Admission Time Frames

[nnolan]

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Hey guys, I am the president of our campus pre-med society. On our campus we have a pre-med committee that consists of various faculty and advisors. This committee, like many others, interviews potential med students and then writes a recommendation letter accordingly. Unfortunately our committee has been notoriously late in the past, sometimes not getting letters out until October or November. Understandably this responsibility falls both on the student to get their application to the committee early and the committee to arrange the interviews in a timely manner. So here is my issue: the committee does not recognize how early that some schools start handing out interviews, and that it would be to our student's benefit to meet with them earlier. Do you know of specific schools that hand out interviews early? I know Michigan does, and I am sure there are plenty of others. I would like to call these schools or find admission stats on their websites that would support my proposal for revamping the pre-med committee's deadlines. Any suggestions on schools I can contact is much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[anfleisch]

This is pretty much the case at every rolling admissions school. Technically, the goal should be to have everything in by August. Even September is late, let alone october or november. For instance, schools like michigan, mayo, NYU, temple, give out almost all of their interviews by then.

It seems like the chances for students having their application complete by November is reduced to like 20% of what it would be in August.

 

[WuMedic]

From what my school has told me, this is a known issue for many premed committees. Ours starts meeting in late June/Early July and gets letters written within 2 weeks after the committee interview. Maybe you just need to emphasize that students need to turn in their stuff early so the committee can get underway. You state that things are not put out by the committee until oct/nov sometimes, but what about the earliest ones? When do those get put out?

 

[eli20]

On our campus, all the interviews/ps/forms/etc. are due/done in the spring before applications open up. The letters are written and mailed as soon as we contact the chairman of the committee with our TMDSAS/AMCAS ID numbers and are always ready by June at the latest.

 

[nnolan]

As of now they do not convene in the summer. They also refuse to meet unless you have your MCAT scores. So students who take the MCAT in April do not get there scores until after finals and thus do not get a committee interview until September. This is the issue at hand. The earliest letters go out in the spring, if students take the earlier MCATs.

Other than those listed, what schools have rolling admissions. I would like to call and get verifiable time lines for admissions so I can present the multitude of cases as support for having the committee meet in the summer.

 

[slowbutsteady]

As of now they do not convene in the summer. They also refuse to meet unless you have your MCAT scores. So students who take the MCAT in April do not get there scores until after finals and thus do not get a committee interview until September. This is the issue at hand. The earliest letters go out in the spring, if students take the earlier MCATs.

Other than those listed, what schools have rolling admissions. I would like to call and get verifiable time lines for admissions so I can present the multitude of cases as support for having the committee meet in the summer.

Your school is putting its students at a significant disadvantage in the apps process. The vast majority of the schools are rolling (Ivy and a few others excepted) and even with the non-rolling, it is an advantage to get your app in as early as possible.

"Early" is June and July, preferably June.

Though, if I went to your school I would "beat" the system by getting all my stuff done early enough for them to deal with it in the spring.

 

[wanderer]

Almost any school that hands out interviews early and does so at a high rate is bad to apply late to. Some schools not previously mentioned are OSU and UVA. UVA does review out of order sometimes, but for borderline applicants it's much tougher later on. Interviews at Albert Einstein that are February or later ten to be much lower yield than early interviews. Submitting in mid-September or later will likely result in a February or March interview.

 

[MasonPrehealth]

I'm not in any position to tell committees how they should run their process. There are other factors, such as the availability of faculty or other interviewers that dictate the timeline, as well as other policies, such as the test score requirement. As the chair of our prehealth committee, I can tell you nothing frustrated me more than taking hours to craft an evaluation letter only to find out later after sending out the letters that the person bombed their exam (MCAT, DAT, whatever) and thus withdrew from the process. Thus, it's probably in this committee's memory that the tendency of the student advisees is to take MCAT's late, so they have no choice for the purposes of making most efficient use of their time but to wait until scores are in to do interviews.

I'm certain that most admissions committees though are aware of when letters are sent out from particular schools, and from their side, they'll be able to adjust the consideration of people from your school until those letters get sent in. They also know well if those letters really contribute significantly to their overall decision for people who they interview before getting the letter or packet. Would the admissions committees want those packets to be in earlier? Of course they would, but they also know the advisors writing those packets well enough to know that timeline.

In short, I wish you lots of luck, but just imagine what the considerations are to changing the timeline to the people who run the committee and make additional suggestions to help adjust the administrative timeline so that letters could be sent out. You may find out from talking to the committee members and the chair that it's much more difficult than you anticipate. Or (better) that they may be thinking about it anyway.

That said, I know that there is a tendency that more schools are going into an earlier timeline to interview candidates. Used to be, one would have the first set of interviews scheduled around Labor Day or thereafter, but obviously now a few schools have first interviews in mid-August. Most of the people in these pools are going to be the out-of-this-world-stats applicants who applied very early and know they're going to command attention in the process that I don't think committee letters would make a huge impact when it comes to getting an interview. So, maybe everything's working just fine from the standpoint of really making the pitch to the applicants who really need convincing and persuasive letters and packets.