I thought about this a lot too over the past few days. As much as it sucked, I hope we remember this when we're all doctors someday and have to give news, good or bad, to patients. I think we'll all be better doctors if we do.
I don't think their decision process is ridiculous as much as SDN makes it ridiculous. Like for an applicant who is not on SDN, who isn't seeing everyone else posting about their phone call or when they got an email or what they heard during their interview day vs another interview day, I think the process makes sense. We were told that we would hear one way or another by late feb/early march, and that is exactly what happened.
My opinion is that phone calls seem unnecessary. While I'm sure some people like calling accepted students and accepted students may enjoying receiving a call, I would much prefer to get an email. It just seems inefficient for everyone to call every accepted student.
I think a good compromise would be to send out the waitlist/rejection emails the morning before acceptance calls start going out rather than the following morning.
I didn't think they offered merit aid here with the debt-free model, but I could be wrong. A brief website search doesn't support or refute this notion
I’m confused what a debt free model is... if I don’t qualify for any aid, but my parents are not helping me., then I will need to take the full COA from loans.. do they take this into account?
No they don't, which is why even under a debt free model many will have debt. They will have some sort of formula for how much money they expect you and your parents to contribute. Most likely it's pretty complicated and varies by tax bracket, number of dependents, etc. but it could be something like 25% of your assets, 20% of your parent's income and 5% of their assets yearly. They will deduct that amount (known as EFC) from the total COA and award you the result number in aid. You're then left to pay the rest (you're EFC) through your own assets and parental contributions. If your parents don't contribute their EFC for whatever reason (choice or inability) you will need to cover the deficit with government loans and/or private scholarships/loans.
As this is a new model for them it's really unknown. If you want a number to think about take your fafsa efc from undergrad and subtract it from the COA (~$90,000). If Columbia's efc calculations are similar to the government's then that will roughly be how much aid you will get
I don't think it makes any sense for P&S to adjust what they like to do because pre-meds get worked up on SDN. They think it's a nice personal touch to receive a call and many applicants like it. If you're nervous about what other people are receiving, then get off SDN.
yes they will let you see your financial aid before
Well said
I mean, the school is literally debt-free...
Sometimes it just be like that...
Reducing that burden is a way that medical schools can help promote socioeconomic diversity - by making going to medical school seem like a possible plan for a student from a lower income family. Even though physicians are usually able to pay back their school loans, imagine that you had a lot of debt from undergrad and now you are looking at schools that have a total COA approaching 350-400k total. That's pretty intimidating. Columbia's financial aid program doesn't automatically make everyone have an equal chance to do pre-med internships and get a good gpa and MCAT classes, but it does help reduce a perceived burden so med school may feel like an option for more people. Columbia also offers programs for low income students to help them get paid clinical experiences. They are still trying to recruit a competitive class and they may believe that the answer is not to lower their admissions standards.
Sometimes it just be like that...
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Puns about usernames aside, it really does feel random sometimes. Almost no one is going to get in everywhere.
This is not true. About 20% of their students are not paying anything in tuition, and that's based on financial need. That means at least 20% of their class likely came from a low SES. I would trust that statistic more than the number of students at your interview that had air pods or were sporting Canada goose (whatever that is). Yes, it could be better, but I think that Columbia in particular is doing more than most schools to increase the SES diversity of their class.
Can someone explain the debt free initiative a little more? I don't understand how the other 80% are paying tuition debt free. Yes some people have their parents paying but I don't believe that 80% are in that situation
What do you think P&S specifically should do about that? Clearly the system isn't right and some people are more privileged than others, but we are talking about P&S and what they should be doing
So it's 20% that are full, but the rest that qualify for aid are likely still receiving something from Columbia. Debt-free means that whatever total COA - EFC is will be paid with scholarships and not loans. A lot of other top-tier schools (like Harvard) have a unit loan of minimum 30k+ that you must take, even if your EFC is 0.
The FAP gives you access to a wide range of prep resources and the AMCAS-Khan Academy partnership is a step in the right direction. Sure, not everyone qualifies for FAP, but you really don't need a prep course that costs 1000s of dollars to do well on the MCAT. You could argue for expanding FAP, but knowing the amount of effort it takes to write quality test questions (plus testing them, ensuring test security etc.) the fee is decently fair and the cutoff for FAP is quite generous. But screw test prep companies. They're scumbags.
I think it was LizzyM that talked about the ladder concept, but yeah. Columbia probably did not seriously consider all 1000 students. The tiered post-II communication is indicative of that, but I personally know someone who despite being relatively mediocre in their application, nailed the interview and got in. N=1, though. Having a smaller pool would be predominantly detrimental to low SES students that don't have the resources to build a stellar application.
Wouldn't really call it significant, unless you describe legacy status very broadly, but otherwise agree with you. Back-door dealing is despicable, but an argument can be made for a school accepting students from their own alma mater or relatives of their alumni as they are much more likely to enroll.
Ngl this is a pretty gross and unacceptable case of nepotism from Columbia (as is expected from an Ivy unfortunately), but in terms of fixing the application process and medical education in general, I’m placing a lot of the blame on governing bodies such as the NBME, AAMC, and others. They’re the ones who make Step 1 and Step 2 cost $600 and $1200, ramp out extraordinarily high costs for ERAS and AMCAS apps, refuse to encourage more transparency in the application process (such as pre screening before sending secondaries to allow unqualified applicants to save money), and probably dozens more sins. Unless the actual government steps in, I don’t see how this changes, as there’s no competition to encourage lower prices and better practices.
On MSAR and other sources of average indebtedness Columbia's avg indebtedness is listed at around 100-130k, so I guess that's where my confusion comes from. Maybe it's that if a family has a 100k income, for example, then maybe Columbia lists an EFC of 15k (a guess) but in reality the parents aren't going to pay that so then that leads to loans being taken out?
Yeah, they would have to take out loans, but also the indebtedness shown on MSAR is before the debt-free initiative. In the next few years it should drop significantly.
