First of all, congrats Ky and Nasty, I know what a great feeling it is to get into school together like that and I'm really happy for you. My girlfriend and I recently got a mutual acceptance to pritzker and we're so excited about it.
Acceptme and others, in my experience it is not a negative to tell schools about your relationship and even that it will influence your decision. At chicago we interviewed on the same day, but decided that unless it came up we wouldn't say anything (fearing it would be viewed negatively) unless it came up then we wouldn't hide anything. So in my gf's interview I came up in the conversation and the interviewer asked what I was doing, and when she found out I was there, interviewing on the same day, the interviewer insited on coming down to meet me. All three of us talked for like 10 minutes, she said things like "chicago is very supportive of relationships... we understand it's a natural part of life, and we want our med students to be happy and to be people, and this is a part of both." She said we should tell the dean and not feel like we need to hide anything, and, of course applications would have to be reviewed independently but that they vastly prefer being open about these things. So that was better than any response I could have imagined, and, in 4 weeks we both got in.
After that (before the acceptance though) we interviewed on the same day at Case Western and took 10 mins to talk to the dean about our relationship and he gave us the same line about "thanks for telling me, applications must be reviewed independently, but thanks for letting us know, a note will be put in each of your files." 3 weeks later we got mutual acceptances to case as well. I can say that it certainly isn't viewed as a negative, but I don't think that if one of us was underqualified that it would have brought the other one up.
At other interviews if it came up we would mention things, and all schools that one of us has said things to (duke, vandy, yale) have been receptive like chicago and case were, saying basically the same line, we'll add it to your file, thanks for being straight with us.
As far as if it helps or hurts, I think its tough to say. I think that one big thing in applying together is that it helps to be different types of candidates, especially if you're coming from the same undergrad school. In my case I'm more the science/reasearch/ems type of candidate, and she's more philosophy/artsy/public health type of candidate (how's that for broad stereotypes
). But people don't want to accept 2 of the same person, so if you're early in the process, try to differentiate your apps as much as possible. I think that it could help you a little in that a school knows if they take both of you they have a better chance of getting you both to matriculate. Conversly, if they don't want to take one, it could hurt the other cause they know they don't have a good chance of getting only one to matriculate. So whatever they do with the information, I would recommend to couples out there to be honest to schools (but it's not necessary to talk about it before interviews), but also be realistic, and make your list of schools places where you both have a good chance.
I'm happy to take other questions on this topic cause I know last year at this time I had a ton of them, good luck everyone and congrats again to KY and Nasty.
