2014-2015 University of Virginia Application Thread

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@pureblazin thanks for providing your perspective. Would you attribute your negative experiences to particular away rotations and/or to the main UVA med center? I know UVA requires more away/rural rotations than most other medical schools, so if anyone could speak to their experiences at these other facilities, that'd be grand. Thank you all for your input!

UVA was probably one of my favourite curriculum setups and – pending my financial situation – I would love to head out for second look. (Here's to hoping they still have that peach cobbler). Good luck to all the upcoming interviewees!
I am also curious about the rural rotations. It seemed like there could be quite a lot of them and I guess I am a little uneasy about being away from the big hospital for so long. Can some students talk about what their experiences have been and the quality of the rotations.
 
I don't understand how calling me an idiot, socially awkward, or a troll is productive to a discussion - and I'm especially surprised that another student at UVA is referring to me in this manner, because I tend to find most of the students at UVA SOM as incredibly helpful, humble, modest, and flat out awesome people - just because it's an anonymous forum, I would imagine that students at UVA would still refrain from attacking other students, so I'm actually inclined to call you a troll since I can't imagine any of the students in my class refer to someone in this manner when there just adding in their experience. Again, I was merely stating my experience at UVA, that's it, and I've said numerous times that I don't deny that other people may have had much better experiences. My point in posting this is that these experiences have caused me to regret coming to UVA SOM, especially when considering that many of my other friends on clerkships at different medial schools have had much better experiences. I find myself thinking at times that perhaps I should've done more researching before picking UVA as the school to attend, and I'm posting this so that I could underscore the importance of making sure you know what you're getting into. I found that the interview day really won me over, and I never would've thought I'd be having such experiences given how awesome the interview day is - so again, do consider much more about the school instead of the interview day, as I found the awesome lunch, friendly faculty, and the new medical school to flat out win me over in an instance. And just as I've said that I don't deny that other students at UVA have been having better experiences, I also know a number of fellow students that are close friends of mines at UVA that share similar negative experiences regarding clerkships, and most of us are fearful in disclosing such experiences with our names tied to it as almost everything you say has the potential to be put into an evaluation and make it's way into the dean letter, as well as the fact that third-year clerkships are graded at UVA. One more thing, many medical schools have decided to revamp their entire curriculum into pass/fail, including the notorious third-year clerkships. I feel that this would've made me exponentially more comfortable in explicitly stating my experiences to faculty as I wouldn't care since it's pass/fail and it wouldn't lower my grade. Some will say that turning third-year into pass/fail has no way in differentiating students scholastically, however I disagree with that - I scored in the 90th percentile on step 1 and similarly on all of the shelfs that I have taken so far, and this is because I end up teaching myself everything since I personally find most of the didactics at UVA to be useless, but again that's just my experience. Furthermore, if you've made it to medical school and have gotten accepted to a school like UVA, you will more than likely score just as well if not better on all standardized tests, which I personally believe is more than enough with a solid deans letter in matching into the residency of your choice. Oh, and to the other "student" at UVA who decided to attack me and ask me to prove that I'm a student here, I'm not going to provide my name or any other personal identifiers for obvious reasons. But I can pretty much answer anything about UVA SOM: you morning classes are usually in the learning studio, afternoon classes up to noon are usually at in the auditorium on the third floor. We tend to have these sessions called "TBL's" during the first two-years that are mandatory in attendance and are typically held in the learning studio. And if that's not enough to prove I'm a student at UVA, the make of the piano in the student lounge is a steinway, take a look at it next time your in there buddy.
 
I am also curious about the rural rotations. It seemed like there could be quite a lot of them and I guess I am a little uneasy about being away from the big hospital for so long. Can some students talk about what their experiences have been and the quality of the rotations.


Thank you for reminding me about this. I had roughly 12 weeks of away rotations, and the worst out of these is those that occur at the Salem, VA veterans affair hospital. This place is a nightmare - I had 3 weeks of internal, 4 weeks of psych back to back so I was here for 7 straight weeks. You will be staying in the old psych unit of the hospital which is in a basement, there are flying cockroaches everywhere and all over the damn showers and sinks. I couldn't believe that UVA forced us to go to such a broke-down hospital with horrendous living conditions. And most of the people that will be teaching you at salem will be foreign medical grads that are not at all accustomed to the curriculum of american medical schools, and frankly, not as competent as most faculty you would find at academic hospitals. UVA seriously needs to either financially contribute to bring the VA in salem out of the 1950's and into the 2000's, or stop sending us to this hospital. Lol at one point in Salem, I thought I might've gotten lead poisoning as the buildings are so damn old and torn up. If I had known about this 3 years ago, this would've been a huge deal breaker for me. And the other rotations that could be away, such as AIM or family medicine, you will likely be in the most rural parts of Virginia that you could possibly imagine. You will be living in a complete strangers home, and you will have to adhere to there policies of when you are supposed to be home and what not. The lady's house that I stayed at for AIM required that I keep my rooms door open at night and that I be home by 8PM - seriuosly, wtf? There are so many problems with clerkships at UVA, I can't believe they are not doing more to change it.
 
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If I had to live with cockroaches for weeks at a time I would most likely have a mental breakdown as I am deathly afraid of them. I thought the hardest thing would be finding a place for my cats to stay while I'm gone.
 
If I had to live with cockroaches for weeks at a time I would most likely have a mental breakdown as I am deathly afraid of them. I thought the hardest thing would be finding a place for my cats to stay while I'm gone.

You will most likely have a mental breakdown at some point if you are at the VA in Salem - at times I thought I was in a third-world hospital, you'll see what I mean if you end up going here.
 
Fair enough...I guess pureblazin just got unlucky with rotations. The Salem VA is known to be a poor rotation for internal med (and each year they are sending less and less students there for this) - I think they may be stopping completely soon but not 100% sure (I believe right now about ~15-20 students total go down there for half their IM rotation- other half at uva). I was in Salem for surgery and it was probably my favorite rotation of third year. You are treated as an actual intern there - you get your own clinic room and see pts yourself (without residents) and get to do full H&Ps, recommend surgery or not, and put in orders (attending co-signs)...got to do a ton of procedures. Also, you get to see a true general surgery experience in the OR - vascular case one day, thoracic the next, and abd surgery after. Generally speaking, academic medical centers are too subspecialized - so if you do all your surgery at uva, you will only get to see 2 major services (for example colorectal and breast surgery) as opposed to the breadth at salem.

Overall, I would say away rotations suck while you are doing them but we're almost always really grateful to have done them after the fact. Especially on AIM and family medicine, you get to work one on one with a preceptor (again with no residents). You start to feel like a real doctor on these rotations vs the bottom rung of the totem pole at the ivory towers. Some of the best learning occurs when you are one on one with an attending. Also, you can almost always come back to cville on the weekends during these away rotations - many of the rotations will have workshops and teaching sessions for which you have to come back half way through.

Another away rotation that was awesome was psych at Western State Hospital (state psych facility) - this is the place where you see incredible psych pathology that is unmatched at any academic center. When patients are mentally too sick at UVA, they are sent to Western State for more intensive treatment. Things like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other crazy stuff are the norm at Western State.

Overall, I would say that it really depends on the specific rotation and location to say whether the away rotations are good or bad. Generally speaking, I really enjoyed my rotations...especially the autonomy given while outside uva. I think pureblazin probably got the worst of everything by being in Salem for psych and IM (and not surgery) + potentially crappy AIM location...could this happen to a future med student..definitely. Is this the typical experience of a UVA medical student?..definitely not. For the applicants out there, I certainly would NOT write off uva because of the away rotations. Many of my most memorable patients/stories/learning came from away rotations.
 
You're absolutely right -- I was on my phone earlier and not logged into SDN, otherwise I could've verified for myself. I know my tone was somewhat abrasive and apologize for that (did not mean to personally attack), I just found it somewhat perplexing that a 3rd year would spend the time to post on SDN when it would probably be more effective to choose other routes of action (since UVA-SOM will fill its class regardless).

There are students in every class that end up hating UVA for one reason or another. I suspect at least a few have an underlying issue going on, but for some, it's just a bad fit for one reason or another.

@pureblazin thanks for providing your perspective. Would you attribute your negative experiences to particular away rotations and/or to the main UVA med center? I know UVA requires more away/rural rotations than most other medical schools, so if anyone could speak to their experiences at these other facilities, that'd be grand. Thank you all for your input!

I did Peds at Fairfax, and it was a great experience. Granted, I did it before the transition to Epic, so my hand-written notes actually mattered, and I got some experience writing prescriptions, which was remarkably helpful for residency. It also just has more volume than UVA, and thus more pathology.
 
I don't understand how calling me an idiot, socially awkward, or a troll is productive to a discussion - and I'm especially surprised that another student at UVA is referring to me in this manner, because I tend to find most of the students at UVA SOM as incredibly helpful, humble, modest, and flat out awesome people - just because it's an anonymous forum, I would imagine that students at UVA would still refrain from attacking other students, so I'm actually inclined to call you a troll since I can't imagine any of the students in my class refer to someone in this manner when there just adding in their experience. Again, I was merely stating my experience at UVA, that's it, and I've said numerous times that I don't deny that other people may have had much better experiences. My point in posting this is that these experiences have caused me to regret coming to UVA SOM, especially when considering that many of my other friends on clerkships at different medial schools have had much better experiences. I find myself thinking at times that perhaps I should've done more researching before picking UVA as the school to attend, and I'm posting this so that I could underscore the importance of making sure you know what you're getting into. I found that the interview day really won me over, and I never would've thought I'd be having such experiences given how awesome the interview day is - so again, do consider much more about the school instead of the interview day, as I found the awesome lunch, friendly faculty, and the new medical school to flat out win me over in an instance. And just as I've said that I don't deny that other students at UVA have been having better experiences, I also know a number of fellow students that are close friends of mines at UVA that share similar negative experiences regarding clerkships, and most of us are fearful in disclosing such experiences with our names tied to it as almost everything you say has the potential to be put into an evaluation and make it's way into the dean letter, as well as the fact that third-year clerkships are graded at UVA. One more thing, many medical schools have decided to revamp their entire curriculum into pass/fail, including the notorious third-year clerkships. I feel that this would've made me exponentially more comfortable in explicitly stating my experiences to faculty as I wouldn't care since it's pass/fail and it wouldn't lower my grade. Some will say that turning third-year into pass/fail has no way in differentiating students scholastically, however I disagree with that - I scored in the 90th percentile on step 1 and similarly on all of the shelfs that I have taken so far, and this is because I end up teaching myself everything since I personally find most of the didactics at UVA to be useless, but again that's just my experience. Furthermore, if you've made it to medical school and have gotten accepted to a school like UVA, you will more than likely score just as well if not better on all standardized tests, which I personally believe is more than enough with a solid deans letter in matching into the residency of your choice. Oh, and to the other "student" at UVA who decided to attack me and ask me to prove that I'm a student here, I'm not going to provide my name or any other personal identifiers for obvious reasons. But I can pretty much answer anything about UVA SOM: you morning classes are usually in the learning studio, afternoon classes up to noon are usually at in the auditorium on the third floor. We tend to have these sessions called "TBL's" during the first two-years that are mandatory in attendance and are typically held in the learning studio. And if that's not enough to prove I'm a student at UVA, the make of the piano in the student lounge is a steinway, take a look at it next time your in there buddy.

I'm also a fourth year and would like to say that this experience seems very much not the norm. Fortunately no one I've known in med school here has had such a bad experience, and I'm extremely sorry that you have. I have, as I'm sure everyone has, run into some dick attendings and obnoxious holier-than-thou nurses (especially in the OR), but I always just figured my skin wasn't thick enough. Or they were having an especially bad day. Most things you shouldn't take personally, but of course overt racism and such is absolutely not okay and should be reported. You mention that you should have done more research, but I can't imagine what sort of research you're getting at. Going through SDN to find evidence of medical student abuse at every school to which you applied? You would probably find at least one person who complained of something similar at every program. As for "making sure you know what you're getting into," as many others have said, this is not the norm for most medical students here and I suspect could happen at any hospital into which you walk as a medical student.

I'm sure you went through that session on medical student abuse and how to report it during transition week, and I'm guessing you have already discussed all of these instances with the Student Advocacy Committee and your college dean. If not, you absolutely should.
 
Can any current medical students comment on average MCAT score for in-state applicants? Thank you
 
I got an interview invite the other day and signed up for January - those were the earliest possible dates, and also the last of the season, am I correct? Am I at a disadvantage to be interviewing so late?

Stats: 4.0/35
 
I got an interview invite the other day and signed up for January - those were the earliest possible dates, and also the last of the season, am I correct? Am I at a disadvantage to be interviewing so late?

Stats: 4.0/35
Interviews go until the beginning of March. Plenty of people in my class interviewed in January so I doubt you're at too much at a disadvantage.
 
Question for those accepted -- when you sent in your form to hold your spot, did you receive any sort of email confirmation about this? (There's always that tiny wiggling paranoia that my form might've gotten lost in the mail or something!)
 
Question for those accepted -- when you sent in your form to hold your spot, did you receive any sort of email confirmation about this? (There's always that tiny wiggling paranoia that my form might've gotten lost in the mail or something!)

Sent mine in last week and haven't received a confirmation yet. I also sent mine in via email so... :shrug:
 
Question for those accepted -- when you sent in your form to hold your spot, did you receive any sort of email confirmation about this? (There's always that tiny wiggling paranoia that my form might've gotten lost in the mail or something!)
I sent mine in via email and got a confirmation email within 24 hours...
 
Question for those accepted -- when you sent in your form to hold your spot, did you receive any sort of email confirmation about this? (There's always that tiny wiggling paranoia that my form might've gotten lost in the mail or something!)
I sent my via mail, and haven't gotten any confirmation either. I also have this paranoia so I'm very glad you asked the question!
 
Hello all, I'm a M2 popping in to say good luck! Please feel free to PM me any questions you may have. I was in your shoes not too long ago, and just yesterday I scheduled my Step 1! 🙂
Do you know what an average MCAT score is for instate accepted applicants? Is a 33 still in the running? thank you.
 
I spoke to one of the staffers today, and she said to expect an email confirmation once the paperwork has been scanned into the system.
 
I emailed the Class reservation form today and got a confirmation within the hour.
 
I just had my interview at UVA yesterday and I was blown away. Mostly, everyone just seems so happy--I had a really good vibe throughout the whole day. Charlottesville also impressed me, it seems like a fun place to live and the students raved about it. Will be looking forward to next week when my decision comes out.
And yes--the lunch really is fantastic! Make sure to save room for dessert 😉
 
Has anyone who mailed in the class reservation form gotten a receipt confirmation yet?
 
That's weird. I mailed it in on the 16th and still haven't got anything. Gonna call them tomorrow to make sure.

This is the kind of thing that makes me paranoid about maybe my email account is frozen, or I accidentally signed to refuse the offer...
 
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That's weird. I mailed it in on the 16th and still haven't got anything. Gonna call them tomorrow to make sure.

This is the kind of thing that makes me paranoid about maybe my email account is frozen, or I accidentally signed to refuse the offer...

The latter is the stuff of my nightmares.
 
That's weird. I mailed it in on the 16th and still haven't got anything. Gonna call them tomorrow to make sure.

This is the kind of thing that makes me paranoid about maybe my email account is frozen, or I accidentally signed to refuse the offer...

Same thing here! Not a peep since I sent in my acceptance packet.

However, due to some recent state school acceptances, I'm going to be declining my acceptance here. Loved the students I met and the program really is remarkable, but I don't know if I could stomach 4 years of OOS tuition. 🙁 Hope my spot goes to one of you folks!
 
Same thing here! Not a peep since I sent in my acceptance packet.

However, due to some recent state school acceptances, I'm going to be declining my acceptance here. Loved the students I met and the program really is remarkable, but I don't know if I could stomach 4 years of OOS tuition. 🙁 Hope my spot goes to one of you folks!
🤔🙁
 

Really saddened too, but I cannot rationalize clinging to a spot in the (extraordinarily slim) chance I'd get a 100+K scholarship – which is what it would take the close the gap between UVA and my state school options. I'm hoping my spot goes to you! :turtle:

But in all honesty, I've heard incredible things about their second look. If their lunch was any indication, I think you guys have a lot of great things ahead of you.
 
Really saddened too, but I cannot rationalize clinging to a spot in the (extraordinarily slim) chance I'd get a 100+K scholarship – which is what it would take the close the gap between UVA and my state school options. I'm hoping my spot goes to you! :turtle:

But in all honesty, I've heard incredible things about their second look. If their lunch was any indication, I think you guys have a lot of great things ahead of you.
Haha I understand! Just bummed I can't meet you this way!
 
I called and they said there's a stack of papers they're in the process of scanning into the system. My letter was received Monday, but their system seems to be backlogged. Try not to worry guys!
 
Does anyone know what the average debt for out of state is? If overall is $140,000 ish, how much would you guys think it is for out of state?
 
Does anyone know what the average debt for out of state is? If overall is $140,000 ish, how much would you guys think it is for out of state?

I'm in-state and my debt is quiiiite a bit more than that. It depends on your scholarship money (from the med school or outside), if your parents or whoever are helping out (mine aren't), etc.
 
Does anyone know what the average debt for out of state is? If overall is $140,000 ish, how much would you guys think it is for out of state?

My principal debt after 4 years was roughly 180-190K as an OOS student. Again, it'll depend on the amount of assistance you get, both from financial aid and your parents, as well as which loans you do or do not qualify for. My total debt is more than that, because I have interest from all four years too.
 
Congrats to everybody here who received an acceptance. 🙂

For others, has anybody received an II recently? My app was complete later than I wanted (at the end of September) and I'm really hoping that I still have an opportunity to interview here. Trying to remain hopeful!
 
For others, has anybody received an II recently? My app was complete later than I wanted (at the end of September) and I'm really hoping that I still have an opportunity to interview here. Trying to remain hopeful!

+1. except complete mid-August. It's my first choice school but I'm OOS. Anyone know about how UVA feels about LOIs?
 
Just got my confirmation to hold my spot.
Still haven't heard anything from the office. I guess I'll just keep playing the waiting game... I'll probably be at Lv. 100 by the time I get any confirmation
 
Question, does anyone know if it's possible for students to apply for VA residency after a year? The IS tuition is still pricey, but being able to potentially save $30k over private schools may be something to consider. I know that students can do that at UNC and OSU.
 
Question, does anyone know if it's possible for students to apply for VA residency after a year? The IS tuition is still pricey, but being able to potentially save $30k over private schools may be something to consider. I know that students can do that at UNC and OSU.

Doesn't really work in VA. They don't think that going to school here is sufficient for claiming residency.
 
Question, does anyone know if it's possible for students to apply for VA residency after a year? The IS tuition is still pricey, but being able to potentially save $30k over private schools may be something to consider. I know that students can do that at UNC and OSU.

On my interview day's finaid presentation, I asked the representative the same question. The reply: "Oh, hon. You'd have to marry a Virginian." (This was said in a melodic Southern drawl, which made it even better).

I believe residency can be obtained without marrying a Virginian IF you work/pay taxes in VA for one year unrelated to academic reasons. I can't recall the specifics behind the requirements, but I was told almost all students entering OOS remain OOS throughout their stay at UVA. 🙁 I'm sure the current students in the thread are far more familiar with the stipulations.
 
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