Traffic rules are a set of guidelines to help medical schools make sure that every seat was filled by providing information about acceptances throughout the cycle and creating a timelime/procedures for acceptances. Some changes this year are
1) Previously there was a Multiple Acceptance Report (in February) that showed every school that accepted you only to every other school that accepted you. This was used primarly for schools to plan number of acceptances and/or depth of wait list. This was followed by National Acceptance Report (in April) which allowed every school to see where every applicant had been accepted. This was a top down approach that AMCAS collected the info and sent it out to all the schools. Neither of these reports will be issued this year.
2) replacing these reports are tools that the schools can use from the bottom up requiring students in AMCAS to declare their "intention to enroll" and their "commitment to enroll" starting about Feb 15 2019 with commitment to enroll by April 30th. While many students have expressed concern about giving out too much information in such a high stakes process, it is projected that most schools will adopt this after the upcoming AAMC November meetings.
3) What this means that since each school will require this, it will be "legal" and all applicants will be required to declare intention to enroll to a single school beginning in February (which you can change) and commitment to enroll b April 30th (which can be changed for new acceptance after that date).
4) What may be slightly different this year and could only affect a very small set of students if at all is getting an acceptance after you have started classes at a medical school. Previously this was not allowed as once you matriculated, a school could not offer you an acceptance. If most schools adopt the above system, they will likely update policies stating that they will not take a student already matriculated elsewhere.
In short, there wont be any difference from old traffic rules to new traffic rules for applicants. Difference will really be only be where the rules originate from.
Opinions from
@Med Ed ,
@gyngyn @Catalystik @LizzyM on this ?
(basing my reasoning from webinar
http://eventcenter.commpartners.com/se/Meetings/Playback_new.aspx?meeting.id=115748
