Congratulations on your other acceptances; best of luck with your future medical education! 🙂
 
Hi everyone I had two questions for you guys:
  1. I'm just wondering, how many people on here are on the waitlist and are hoping to get off of it?
  2. For those accepted students that went to the second look last week, was there anything mentioned about the waitlist and if they believed people would be coming off of it? Did they mention anything else interesting?
 
I'd definitely love to move from the "waitlist" to the "accepted" list. I was turned down at the only other school at which I interviewed. Applying late might have been my downfall...
 
I'm also hoping to get off the waitlist. Fingers crossed for some movement soon.
 
Accepted to my state school, so taking my name off the waitlist here. Hope it goes to one of you SDN members!
 
Looks like there is a good number of us hoping to get off the wait list. I feel like we should start a support group or something🙂
 
monkeyjack said:
Looks like there is a good number of us hoping to get off the wait list. I feel like we should start a support group or something🙂
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yeah i hear you man. i really felt like a did well on the interview for this specific school. my other interviews at other schools went ok, but this one i felt like i had a good chance, i wuld honestly hate it if they wait like june or august to inform me. because by then ill have probably reapplied and wsterd money on new applications and that also gives less time to get prepared if it is indeed an acceptance. ughhhhhhhhh, going into finals feeling this way is going to be hell.
 
monkeyjack said:
Looks like there is a good number of us hoping to get off the wait list. I feel like we should start a support group or something🙂
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It's unfortunate situation for most of us. It looks like all of us who were interviewed were placed on the waitlist if we were not accepted at least. With how everyone was selected for the interview (pre-secondary screen , personality quiz, phone interview) and how much they narrowed down the applicant pool, I am disappointed in how they made their post-interview decisions.

medschoolmyname said:
yeah i hear you man. i really felt like a did well on the interview for this specific school. my other interviews at other schools went ok, but this one i felt like i had a good chance, i wuld honestly hate it if they wait like june or august to inform me. because by then ill have probably reapplied and wsterd money on new applications and that also gives less time to get prepared if it is indeed an acceptance. ughhhhhhhhh, going into finals feeling this way is going to be hell.
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According to some admissions members(gyngyn among others) on this forum, schools in march/april start to see which schools waitlisted applicants have been accepted to, if any. By deciding to wait list everyone, Western Michigan now knows which students have acceptances and which do not. They can see that many of us have no other acceptances and will go to Western if given an acceptance, so I believe that they may just hold off on giving us acceptances so they can try to recruit more desirable applicants with multiple acceptances. [I do not know why they would do that, but if you see who has been accepted in this thread so far, most of them hold acceptances else where. Maybe it looks good for them and they can say students choose Western over many other more established schools]. Maybe they also believe that because they are so new they need to waitlist everyone just in case literally everyone turns them down.

I am also someone who initially felt they did really well on this interview. In hindsight, I don't believe it was because I was well prepared, but because the interviews were not designed to be "challenging". I know we signed those nondisclosures, so I wont get into any specific, but look back to what other posters said in previous posts, starting with the personality quiz and phone interviews. If you think back upon your own experiences, you'll see that everything we did was very similar, and not very challenging. The interviews themselves were very "laid back." In fact, I do not know how much more they could have learnt about me from the on campus interview that they already didn't know. It seems like to me most people would have answered the questions in a very similar manner.

I do not think many of us will be getting off of the waitlist, unfortunately. 50 spots and 300 people in contention for them. It looks like most of the people withdrawing are females, at least on this thread, so if you are a guy, your chances are lower. It also appears that we are ranked internally somehow. The school says they like/want letters of interest, but some users have not sent in anything and have received acceptances (@Elewynne) while others have sent in multiple and received nothing(@hjhjghf). Maybe they have an impact, maybe they don't, but again, many admissions members have stated that it doesn't really help unless you have other acceptances.

I guess this was just a rant for me more than anything else. I have lots of free time and not much else to do but think and writing this was oddly therapeutic. I mean no insult to anyone from Western or any admissions members, I am just trying to make sense of a difficult, depressing, and stressful situation.
 
misswhatthe said:
According to some admissions members(gyngyn among others) on this forum, schools in march/april start to see which schools waitlisted applicants have been accepted to, if any. By deciding to wait list everyone, Western Michigan now knows which students have acceptances and which do not. They can see that many of us have no other acceptances and will go to Western if given an acceptance, so I believe that they may just hold off on giving us acceptances so they can try to recruit more desirable applicants with multiple acceptances. [I do not know why they would do that, but if you see who has been accepted in this thread so far, most of them hold acceptances else where. Maybe it looks good for them and they can say students choose Western over many other more established schools]. Maybe they also believe that because they are so new they need to waitlist everyone just in case literally everyone turns them down.
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Or maybe they will give acceptances to those without any... because then they can say that they have a super high acceptance/matriculation ratio. 🙂

I expect they have a lot of people waitlisted because they're expecting massive dropout due to the cost, preliminary accreditation, and unknown status/match results. I believe similar new schools have burned through up to 250% their starting class size in order to ultimately fill. However, others, like CMU, only accepted somewhere under 150% class size (under 100 accepted[don't quote me on this] for 64 spots) to fill last year. I think they may have been an exception, as they seriously targeted people who wanted to work in rural Michigan areas.

I'm just a bit annoyed that I made it all the way through a phone interview way back in August... and then was never invited to campus after 7.5 months of being left in the dark. Oh well, such is life! I hope you guys on the waitlist ultimately make it, because it does seem like such an exciting new school.
 
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johnamo said:
Or maybe they will give acceptances to those without any... because then they can say that they have a super high acceptance/matriculation ratio. 🙂
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Maybe.
johnamo said:
I expect they have a lot of people waitlisted because they're expecting massive dropout due to the cost, preliminary accreditation, and unknown status/match results. I believe similar new schools have burned through up to 250% their starting class size in order to ultimately fill. However, others, like CMU, only accepted somewhere under 150% class size (under 100 accepted[don't quote me on this] for 64 spots) to fill last year. I think they may have been an exception, as they seriously targeted people who wanted to work in rural Michigan areas.
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I get the feeling Western is being very cautious with their acceptances, only sending out one acceptances per opening. So at most their are only 50 acceptances out.
 
misswhatthe said:
It looks like all of us who were interviewed were placed on the waitlist if we were not accepted at least.
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This is false.

The example you gave regarding LOI doesn't really mean much. Even without an internally ranked WL, a LOI or lack thereof does not guarantee you anything since LOI itself is worth barely anything.
 
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johnamo said:
Or maybe they will give acceptances to those without any... because then they can say that they have a super high acceptance/matriculation ratio. 🙂
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If only, that would be great! :soexcited:

johnamo said:
I expect they have a lot of people waitlisted because they're expecting massive dropout due to the cost, preliminary accreditation, and unknown status/match results. I believe similar new schools have burned through up to 250% their starting class size in order to ultimately fill. However, others, like CMU, only accepted somewhere under 150% class size (under 100 accepted[don't quote me on this] for 64 spots) to fill last year. I think they may have been an exception, as they seriously targeted people who wanted to work in rural Michigan areas.
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I am interested in learning what Oakland University's numbers were. Because they are a fairly new private medical school in Michigan, there numbers might be more indicative of Stryker's numbers.

johnamo said:
I'm just a bit annoyed that I made it all the way through a phone interview way back in August... and then was never invited to campus after 7.5 months of being left in the dark. Oh well, such is life! I hope you guys on the waitlist ultimately make it, because it does seem like such an exciting new school.
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I'm sorry, I wish I knew how they decided who to interview? I actually think I did not do well in the phone interview. I was surprised to get an actualy interview. Did you call them to ask if they offer advising appointments?
 
monkeyjack said:
If only, that would be great! :soexcited:


I am interested in learning what Oakland University's numbers were. Because they are a fairly new private medical school in Michigan, there numbers might be more indicative of Stryker's numbers.



I'm sorry, I wish I knew how they decided who to interview? I actually think I did not do well in the phone interview. I was surprised to get an actualy interview. Did you call them to ask if they offer advising appointments?
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After looking at my notes, CMU was actually 119 offers for 64 spots during their inaugural year. I think you're right that OU would be more representative of WMed... but I have no idea what those numbers were (other than it being around ~325+ interviewees for their 50 spots)! My guess is that WMed will end up with 115-135 offers for the 50 spots.

Haha, naw, I didn't ask about advising since I have been lucky enough to get other acceptances I was happy about. WMed would have been one of my first choices, though 🙂
 
johnamo said:
After looking at my notes, CMU was actually 119 offers for 64 spots during their inaugural year. I think you're right that OU would be more representative of WMed... but I have no idea what those numbers were (other than it being around ~325+ interviewees for their 50 spots)! My guess is that WMed will end up with 115-135 offers for the 50 spots.

Haha, naw, I didn't ask about advising since I have been lucky enough to get other acceptances I was happy about. WMed would have been one of my first choices, though 🙂
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Congrats on your acceptances! Gosh it would be nice to be at least in the top 135, or at least know where I rank so I know if I should keep praying/hoping or not.
 
misswhatthe said:
Maybe.

I get the feeling Western is being very cautious with their acceptances, only sending out one acceptances per opening. So at most their are only 50 acceptances out.
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They are doing a delicate dance. As of second look they admitted they had more acceptances than spots, planning that some if not many of these will withdraw in the next week or so. If it's any consolation, they seemed to indicate they are planning to take 54 instead of 50 students. I wouldn't lose hope yet. Once the multiple acceptance deadline passes, musical chairs med school edition begins.
 
bobdgil said:
They are doing a delicate dance. As of second look they admitted they had more acceptances than spots, planning that some if not many of these will withdraw in the next week or so. If it's any consolation, they seemed to indicate they are planning to take 54 instead of 50 students. I wouldn't lose hope yet. Once the multiple acceptance deadline passes, musical chairs med school edition begins.
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Wow, thats good to know I suppose. Maybe that why they haven't sent out acceptances in a while, they're just waiting for many people to withdraw. Did they by chance indicate anything else the waitlisted people can do in the meantime?
 
monkeyjack said:
Wow, thats good to know I suppose. Maybe that why they haven't sent out acceptances in a while, they're just waiting for many people to withdraw. Did they by chance indicate anything else the waitlisted people can do in the meantime?
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Unfortunately, no. Second look is an event for admitted students, so there wasn't much waitlist talk. I'm not sure there is much you can do to increase your likelihood of admission at this point. A letter of interest can't hurt, but as someone who has gone through this process once before, I suggest using this time to make sure you are prepared to reapply right away if necessary, including revising your personal statement and gaining additional volunteer experience (especially clinical), or addressing any other potential weaknesses in your application. Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.
 
chenzt said:
This is false.

The example you gave regarding LOI doesn't really mean much. Even without an internally ranked WL, a LOI or lack thereof does not guarantee you anything since LOI itself is worth barely anything.
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Can someone explain to me what a letter of interest is?? When am I supposed to write one?? Is it the same as the thank you letter after the interview??
 
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