2022-2023 Wake Forest
Started by wysdoc
About an hour.
M4 here at Wake just wanted to do a quick write up of my experience here and an honest pro/con. GL all and I hope you choose Wake it was the best decision I made!
Pro:
-1/2nd yr building is beautiful and the facilities are top notch the class "houses" and student area is very impressive
-1st/2nd year schedule is pretty awesome, some weeks suck but most weeks are pretty chill and you will have ample opportunity to live your life
-most of the time you only have like 10 hours of required responsibilities a week and then you have a test in a month so its your time to budget for that month
-everything is true P/F 1/2 year no rank list, however your grades are kept and use to calculate AOA status in M4 --> no one from administration will ever tell you what the cutoffs are though.
-As someone with a scored step 1 my class crushed step 1, our average was 4 points above the national median we were extremely well prepared. the classes below (not just at wake but nationally) all slept on step 1 once it went P/F and it was a blood bath which honestly was kinda pathetic (just the boomer in me)
-get good clinical exposure in the preclinical years
-with the clinical exposure you get 2 MD mentors who are your clinical coaches most people stay close with them and get letters of rec's for all types of things such as research, scholarships, grants, residency they are your go to people to help you out with your career and career planning (can find your own mentors if you want these are just handed to you don't have to use them)
-plenty of programs to match upperclassmen with underclassmen to facilitate mentorship and guidance when applying to specialties
-student clinic you can volunteer in and get a special award (once you hit a # of hours) for on your residency letter which has been mentioned for me in almost every interview, also great way to give back to the community and build up clinical skills in year 1/2
-WS is a very low cost of living city (one of the best) everything is affordable before covid and inflation they use to have dollar IPA's at the local baseball stadium and you get crushed with 5 dollars
-very realistic to buy a house if you have a partner with income my biggest regret was not buying I could have made so much money with the current housing market
-With the merger between Wake and Atrium (CMC) if you don't like WS you can go try out Charlotte which is a major city with all of the city things to do
-CMC give you free lunch in M3 which is so nice
-when it comes time for residency you can essentially have 2 home programs to boost your chances of matching for certain specialties such as ortho, NSGY, Urology, OBGYN, IM, EM... ect.
-Wake has matched people in every specialty at every hospital so nothing or nowhere is off limits, being on the interview trail rn me and my classmates are crushing it with interviews at top programs
-I've had multiple interviewers/program directors who went to wake for med school which has been awesome
-diverse student population personality wise you will find someone with your interests and personality but there will also be people very different from you
-finding research is no problem at all (see cavate down in cons) after your first year they have a summer research program to anyone who want to stay in WS it pays ~4k if you already have a project and a specialty in mind you can do that or you can cold email or there is a database of at least 100 on going projects if you just want something to boost your resume.
-during my 3rd year I got handed the offer to join multiple different project in different specialties as I was doing my rotations simply because I showed interest I declined most
-4th year is actually 14 months while the first 2 years are condensed into 1.5 years which means we start 4th year earlier than other schools which allows you to be able to explore multiple specialties if you are undecided or allows you to do earlier aways or just have more time to build you app for residency which is the whole point of medical school
pro/con
-its one of the better private med school so there are going to people who are on completely different levels in terms of SES - private jets to on loans supporting a family
Cons
-very little research opportunities at CMC compared to at Wake if you want to do something competitive probably will have to commute back to stay in touch with faculty if you go to CMC (like 1.5 hr drive)
-3rd year grading uniform at both CMC and Wake and it is very tough, no cutoffs on # of people that can honor but they don't hand out the grades either --> this is to try and help you look better if you honor rotations however no residency program knows the difference between honors requirements at different schools so it ends up making you look worse because you have less honors. but because of this BS a lot of program directors don't put too much weight into 3rd year grades and care more about clinical comments and shelf exams.
-WS is a small city and even though its a "college town" Wake Forest Undergrad has no presence in the city at all because the college is so small ~5k students
-not too much to do other than hiking, beaches are like 4 hours away which somehow always gets sold as a pro here
-no PMR exposure at wake but CMC has a residency so tough to get exposure early unless you know you want it
-private med school so its EXPENSIVE they say average debt is 200k upon graduation but I'm not sure how they calculate that.....
-definitely not "one big happy family" which if anyone anywhere tells you that know its BS but the classes are usually split between people who are social and do social things and the people who don't but its probably a 50/50 split but like I said you will find your people
-most people come in wanting to do something competitive like ortho and because of the nature everyone wants to do research so certain research can be hard to come by because you have 20 M1s + 15 M2s + 10 M3s + 5 M4s all trying to get 1st authors pubs
-night life in WS is lacking but CLT is a very yopro city
-Wakes hospital is old and kinda run down CMC is nicer but its like a pseudo academic hospital, the merger was because wake was broke and needed to be bought out so hopefully for the their sake they get some money flowing
-no public transportation at all you have to own a car
Pro:
-1/2nd yr building is beautiful and the facilities are top notch the class "houses" and student area is very impressive
-1st/2nd year schedule is pretty awesome, some weeks suck but most weeks are pretty chill and you will have ample opportunity to live your life
-most of the time you only have like 10 hours of required responsibilities a week and then you have a test in a month so its your time to budget for that month
-everything is true P/F 1/2 year no rank list, however your grades are kept and use to calculate AOA status in M4 --> no one from administration will ever tell you what the cutoffs are though.
-As someone with a scored step 1 my class crushed step 1, our average was 4 points above the national median we were extremely well prepared. the classes below (not just at wake but nationally) all slept on step 1 once it went P/F and it was a blood bath which honestly was kinda pathetic (just the boomer in me)
-get good clinical exposure in the preclinical years
-with the clinical exposure you get 2 MD mentors who are your clinical coaches most people stay close with them and get letters of rec's for all types of things such as research, scholarships, grants, residency they are your go to people to help you out with your career and career planning (can find your own mentors if you want these are just handed to you don't have to use them)
-plenty of programs to match upperclassmen with underclassmen to facilitate mentorship and guidance when applying to specialties
-student clinic you can volunteer in and get a special award (once you hit a # of hours) for on your residency letter which has been mentioned for me in almost every interview, also great way to give back to the community and build up clinical skills in year 1/2
-WS is a very low cost of living city (one of the best) everything is affordable before covid and inflation they use to have dollar IPA's at the local baseball stadium and you get crushed with 5 dollars
-very realistic to buy a house if you have a partner with income my biggest regret was not buying I could have made so much money with the current housing market
-With the merger between Wake and Atrium (CMC) if you don't like WS you can go try out Charlotte which is a major city with all of the city things to do
-CMC give you free lunch in M3 which is so nice
-when it comes time for residency you can essentially have 2 home programs to boost your chances of matching for certain specialties such as ortho, NSGY, Urology, OBGYN, IM, EM... ect.
-Wake has matched people in every specialty at every hospital so nothing or nowhere is off limits, being on the interview trail rn me and my classmates are crushing it with interviews at top programs
-I've had multiple interviewers/program directors who went to wake for med school which has been awesome
-diverse student population personality wise you will find someone with your interests and personality but there will also be people very different from you
-finding research is no problem at all (see cavate down in cons) after your first year they have a summer research program to anyone who want to stay in WS it pays ~4k if you already have a project and a specialty in mind you can do that or you can cold email or there is a database of at least 100 on going projects if you just want something to boost your resume.
-during my 3rd year I got handed the offer to join multiple different project in different specialties as I was doing my rotations simply because I showed interest I declined most
-4th year is actually 14 months while the first 2 years are condensed into 1.5 years which means we start 4th year earlier than other schools which allows you to be able to explore multiple specialties if you are undecided or allows you to do earlier aways or just have more time to build you app for residency which is the whole point of medical school
pro/con
-its one of the better private med school so there are going to people who are on completely different levels in terms of SES - private jets to on loans supporting a family
Cons
-very little research opportunities at CMC compared to at Wake if you want to do something competitive probably will have to commute back to stay in touch with faculty if you go to CMC (like 1.5 hr drive)
-3rd year grading uniform at both CMC and Wake and it is very tough, no cutoffs on # of people that can honor but they don't hand out the grades either --> this is to try and help you look better if you honor rotations however no residency program knows the difference between honors requirements at different schools so it ends up making you look worse because you have less honors. but because of this BS a lot of program directors don't put too much weight into 3rd year grades and care more about clinical comments and shelf exams.
-WS is a small city and even though its a "college town" Wake Forest Undergrad has no presence in the city at all because the college is so small ~5k students
-not too much to do other than hiking, beaches are like 4 hours away which somehow always gets sold as a pro here
-no PMR exposure at wake but CMC has a residency so tough to get exposure early unless you know you want it
-private med school so its EXPENSIVE they say average debt is 200k upon graduation but I'm not sure how they calculate that.....
-definitely not "one big happy family" which if anyone anywhere tells you that know its BS but the classes are usually split between people who are social and do social things and the people who don't but its probably a 50/50 split but like I said you will find your people
-most people come in wanting to do something competitive like ortho and because of the nature everyone wants to do research so certain research can be hard to come by because you have 20 M1s + 15 M2s + 10 M3s + 5 M4s all trying to get 1st authors pubs
-night life in WS is lacking but CLT is a very yopro city
-Wakes hospital is old and kinda run down CMC is nicer but its like a pseudo academic hospital, the merger was because wake was broke and needed to be bought out so hopefully for the their sake they get some money flowing
-no public transportation at all you have to own a car
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Does wake forest accept LOI's or updates?
yes -- open your portal and click "view checklist" and there should be an option to upload them under there
I was complete early August but still no II or pre-II R, how long do they keep sending II's for?
Updates from this week's info session: I am in love with this school, definitely the best informational session I've had as well!
Dean said this would be the last group to hear back before the holidays. Also gently said that more updates don't necessarily mean that you care more, so try not to stress about filling in those slots.
He explained that there are more than one person grading interviews and so if there's a large discrepancy in the grading they'll bring in others to even it out (if I understood correctly)--if you're like me and overthinking every answer, it's definitely a comfort to hear that you're being assessed pretty fairly.
Hang in there everyone!
Dean said this would be the last group to hear back before the holidays. Also gently said that more updates don't necessarily mean that you care more, so try not to stress about filling in those slots.
He explained that there are more than one person grading interviews and so if there's a large discrepancy in the grading they'll bring in others to even it out (if I understood correctly)--if you're like me and overthinking every answer, it's definitely a comfort to hear that you're being assessed pretty fairly.
Hang in there everyone!
aspiringphysician2023a
Full Member
I submitted an update letter a few weeks ago. When I opened the portal again, I no longer see my submission under application updates although I recall making sure it showed up there when I submitted it. Has this happened to anyone else? I have five slots to upload additional uploads with "no file chosen" as the title.
When were they scheduling for?
poppy123o6
Full Member
I am also wondering this! Completed late july and have not heard anything
pnaupnau123
Full Member
+1, does this school just ghost?
First time I applied here (2020) they straight up ghosted me
medschoolaspirant2023
Full Member
Did they not say we will hear back before the holidays? I am guessing tomorrow is the last day before that. Anyone heard anything ?
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Does Wake accept thank you emails?
Alwaysthesecondary
Full Member
R
pre ii R
+1 complete 7/28!
+1 complete 8/13 and update letter sent on 12/1. Not sure if the update expedited my R but it is what it is lol
+1, complete 8/2
similar boat! i sent an update on 12/7 and R today
complete 7/24, OOS, ORM, and recently sent an update
R here too. Update sent on 10/06, complete on 09/10.
Pre-II R today. Good luck everyone else!
D
deleted1106899
pre II R
D
deleted1141836
Pre-II R
D
deleted910026
pre II R
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Learn To Swim!
Full Member
Pre-II R. Complete 9/16. Update sent two days ago [emoji23]
pre II R oof
Pre-II R. Update sent couple weeks ago
Learn To Swim!
Full Member
Lots of Rs, maybe it was a mistake.
Doc_McStuffinz
Full Member
Pre-II R, complete 10/3. Love how they made me log into my portal. Like bro if I don’t have an II there’s only one decision you can give me. Save us the clicks lol
Lol maybe I won't send an update to Wake...
medschoolaspirant2023
Full Member
I think they have mentioned it not to send any updates unless you are WL. Not sure that caused any R’s.
Last edited:
Please don't spread misinformation, the dean welcomed updates during my info session and I submitted a few and got an invite. Per the site:
"You can submit updates through your applicant portal to be placed in your file, but we cannot guarantee that it will be reviewed by the Committee on Admissions."
medschoolaspirant2023
Full Member
I said I think , it’s for anyone to check. I posted what I remembered and that is why I never sent an update. Thankfully I got an II and am waiting for a decision.
+2. Surfing on the R waves these last couple weeks.
WannabeBoneWizard
Full Member
Joined the R wave as well 🌊 ❌
Same. Not part of this R wave... Very interesting! Just silence. Complete 7/4.
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Not trying to jinx myself, but secondary submitted 6/28 and complete 7/20… still waiting.
NC is my home state and I would delighted to come back!
Either were ghosted or still being considered especially with this being the second massive r wave
I’ve avoided a few massive R waves from here and I thought I was still in the running until I got slapped with that ominous “Your Decision Letter is in the Portal” email
I’m starting to lose hope in these purgatory silences 😞😞
I’m starting to lose hope in these purgatory silences 😞😞
