I don't fully disagree with this but I do have some of my own thoughts regarding the whole process.
I'm personally a second-time reapplicant. In other words, this is my third attempt at entering medical school after the two previous years going very poorly. I'm not a stellar applicant by any shot, nowhere a superstar interviewee, and a standard deviation or two older than the average applicant. Today, I'm still without an acceptance, but I am on multiple waitlists, something I would have never dreamed of and am thankful for.
In the schools I have interviewed with, almost all of them will not reject you outright after an interview. Rather, they'll put you on the waitlist, and you won't hear back from them until late April when waitlist movement begins. Around March/April, you may get a rejection, withdrawing you from the waitlist, but many will just leave you in the dark until July or August when school starts. For some schools, you also have no clue where you stand in their waitlist pool filled with hundreds others like you.
Similarly, UMass seems to also not reject you outright. However, they tend to reject or waitlist the bulk of their interviewees in mid-April, creating a waitlist pool of about 150.
The question I ask is, is it ultimately so different when the waitlist for so many other schools is basically just another Active Consideration? In my opinion, I don't think so. To me, UMass does things quite differently from other schools appearance-wise, but the result ends up feeling about the same.
I do agree that UMass's admissions process can be improved with better transparency, but this isn't a problem with just UMass. It's a problem with many schools, and something I suspect has gotten worse with the influx of applicants the past few years.
Regardless, I hope everyone who is still waiting hears back soon. I know the uncertainty sucks and can feel gut-wrenching, and I dream that everyone will be able to enjoy their next few months without any worry.
