2018-2019 Harvard Medical School

Med School Insiders
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Are there any current students in the thread?
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Anyone happen to know if sending a LOI post-interview right now will be considered? When does the committee finish meeting?
 
"Note that you are not required or expected to submit application updates, and updates may or may not be reviewed." - Application Portal

I interpret this to mean that if you have something actually substantial to submit then go ahead. Otherwise, it may be to your detriment to submit superfluous updates. In regards to LOIs, they typically carry little to no weight at any medical school (according to Adcoms on here). So at Harvard, which has one of the height yields in the country, I doubt it will have much weight. I've never really understood LOIs (assuming you mean letter of intent as opposed to letter of interest). I don't know how you can commit to a medical school without knowing any financial aid information, which is arguably the most important factor in selecting a school.
 
SpashMountain12 said:
"Note that you are not required or expected to submit application updates, and updates may or may not be reviewed." - Application Portal

I interpret this to mean that if you have something actually substantial to submit then go ahead. Otherwise, it may be to your detriment to submit superfluous updates. In regards to LOIs, they typically carry little to no weight at any medical school (according to Adcoms on here). So at Harvard, which has one of the height yields in the country, I doubt it will have much weight. I've never really understood LOIs (assuming you mean letter of intent as opposed to letter of interest). I don't know how you can commit to a medical school without knowing any financial aid information, which is arguably the most important factor in selecting a school.
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I'm sure that if you get accepted into a school that you sent a letter of intent to but it turns out that you absolutely cannot attend due to financial reasons, no one is going to hunt you down because you sent that letter.
 
gunzzta said:
I'm sure that if you get accepted into a school that you sent a letter of intent to but it turns out that you absolutely cannot attend due to financial reasons, no one is going to hunt you down because you sent that letter.
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True but then that defeats the purpose of a LOI, thus decreasing its value for everyone. I’m interested if there is a way to send a LOI with a finacial aid condtion. HMS is my top choice, but I’m not sure I would go into 400K of debt to go. In all honesty though, no school will reject you for not sending in a LOI (except maybe Mayo lol). I think they’re truly valuable in the late game waitlist, where schools will looks for applicants that they know will matriculate. At that point, you may even have financial aid info as well.
 
I would not send a letter of intent (or interest) to HMS at this point. And only consider sending an update if you are first author on an article in a high impact journal, maybe. Even then, may not even be seen. Schools like HMS obviously assume a high yield from the students who are accepted. Follow the advice of the other long-term ADCOMS on SDN.

That is not to say there will be NO waitlist movement, as there are other "top" medical schools, and fit in terms of curriculum type and location will factor in a decision to go elsewhere for some students. And there will be some students whose families earn enough money that they will not be offered much financial aid, and if parents will not contribute, those students may decide on state schools or places that offer them a lot of merit money. So all is not lost if you are WL at Harvard. But if they want to accept you initially, they will, without you having to show ANY love to them prior to the round of outright acceptances. Same is true for most of the other top schools. (Mayo being exception).
 
SpashMountain12 said:
True but then that defeats the purpose of a LOI, thus decreasing its value for everyone. I’m interested if there is a way to send a LOI with a finacial aid condtion. HMS is my top choice, but I’m not sure I would go into 400K of debt to go. In all honesty though, no school will reject you for not sending in a LOI (except maybe Mayo lol). I think they’re truly valuable in the late game waitlist, where schools will looks for applicants that they know will matriculate. At that point, you may even have financial aid info as well.
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I thought about sending a conditional LOI to a school because I have a scholarship at a school I’d go to before going into A LOT of debt for the other school, but I don’t think it would go over well. The school has all the power until they accept you, plus it sounds kind of toolish. If I get into the school, I’ll see if they can match the scholarship at the other school.
 
gorowannabe said:
I would not send a letter of intent (or interest) to HMS at this point. And only consider sending an update if you are first author on an article in a high impact journal, maybe. Even then, may not even be seen. Schools like HMS obviously assume a high yield from the students who are accepted. Follow the advice of the other long-term ADCOMS on SDN.

That is not to say there will be NO waitlist movement, as there are other "top" medical schools, and fit in terms of curriculum type and location will factor in a decision to go elsewhere for some students. And there will be some students whose families earn enough money that they will not be offered much financial aid, and if parents will not contribute, those students may decide on state schools or places that offer them a lot of merit money. So all is not lost if you are WL at Harvard. But if they want to accept you initially, they will, without you having to show ANY love to them prior to the round of outright acceptances. Same is true for most of the other top schools. (Mayo being exception).
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FWIW, this years class had a yield of only 72%, so there was substantial waitlist movement. I want to say ~30 people were accepted from the waitlist.
 
boneitis said:
FWIW, this years class had a yield of only 72%, so there was substantial waitlist movement. I want to say ~30 people were accepted from the waitlist.
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Does Harvard initially over accept? Or do they only accept the class size and then pull from the wait list?
 
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All schools over accept by at least a little. However, this year, it will be somewhat harder for the schools to predict their yield, which is why the ADCOMS on this site are predicting smaller number of acceptances than prior years, and more WL acceptances. Even a top-ranked school like HMS can safely accept 10-15% or more than their capacity and then pull from the WL to fill their final spots. The main issue is that no school can really end up with more students in the class than they want. A school with 100 spots does not even want 101 students to show up. (they also do not want 99, but they are happier with too few as opposed to too many - unless that school has regular dropouts). Our school has essentially no dropouts most years, so we do not want to over-accept. Would definitely rather pull to full from the WL and take chance of having a last-minute empty seat.
 
Sorry if this has been asked already, but anyone know the exact day decisions will be released in March? Phone call or email? TIA
 
So decisions are released the first week of March, do we think that means friday, march 1st? Or sometime the following week aka the first full week of march?
 
Can a current student discuss how feasible it is to take classes outside of medical school curriculum? I am interested in taking a language course that is offered once a week in the evenings through the Harvard University language department. Is something like this commonly done? How difficult is it to do so? Are there additional costs associated with taking an extra class? TIA
 
lifeofmedicine said:
Can a current student discuss how feasible it is to take classes outside of medical school curriculum? I am interested in taking a language course that is offered once a week in the evenings through the Harvard University language department. Is something like this commonly done? How difficult is it to do so? Are there additional costs associated with taking an extra class? TIA
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On a technical level, it’s very easy to register. The reality of juggling the class will depend heavily on what block you are in. The med school offers language classes as well. People take them and seem to manage their time well. You’d have more time to do this during your 3rd and 4th years though.
 
Having a lowkey panic attack because I can’t remember if I turned in my form on the interview day with the confirmation of class requirements. Should I send an email to admissions confirming that they have everything they need and also adding in my “continued interest in the school” and blah blah blah?
 
jessicaday95 said:
Having a lowkey panic attack because I can’t remember if I turned in my form on the interview day with the confirmation of class requirements. Should I send an email to admissions confirming that they have everything they need and also adding in my “continued interest in the school” and blah blah blah?
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Per the admissions office, they don’t even review those until after decisions are made. Personally, I would just call them, admit it may be a silly question, and ask if they can confirm. In my experience, the staff there is very friendly and welcoming!
 
I heard it doesnt matter at this point. They are reviewing applicants now, and dont want any more letters of interest or anything right now.
 
Wahkoon said:
Per the admissions office, they don’t even review those until after decisions are made. Personally, I would just call them, admit it may be a silly question, and ask if they can confirm. In my experience, the staff there is very friendly and welcoming!
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Thank you so much sdn community for being there for me to calm my neuroticism. Can’t say enough how much it helps.
 
Being neurotic seems to be the sine qua non of the successful premed. It's too bad for us neurotics that we are motivated by fear, rather than greed, but there is nothing that can be done on that score.
 
Yes, they told us during interview... and someone else posted that admissions said that also.
 
mysonadoctor said:
Yes, they told us during interview... and someone else posted that admissions said that also.
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Did you interview recently? if so did they happen to hint at when decisions might be? I know it's officially 'first week of March' but does Friday March 1 this year count lol?
 
chiral45 said:
Did you interview recently? if so did they happen to hint at when decisions might be? I know it's officially 'first week of March' but does Friday March 1 this year count lol?
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last year they sent them out friday march 2nd haha so maybe it will be on the first this year.
 
chiral45 said:
Did you interview recently? if so did they happen to hint at when decisions might be? I know it's officially 'first week of March' but does Friday March 1 this year count lol?
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Interviews stopped in January. I was near the end of interviews.
 
To anyone who is a medical student here, how heavy is the use of Anki generally among the class? Are there any high quality decks produced for the classes here or do people usually use 3rd party (Zanki, Bros, etc.) or other study methods besides Anki?
 
socloseithurts said:
To anyone who is a medical student here, how heavy is the use of Anki generally among the class? Are there any high quality decks produced for the classes here or do people usually use 3rd party (Zanki, Bros, etc.) or other study methods besides Anki?
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It's highly used for step studying. In terms of first year, some people make their own decks, but many don't.
 
socloseithurts said:
To anyone who is a medical student here, how heavy is the use of Anki generally among the class? Are there any high quality decks produced for the classes here or do people usually use 3rd party (Zanki, Bros, etc.) or other study methods besides Anki?
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I found Anki to be pretty low yield for the preclinical material. The content here isn’t structured in a way that is conducive to using outside resources, which I think is a good thing. At other schools, it’s not uncommon to forego lecture, watch some B&B, do some uworld and zanki and be good to go since the school just uses NBME tests. Here, the tests are more case-based, so I feel like I’ve never had to rely on rote memorization.

In theory, you could make your own Anki decks; I know some of my classmates did. But that is super low yield and time consuming. The stuff they give us does a great job of prepping us for the CBCL sessions and the CBCL sessions solidify the information in such a way that negates the need for the use of outside resources. That may just be me, however.
 
boneitis said:
I found Anki to be pretty low yield for the preclinical material. The content here isn’t structured in a way that is conducive to using outside resources, which I think is a good thing. At other schools, it’s not uncommon to forego lecture, watch some B&B, do some uworld and zanki and be good to go since the school just uses NBME tests. Here, the tests are more case-based, so I feel like I’ve never had to rely on rote memorization.

In theory, you could make your own Anki decks; I know some of my classmates did. But that is super low yield and time consuming. The stuff they give us does a great job of prepping us for the CBCL sessions and the CBCL sessions solidify the information in such a way that negates the need for the use of outside resources. That may just be me, however.
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Interesting, this is great color thank you. During my pre-med studies, I have found that the biggest utility of a flashcard based software program is to be able to retain a large volume of information over time. From the data, it seems that Harvard students do exceedingly well on the Step 1 test. My question then is, how do you retain a large volume of material from day 1 to 2.5 years later when you take the Step 1? It seems that the Harvard curriculum is conducive to understanding and engaging with the material. However, if you don't use Anki, how do you retain this information for multiple years?
 
socloseithurts said:
Interesting, this is great color thank you. During my pre-med studies, I have found that the biggest utility of a flashcard based software program is to be able to retain a large volume of information over time. From the data, it seems that Harvard students do exceedingly well on the Step 1 test. My question then is, how do you retain a large volume of material from day 1 to 2.5 years later when you take the Step 1? It seems that the Harvard curriculum is conducive to understanding and engaging with the material. However, if you don't use Anki, how do you retain this information for multiple years?
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Important concepts are revisited many times throughout the curriculum. Taking Step 1 a year removed from didactic was a big concern of mine when coming here, but upperclassmen said that the experience we get applying that information in the wards during second year helps solidify it even further. In addition, we take our shelf exams before our boards which, according to everyone I've spoken to, is a huge help in preparing for step. Allegedly, our shelf exams aren't factored into our clinical grades, which also helps.

The curriculum here isn't designed to prepare you for boards like other schools, it's designed to prepare you to think like a doctor. Based on what I've heard from others, there is going to be some stuff you're going to be learning for the first time during dedicated, but I doubt that is different from any other school. We also can take up to 3 months of dedicated study time for Step 1 if we need it. I wouldn't worry about it though. The past three years have seen the class average for Step 1 between 240 and 245.
 
Is there a reason why Harvard's unit loan is so ridiculously high in comparison to other top-tier schools? (33-34k/year, obviously Im making a gross generalization since I don't know all of them, but I saw a post that listed a couple and it's definitely in the upper end). Couldn't they use some of that endowment money to lower this puppy? With such a high unit loan, Harvard is pretty much grouping those who have a 35k/year to those with full. And I know this is more complicated than I present it since the financial need formula is not perfect but still...Idk how that is not suppose to discourage students with high financial need that are almost obligated, if accepted and really wanted to go to Harvard, to borrow such a large amount per year.
 
luigi1996 said:
Is there a reason why Harvard's unit loan is so ridiculously high in comparison to other top-tier schools? (33-34k/year, obviously Im making a gross generalization since I don't know all of them, but I saw a post that listed a couple and it's definitely in the upper end). Couldn't they use some of that endowment money to lower this puppy? With such a high unit loan, Harvard is pretty much grouping those who have a 35k/year to those with full. And I know this is more complicated than I present it since the financial need formula is not perfect but still...Idk how that is not suppose to discourage students with high financial need that are almost obligated, if accepted and really wanted to go to Harvard, to borrow such a large amount per year.
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That's only 140k of debt upon graduation which is very reasonable for a doctor. Personally id go to the cheapest place but just wanted to point that out. They probably could lower it but it's still not bad compared to average medical school debt.
 
Considering decisions might go out next week, does anyone know if they do calls or do all decisions come via email on the same day?
 
Dr_Yankee said:
Considering decisions might go out next week, does anyone know if they do calls or do all decisions come via email on the same day?
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Their website says "All admissions decisions are sent out via email on the same date, whether candidates are accepted, declined, or waitlisted"
Sounds like everyone finds out around the same time.
 
Dr_Yankee said:
Considering decisions might go out next week, does anyone know if they do calls or do all decisions come via email on the same day?
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Traditionally, emails have been sent in waves. I think the first wave was MD/PhD, second was HST, third was Pathways, fourth was waitlists, and fifth was rejections. IIRC, during my app cycle, there was maybe 20 minutes between each wave.
 
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