OHSU & MUSC are fairly small programs and small programs have a particularly challenging task in managing their accepted list. They do not want to oversubscribe because they may not have the money to fund any extra students. Another reason could be that their medical school strictly limits the number of MD-PhD students they can have in the entering class. My guess would be that these schools have made some offers and that you are on a waitlist. They cannot make additional offers until some declines come in.
This is why it is important that individuals do not take overly long to make decisions. (Of course, you could say that it is hypocritical to ask applicants to make a decision in a matter of a couple of weeks when some programs do not make decisions until 3 or 4 months after the interview.) One of the applicants our program has accepted is holding acceptances at 9, count 'em 9, medical schools. I do not know if they are all MD-PhD acceptances, but i would guess that most are. I am pretty sure that this individual could discern enough differences among these 9 programs to decline at least half of the acceptances. As it is, this person is holding a number spots that other applicants are waiting to grab. I believe that 2 or 3 choices is about all anyone needs to have at this point in the game. I am sure that there are some circumstances where holding more acceptances might be justified (for example, needing to coordinate location with a significant other), but those should be the exception rather than the rule. So, if you are killing time on a waitlist, don't place all of the blame on the programs that waitlisted you; they would love to accept you as soon as some other guys act on their admissions offer. And if you are the applicant who is sitting on 9 acceptances, help a fella or gal out and jettison some of those acceptances. Decline our offer now so that we can go to the waitlist to accept someone who wants to be in our program.
