2020-2021 Virginia

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MedicalStudent2021 said:

Application Process - Financial Aid

How to apply for financial aid at the University of Virginia School of Medicine
med.virginia.edu med.virginia.edu

Federal tax returns and W2s for you and your parents (unless you’re an exception).
Here’s the instructions, you can email or use regular mail. Don’t forget to sign the documents before!
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thetenthletter said:
in SIS, go to Financials --> To Do List --> (you should see the options to upload them there).

You need
- your parents tax returns
- your parents W2 forms
- your tax returns
- your W2 forms
- citizenship document

I will also add that the upload options do not show up until 24-48 hrs after you finish the financial aid application.
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Great thanks so much! When I logged into SIS it was there this time. Question: how are you all signing your forms? They're just online tax forms with no signature line. Are you just adding it? Also do you get a confirmation that they were accepted by the financial aid office or do you just wait and hope for the best?
 
Maybedoc1 said:
Great thanks so much! When I logged into SIS it was there this time. Question: how are you all signing your forms? They're just online tax forms with no signature line. Are you just adding it? Also do you get a confirmation that they were accepted by the financial aid office or do you just wait and hope for the best?
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I got a confirmation email when everything was in.
I just signed using Notability.
I think you should be able to sign using an application. Or, you can make a photocopy of the document, then sign it physically and take a photo.
 
Also, anyone know what happened with this year’s match? I heard on Reddit that 15 students didn’t match pre-SOAP (though, I have no way to confirm this).
 
thetenthletter said:
Also, anyone know what happened with this year’s match? I heard on Reddit that 15 students didn’t match pre-SOAP (though, I have no way to confirm this).
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I was curious about this, too. There were also many prelim surg placements. I know of one MS4 through a friend who failed to match. I don't know what to make of it. There were plenty of good matches so it doesn't deter me, but I am curious as to what happened.
 
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thetenthletter said:
Also, anyone know what happened with this year’s match? I heard on Reddit that 15 students didn’t match pre-SOAP (though, I have no way to confirm this).
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Could you share that post?
I personally know one MS4s who applied to a very competitive residency and didn’t match.
 
Speculating about match = view low yield. UVA is an amazing school. You dont know the circumstances of any individual applicant, and you also dont really know anything. Its all rumor.
 
MedicalStudent2021 said:
Could you share that post?
I personally know one MS4s who applied to a very competitive residency and didn’t match.
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It was this post. I don’t think we can really draw any conclusions without firm evidence. Even if this was the case, I think it has to do more with individual students as opposed to the school.
 
urobilinogen said:
I was curious about this, too. There were also many prelim surg placements. I know of one MS4 through a friend who failed to match pediatrics. I don't know what to make of it. There were plenty of good matches so it doesn't deter me, but I am curious as to what happened.
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The match was rougher than usual this year - normally, the strength of UVA is the clinical training we get and so UVA students normally look really good when doing away rotations (especially in competitive fields); didn't have that this year, so it made it more difficult. Other than that, I believe the number of applicants in general was up across the board which obviously complicates things
 
UNMedGa said:
The match was rougher than usual this year - normally, the strength of UVA is the clinical training we get and so UVA students normally look really good when doing away rotations (especially in competitive fields); didn't have that this year, so it made it more difficult. Other than that, I believe the number of applicants in general was up across the board which obviously complicates things
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That’s so tough! I didn’t even think about not having away rotations changing the competitiveness!
 
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Has anyone heard about merit scholarships? They said end of March at my interview day. I’m not expecting anything by any means but I want to know the full financial picture before making a decision.
 
UNMedGa said:
p/f preclinical, ABCDF clinical. I haven't heard of any plans for p/f clinical (although I would love that, clinical grading sucks worse than preclinical grading would)
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Do you mind sharing why you would prefer pre-clinical letter grades to stratified grades during clerkships? Thanks in advance!
 
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SiberianIris said:
Has anyone heard about merit scholarships? They said end of March at my interview day. I’m not expecting anything by any means but I want to know the full financial picture before making a decision.
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I have no idea about this/haven’t heard anything
 
SiberianIris said:
Has anyone heard about merit scholarships? They said end of March at my interview day. I’m not expecting anything by any means but I want to know the full financial picture before making a decision.
Click to expand...
I haven't gotten a merit scholarship but I was just notified of a needs based scholarship yesterday. I assume that means they're rolling things out now.
 
thetenthletter said:
Received a very generous financial aid offer today! Super grateful and excited for UVA.
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Congrats! Are you referring to financial aid via the FA office or merit aid? Since people are wondering when merit is being released.
 
MedicalStudent2021 said:
Bruh, you got us all excited 😢

Yeah the need-based aid is pretty much guaranteed at UVA for middle to low income families 😍
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Awesomesauce, also congrats dude on all the acceptances! I know you have the pick of the pack to choose from, but obviously you're a stellar applicant and we'd be so welcome to have you in our class cohort
 
MedicalStudent2021 said:
Bruh, you got us all excited 😢

Yeah the need-based aid is pretty much guaranteed at UVA for middle to low income families 😍
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Do you know if the FA is consistent throughout all 4 years, or can it fluctuate if your parents' income changes?

i.e., if you received 32K this year, is there a possibility of it dropping to less than 20K the next year if parents made $10-20K more? Is there anywhere I can see the cutoffs?

( I ask because I want to approximate COA for 4 years as accurately as possible)
 
thetenthletter said:
Do you know if the FA is consistent throughout all 4 years, or can it fluctuate if your parents' income changes?

i.e., if you received 32K this year, is there a possibility of it dropping to less than 20K the next year if parents made $10-20K more? Is there anywhere I can see the cutoffs?

( I ask because I want to approximate COA for 4 years as accurately as possible)
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I'm 95% sure that during the orientation session they informed us that the aid we receive will not decrease annually. It's renewable annually and we can inquire for an increase if we believe our EFC has significantly dropped from the year prior.
 
asrp12 said:
Awesomesauce, also congrats dude on all the acceptances! I know you have the pick of the pack to choose from, but obviously you're a stellar applicant and we'd be so welcome to have you in our class cohort
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Thanks so much! Honestly, UVA is my top choice but there’s another school that has given me way more $$. Keeping my fingers crossed for merit-based scholarships.
 
thetenthletter said:
Do you know if the FA is consistent throughout all 4 years, or can it fluctuate if your parents' income changes?

i.e., if you received 32K this year, is there a possibility of it dropping to less than 20K the next year if parents made $10-20K more? Is there anywhere I can see the cutoffs?

( I ask because I want to approximate COA for 4 years as accurately as possible)
Click to expand...
Don’t know for sure, you should reach out to the fin aid office for specifics. They’re great! I talked with them a few weeks ago and got all my questions answered.
 
MedicalStudent2021 said:
Thanks so much! Honestly, UVA is my top choice but there’s another school that has given me way more $$. Keeping my fingers crossed for merit-based scholarships.
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Yeah I'm rooting for you on that! There's also other programs I think too like the Generalist Scholars Program and the Hook's Scholars. If you applied for GSP I received a decision today so they may get back to you quick 🙂
 
asrp12 said:
Yeah I'm rooting for you on that! There's also other programs I think too like the Generalist Scholars Program and the Hook's Scholars. If you applied for GSP I received a decision today so they may get back to you quick 🙂
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That’s great! I didn’t apply to the GSP bc I’m interested in a specialty that’s not part of the program. But it sounds like you got it!
 
breezys16 said:
has anyone tried negotiating for more FA?
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I don't see the harm in doing so, they can't rescind your acceptance for asking. I do know they have caps on their need-based aid scholarships for IS (26K) and OOS (32K).
 
My EFC is 0 but I received almost all (~91% COA) loans... is this normal?
 
theatrics98 said:
My EFC is 0 but I received almost all (~91% COA) loans... is this normal?
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Hmm that’s weird. Are you basing your EFC off of what FAFSA says? Any one who is applying to grad school will automatically have an EFC of 0 according to FAFSA because all grad students are considered independent. But the EFC that FAFSA reports isn’t the same as the EFC med schools calculate because med schools treat you like a dependent student basically.
 
vitafusion said:
Hmm that’s weird. Are you basing your EFC off of what FAFSA says? Any one who is applying to grad school will automatically have an EFC of 0 according to FAFSA because all grad students are considered independent. But the EFC that FAFSA reports isn’t the same as the EFC med schools calculate because med schools treat you like a dependent student basically.
Click to expand...
Ah yes thanks for explaining! Didn’t realize that FAFSA ignores parent financial info if you are technically an independent student when determining EFC.
 
urobilinogen said:
Do you mind sharing why you would prefer pre-clinical letter grades to stratified grades during clerkships? Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
This is less specific to UVA and more philosophical (all med schools with tiered clinical grading have these issues), but basically I think that the nature of the preclinical curriculum is such that your grades are more likely to respond to hard work than are clinical grades. In clinical grading, most places try to convert an entirely subjective conglomerate of opinions of the student into some sort of continuous variable in the form of stratified grading. It almost always hurts introverts and minorities more than anyone else. I've seen some extremely impressive classmates get meh clinical grades. Sure, people argue it's best to be used to weed out sociopaths and total weirdos/jerks. But all you need is a narrative eval for that, not a tiered grade, and such a tiered system hurts normal people who just aren't as charismatic (but still compassionate healers) in addition to the weirdos and jerks.

Also very dependent on who you get as an evaluator e.g. some people only give mediocre grades across the board because they care more about getting the form done in 2 minutes than they do about giving an honest assessment etc. So if you get a few of those types while your classmate gets a bunch of generous graders then you look worse on paper than them. I've gotten evals from people who I worked with for maybe 30 minutes total so you're often getting hurried and incomplete pictures of who you are as a person on your evals.

At baseline, I don't love graded preclinical either. People who get into med school have proven they can get good grades in that structure. But with step 1 being p/f residencies are going to start using things like clinical grades more, and I think there's more inequity/injustice in the way clinical grading is done, so a graded preclinical seems like the lesser of two evils to me. I know that my best clinical learning was done on p/f rotations where I wasn't worried about the politics of the grading so it just seems like the p/f model is better suited for the clinical phase. Just my philosophy
 
UNMedGa said:
This is less specific to UVA and more philosophical (all med schools with tiered clinical grading have these issues), but basically I think that the nature of the preclinical curriculum is such that your grades are more likely to respond to hard work than are clinical grades. In clinical grading, most places try to convert an entirely subjective conglomerate of opinions of the student into some sort of continuous variable in the form of stratified grading. It almost always hurts introverts and minorities more than anyone else. I've seen some extremely impressive classmates get meh clinical grades. Sure, people argue it's best to be used to weed out sociopaths and total weirdos/jerks. But all you need is a narrative eval for that, not a tiered grade, and such a tiered system hurts normal people who just aren't as charismatic (but still compassionate healers) in addition to the weirdos and jerks.

Also very dependent on who you get as an evaluator e.g. some people only give mediocre grades across the board because they care more about getting the form done in 2 minutes than they do about giving an honest assessment etc. So if you get a few of those types while your classmate gets a bunch of generous graders then you look worse on paper than them. I've gotten evals from people who I worked with for maybe 30 minutes total so you're often getting hurried and incomplete pictures of who you are as a person on your evals.

At baseline, I don't love graded preclinical either. People who get into med school have proven they can get good grades in that structure. But with step 1 being p/f residencies are going to start using things like clinical grades more, and I think there's more inequity/injustice in the way clinical grading is done, so a graded preclinical seems like the lesser of two evils to me. I know that my best clinical learning was done on p/f rotations where I wasn't worried about the politics of the grading so it just seems like the p/f model is better suited for the clinical phase. Just my philosophy
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That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing your experience and perspective!
 
Uh, aren't they tied for #26 on the latest PD rankings? Not that those are great either, but more meaningful than the composite rankings they change every year for attention. PD rankings are pretty much the same every year.
 
TehTeddy said:
Uh, aren't they tied for #26 on the latest PD rankings? Not that those are great either, but more meaningful than the composite rankings they change every year for attention. PD rankings are pretty much the same every year.
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Agreed. I trust PD rankings more than USNWR, though both are very subjective.
 
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