2018-2019 University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

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MD:
1. Have you taken any online courses for credit?

2. Have you been nominated for or received an award from any state, regional or national organization?

3. Have you taken or are you planning to take time off between college graduation and medical school matriculation? If you answer yes, a 1,000 char prompt to elaborate appears.

4. Have you participated in any global activities outside of the U.S. prior to submitting your AMCAS application?

5. Are there any special, unique, personal, or challenging aspects of your personal background or circumstances that you would like to share with the Committee on Admissions, not addressed elsewhere (siblings/relatives at Penn, applying as a couple, educational environment, culture, ethnicity, etc.) (1000 characters if you answer yes)


6. Have you or your family experienced economic hardships? (1000 characters if yes)

7. Have you been employed at the University of Pennsylvania Health System or Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and worked with a Penn faculty mentor? If yes, please indicate name, department, phone number of faculty, and start/end dates

8. Please explain your reasons for applying to the Perelman School of Medicine and limit your response to 1,000 characters.


9. Sexual and Gender Identity (optional)

Do you identify as (please check all that apply):

Heterosexual/Straight
Gay
Lesbian
Bisexual
Asexual
Queer
Other
Do you identify as (please check all that apply):

Cisgender
Transgender
Gender non-conforming
Gender non-binary
Other
Please let us know if you have a preferred name and/or preferred Gender Pronouns.

MSTP:

Additional pages to check your preferred research group at the time of application (History and Sociology of Medicine, Anthropology, and Business/Economics have further requirements). Also a 500 character box to list keywords related to your research interests.

Good luck to everyone applying!

Interview Feedback: University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

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Members don't see this ad :)
Graduated a few years ago but happy to answer any questions about this wonderful institution.
 
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secondary received couple minutes ago
 
I'm nervous that sexual and gender identity is a part of their secondary. What happens if someone reading my application is leftist and doesn't like that I didn't answer and assumes that I'm straight/cis trying to slide by? Or their rightist and think my answers are just a ploy to seem disadvantaged?

I chose to not identify my race as well on the AMCAS too. Not sure whether answering these questions is a detriment or not.
 
Graduated a few years ago but happy to answer any questions about this wonderful institution.

What made you attend this school over (I assume) other probably great acceptances? I hadn't really thought much about UPenn until I started looking at it a little more and it seems like a fantastic institution that's easily one of my top 5. I'd love to get a bit of insider's perspective :)
 
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I'm nervous that sexual and gender identity is a part of their secondary. What happens if someone reading my application is leftist and doesn't like that I didn't answer and assumes that I'm straight/cis trying to slide by? Or their rightist and think my answers are just a ploy to seem disadvantaged?

I chose to not identify my race as well on the AMCAS too. Not sure whether answering these questions is a detriment or not.
"9. Sexual and Gender Identity (optional)
You may choose to answer, one, both or none of these questions. This will not have any impact on your application and will not be shared as part of the admissions process. Rather, this information will enable us to better facilitate any visit that you have to the School of Medicine."

You're safe. You can leave the question blank with impunity.
 
For "activities abroad", I lived abroad for 2 years before high school--would that count?
 
Question...

On the secondary app question where it asks whether we have taken online courses for credit, what do we put the grade down as if we're currently taken the online courses? I wasn't able to put TBA or NA.
 
just checking, activities abroad refers to study abroad, volunteering, etc. and probably not to just taking a short trip abroad, correct?
 
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just checking, activities abroad refers to study abroad, volunteering, etc. and probably not to just taking a short trip abroad, correct?

I feel like it wouldn't hurt to mention. I spent many summers abroad prior to college so I was just going to mention that.
 
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for the unique or challenging circumstances one, it mentions including if you are applying as a couple. i am not, but my significant other will be attending school at UPenn (not the medical school) until 2020. is this appropriate information to include here?
 
for the unique or challenging circumstances one, it mentions including if you are applying as a couple. i am not, but my significant other will be attending school at UPenn (not the medical school) until 2020. is this appropriate information to include here?
probably
 
For the global question, should I mention research that involved a lot of global collaborators and had a major public health focus or should I just leave it blank?
 
For the global question, should I mention research that involved a lot of global collaborators and had a major public health focus or should I just leave it blank?

My interpretation of the question is more to do with actually going abroad and doing some type of service work, research, etc. If you didn't travel abroad I'm not sure its applicable. Others may disagree but this is just my interpretation.
 
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Also have a question about the applying as a couple question. Does anyone know if this exclusively applies to spouses or also includes long term relationships
 
Also have a question about the applying as a couple question. Does anyone know if this exclusively applies to spouses or also includes long term relationships

I'd also like people's perspectives on this, although in past years people tend to be divided on the topic. I personally will likely use the space just due to the nature of my relationship and the connections to Penn and Philly it's associated with, but still would like to hear what others are doing!
 
Hi all, for the first questions, I took an online writing course while working an internship.

Should I indicate "Yes" for an online course, then 1 course, but not fill out the "List all sciences course you took online." ?

Any help would be great.

Thanks!
 
4. Have you participated in any global activities outside of the U.S. prior to submitting your AMCAS application?
If the answer is "not really besides international traveling," does this mean one is not competitive here in terms of EC?
 
Secondary submitted :)!
This is my #1 choice, so keeping fingers crossed :nailbiting:!
 
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Graduated a few years ago but happy to answer any questions about this wonderful institution.
Hi! I was wondering if Perelman students have the chance to take courses at the other professional schools at Penn. Thanks so much!
 
Hi! I was wondering if Perelman students have the chance to take courses at the other professional schools at Penn. Thanks so much!
From the front of their admissions page:
Our One University concept encourages students to broaden their studies by taking courses in other schools at Penn without additional cost.
 
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Congratulations! That is absolutely awesome and I wish you the best of luck! I am just starting undergrad this coming fall as a biochem/molecular bio major. I was wondering if there is anything that you wish you had known about medical school admissions when you started undergrad and if there were any things you would have done differently? Thanks a lot!

Please keep questions like this to the PreAllo board. The school specific threads are for current and past applicants to discuss the current cycle
 
For the global activities question, if we discuss it as one of our AMCAS activities, should we essentially repeat the lessons or come up with a different angle?
 
For the global activities question, if we discuss it as one of our AMCAS activities, should we essentially repeat the lessons or come up with a different angle?

In my case, I really only had room to put a comprehensive description on what I did and didn't have room to add in too many meaningful lessons learned. In any case, I hit on a lot of those for my activity description in my primary.
 
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I did the Atlantis Fellowship for a week. I didn't include it on my AMCAS because I read here that med schools don't particularly like it. Should I write about it for the global activities question or not?
 
I did the Atlantis Fellowship for a week. I didn't include it on my AMCAS because I read here that med schools don't particularly like it. Should I write about it for the global activities question or not?

lol maybe don't mention it by name, but I would go ahead and describe the experiences
 
Does anyone know why I haven't received a secondary application if I was verified in June?
 
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I haven't either!
A lot of secondary applications are sent out in batches, presumably randomly. If another week goes by, I'd try calling or emailing them to politely ask if all secondaries have gone out to applicants and that you were wondering because you have been verified for a while.
 
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has anyone had an issue submitting their application fee? when I hit "pay" on the review screen of the payment portal it just sends me right back to the secondary portal and nothing changes on my secondary...
This has been an issue with the "Amp" portal that a couple schools are using. On another school's thread, I remember reading that it got processed anytime between a few hours to a business day.
 
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Quick question...
Does Penn screen applicants before sending out secondaries or do they just send to all applicants? I have been hearing different things.
 
lol when they sent that complete email I thought I was bout to open up my first rejection of the cycle :p
 
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For the economic hardship prompt, I'm tempted to just copy/paste my disadvantaged prompt from AMCAS -- they only give 1000 characters, which is even less than AMCAS. I don't really have room to reflect on how it has impacted my interest in medicine and it seems redundant to just restate the (no-fluff, factual) statement I gave AMCAS. Thoughts?

Lol I advise not copying and pasting anything. The one secondary where I did that and didn’t put in the extra effort on their secondary has definitely passed me over.
 
I have more of a general question....Do most schools contact you via email when action has been taken on your application? Whether it is interview invite, rejection, or hold? Thanks for any response in advance
 
I have more of a general question....Do most schools contact you via email when action has been taken on your application? Whether it is interview invite, rejection, or hold? Thanks for any response in advance

they usually do for an interview invite or rejection but sometimes they just hold without email notification, like GW for example
 
How are there so many post-bac students accepted with such a high 10th percentile GPA? It doesn't make sense to me, could you shed some light on this? Is there a linkage program I'm not aware of?
Multiple postbacs link to Penn including Bryn Mawr, Johns Hopkins and Penn's own postbac program. The students that do these programs generally were accepted into these programs with already pretty stellar GPAs so there is a pretty strong pre-selection bias.

What made you attend this school over (I assume) other probably great acceptances? I hadn't really thought much about UPenn until I started looking at it a little more and it seems like a fantastic institution that's easily one of my top 5. I'd love to get a bit of insider's perspective :)
I did my postbac at Bryn Mawr and wound up falling in love with Philadelphia more so than most other cities I lived in including NYC and Boston. Penn has a lot of great graduate schools that are easily accessible from the medical school, both in terms of access to research as well as the options to do other degrees. I came from a finance background and wanted to still be able to leverage some of my other experiences throughout my career in medicine. Penn offered a ton of opportunities to be able to make that happen, more so than most schools. There's a ton of other reasons too and I'll start sounding like a salesmen, but those are the things that drew me personally to Penn over most other places.

Hi! I was wondering if Perelman students have the chance to take courses at the other professional schools at Penn. Thanks so much!
We were able to take 2 classes for free which many people took advantage of. Common courses included health care topics at the Wharton school.
 
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Multiple postbacs link to Penn including Bryn Mawr, Johns Hopkins and Penn's own postbac program. The students that do these programs generally were accepted into these programs with already pretty stellar GPAs so there is a pretty strong pre-selection bias.


I did my postbac at Bryn Mawr and wound up falling in love with Philadelphia more so than most other cities I lived in including NYC and Boston. Penn has a lot of great graduate schools that are easily accessible from the medical school, both in terms of access to research as well as the options to do other degrees. I came from a finance background and wanted to still be able to leverage some of my other experiences throughout my career in medicine. Penn offered a ton of opportunities to be able to make that happen, more so than most schools. There's a ton of other reasons too and I'll start sounding like a salesmen, but those are the things that drew me personally to Penn over most other places.


We were able to take 2 classes for free which many people took advantage of. Common courses included health care topics at the Wharton school.

How common is the MD/MBA with Wharton? That seems like it'd be an incredible opportunity
 
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How common is the MD/MBA with Wharton? That seems like it'd be an incredible opportunity
It's probably one of the more common dual degrees at Penn, I'd say on average ~10 people do a year. Depending on your career goals, it can open a lot of doors, but some wind up doing it as an exit away from clinical medicine.
 
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