Admissions people reading SDN

[Shredder]

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how proud are people of their sdn personas. arguably the sum total of a frequent poster's posts can reveal more about him than any app or interview

 

[Flopotomist]

(lurking)

 

[Pewl]

Of course I don't want adcoms reading what I post. This forum is a place of free exchange of random ideas. It's certainly not something I"d want them to see.

 

[tank you]

i dont mind, i think they would get a better idea of what our *real* personalities are like.

 

[Shredder]

Of course I don't want adcoms reading what I post. This forum is a place of free exchange of random ideas. It's certainly not something I"d want them to see.

i dont think theres any of course about it. why must ones ideas be hidden or damaging to an app? you can learn a whole lot about ppl from post history. its not all random ideas, its a premed/medical community with ideas usually pertaining to that. its a hypothetical question--whats there to be afraid of? i dont mean inviting adcoms to scour through here, as that would lead to all posts being sucking up and putting on an act. i mean exposing who we really are, behind all of the apps and interviews. basically if it were discovered that adcoms knew every word you said here, would you be happy or unhapy?

 

[jebus]

My biggest objection is the lack of distinction between a public and private personality as expressed in my posts. In a public forum (a classroom, job, etc.) I'm very different than I am in my private life. My posts in SDN tend to express my private personality more than my public one. Maybe that was a mistake on my part, but I'm not particularly concerned with that - I rarely go to class drunk or otherwise inebriated; I do it here all the time. I do it because I know it's all anonymous.
I think my medical school application should be judged on the merits of my public persona, that's all.

 

[Pewl]

My biggest objection is the lack of distinction between a public and private personality as expressed in my posts. In a public forum (a classroom, job, etc.) I'm very different than I am in my private life. My posts in SDN tend to express my private personality more than my public one. Maybe that was a mistake on my part, but I'm not particularly concerned with that - I rarely go to class drunk or otherwise inebriated; I do it here all the time. I do it because I know it's all anonymous.
I think my medical school application should be judged on the merits of my public persona, that's all.

PRECISELY. I say a lot of $hit here that I would otherwise never say in public. Who I am online is not at all reflective of who I am in person.

 

[SanDiegoSOD]

I just dont want them to see the fact that I have 2000+ posts. 😳

 

[crazy_cavalier]

Reality check: nobody here is a celebrity. Adcoms are not going to hunt you down and figure who you are, based on your SDN persona or MDapps data. Even if you flat out write your real name in your signature, chances are they simply won't bother. They're busy enough as it is without going through your internet forum post history.

 

[MarzMD]

Reality check: nobody here is a celebrity. Adcoms are not going to hunt you down and figure who you are, based on your SDN persona or MDapps data. Even if you flat out write your real name in your signature, chances are they simply won't bother. They're busy enough as it is without going through your internet forum post history.

I think you are missing the point of the question.

 

[Shredder]

My biggest objection is the lack of distinction between a public and private personality as expressed in my posts. In a public forum (a classroom, job, etc.) I'm very different than I am in my private life. My posts in SDN tend to express my private personality more than my public one. Maybe that was a mistake on my part, but I'm not particularly concerned with that - I rarely go to class drunk or otherwise inebriated; I do it here all the time. I do it because I know it's all anonymous.
I think my medical school application should be judged on the merits of my public persona, that's all.

thats an interesting point of view. good post. cavalier its only hypothetical--im sure ppl like brettbatchelor are safe no matter what

 

[pseudoknot]

You forgot the third option, that it wouldn't make a difference.

 

[-Goose-]

You forgot the third option, that it wouldn't make a difference.

sign me up for this

 

[mshheaddoc]

I just dont want them to see the fact that I have 2000+ posts. 😳

Well I won't say anything for 20K+ then 😉 Probably at least 30K+ by the time I apply

If they want to sort through all them ... they could be my guest.

Honestly though, who really gives a flying frick about where you post? That would mean all other forums you visit would give insight? I think its a weary suggestion.

Reality check: nobody here is a celebrity. Adcoms are not going to hunt you down and figure who you are, based on your SDN persona or MDapps data. Even if you flat out write your real name in your signature, chances are they simply won't bother. They're busy enough as it is without going through your internet forum post history.

Actually there have been some "famous" people who post on here, but you have to know where to look.

 

[CTSballer11]

Either way I think Adcoms for the most part are far to busy to search around an internet forum for the sole purpose of finding out someone's identity here on SDN. I am sure adcoms know that 80 percent of applicantsare bsing during their interview so I doubt they really care anyway. I would not worry too much.

 

[mshheaddoc]

Either way I think Adcoms for the most part are far to busy to search around an internet forum for the sole purpose of finding out someone's identity here on SDN. I am sure adcoms know that 80 percent of applicantsare bsing during their interview so I doubt they really care anyway. I would not worry too much.

👍

 

[Shredder]

Either way I think Adcoms for the most part are far to busy to search around an internet forum for the sole purpose of finding out someone's identity here on SDN. I am sure adcoms know that 80 percent of applicantsare bsing during their interview so I doubt they really care anyway. I would not worry too much.

i know thats why i said it was hypothetical. the point is that it might be safe to assume that what comes out on sdn isnt "bs" so it shows another side of the applicant. that was the essence of the question--i guess it boils down to how similar is the face you present to adcoms compared to sdn face

 

[atrovariousg]

When I post here, I feel that I am among friends and anything taken out of that context might make me look like a prick, which is too bad, because I know that I am a very nice guy.
Any admissions people who read SDN and try to figure out who is who, have way too much time on their hands.

 

[Shredder]

When I post here, I feel that I am among friends and anything taken out of that context might make me look like a prick, which is too bad, because I know that I am a very nice guy.
Any admissions people who read SDN and try to figure out who is who, have way too much time on their hands.

again, this isnt about whether adcoms actually do this or not. this topic has been raised time after time on pre allo. i try to avoid creating silly threads. if they somehow could, in theory, string together posts and try to figure out who you are based on them, would you be up for it. if you take certain posts out of context, it certainly can make a user look bad. but if you take the aggregate of posts things become more clear, especially as you rack up more of them.

maybe the question is: do you feel you have established yourself well enough on sdn to be judged accurately by your posting record? and thus, would you feel okay about a fantasy adcom scrutinize it? if adcoms did figure out who everyone is, would you wring your hands or shrug it off? or smile, even?

 

[funshine]

I think it would hurt a lot of people on here--esp. those of us who use the forum to vent! 🙂 I actually wish ADCOMs did read SDN more often. I think there's a pretty wide range of opinions on here, and it might help admissions ppl gain a more realistic picture of the diversity of premeds out there--i.e. not everyone has to be heartbleedingly compassionate, a lot of us go into it for practical reasons, etc.

 

[funshine]

again, this isnt about whether adcoms actually do this or not. this topic has been raised time after time on pre allo. i try to avoid creating silly threads. if they somehow could, in theory, string together posts and try to figure out who you are based on them, would you be up for it. if you take certain posts out of context, it certainly can make a user look bad. but if you take the aggregate of posts things become more clear, especially as you rack up more of them.

maybe the question is: do you feel you have established yourself well enough on sdn to be judged accurately by your posting record? and thus, would you feel okay about a fantasy adcom scrutinize it? if adcoms did figure out who everyone is, would you wring your hands or shrug it off? or smile, even?

I think for me at least, it comes down to a conflict between the need to hide certain traits that make me less than ideal for medical school, and the natural desire to tell the truth and present myself fully and honestly. So I would wring my hands, smile, feel awful AND feel good at the same time.

 

[Shredder]

Well I won't say anything for 20K+ then 😉 Probably at least 30K+ by the time I apply

If they want to sort through all them ... they could be my guest.

Honestly though, who really gives a flying frick about where you post? That would mean all other forums you visit would give insight? I think its a weary suggestion.

you guys need to think more abstractly--im not asking about the practicality of the situation. its an abstract discussion thread, nothing too important or dealing with reality

i think aggregate posting record can be pretty revealing, or at least thats the premise of the thread. have any of you guys read enders game? remember that tv he had in his head in the beginning of the book? it would be something like that, if that makes sense. analyzing your every move sort of thing

I think for me at least, it comes down to a conflict between the need to hide certain traits that make me less than ideal for medical school, and the natural desire to tell the truth and present myself fully and honestly. So I would wring my hands, smile, feel awful AND feel good at the same time.

there are definitely posts here and there that would hurt, like when youre fuming and post or make offhanded jokes and remarks, but its like fighting with a friend--you dont cast them off just bc of one spat, unless its really bad. you take the overall average of interactions and attributes

 

[DrBowtie]

Ender's Game. Good Book.

My posts and such are what I think in private and public so there really isn't a difference. In my 2000+ posts I have wrote enough text to comprise my whole AMCAS. I'd rather save the time and just tell them to search all posts by me.

 

[Shredder]

Ender's Game. Good Book.

My posts and such are what I think in private and public so there really isn't a difference. In my 2000+ posts I have wrote enough text to comprise my whole AMCAS. I'd rather save the time and just tell them to search all posts by me.

enders game was one of my favorites. that kid was brilliant, always my idol. won against all odds, using whatever means necessary, fabulous.

exactly--at a certain number of posts, you could meet an sdn user in person and know them through and through without ever having actually met them before. or maybe it doesnt take a whole lot of posts--it depends on their nature. but you can learn a lot about ppl from them. private/public same here, im the same in either domain. so i suppose for someone with a discrepancy between those two, the answer would be no (not that there is something wrong with that). actually i dont know, for someone with 1K+ posts, i would think its hard to be markedly different in public vs here. i guess i shouldve clarified from the get go, didnt realize there would be confusion. but im glad you understood

now that i think about it, i couldve simplified by just asking "would you be ok with adcoms, in theory, knowing the real you?" but surely everyone would say yes, so instead "is the real you represented by your posting record on sdn?" maybe thats better and more clear

 

[DrBowtie]

enders game was one of my favorites. that kid was brilliant, always my idol. won against all odds, using whatever means necessary, fabulous.

exactly--at a certain number of posts, you could meet an sdn user in person and know them through and through without ever having actually met them before. or maybe it doesnt take a whole lot of posts--it depends on their nature. but you can learn a lot about ppl from them. private/public same here, im the same in either domain. so i suppose for someone with a discrepancy between those two, the answer would be no (not that there is something wrong with that). actually i dont know, for someone with 1K+ posts, i would think its hard to be markedly different in public vs here. i guess i shouldve clarified from the get go, didnt realize there would be confusion. but im glad you understood

Basically the question is do you have an alter ego on SDN?

I would say for the majority of the major posters around here that the answer would be no and hence wouldn't mind.

The fringe posters who pop in to vent or just say whacky things probably wouldn't.

 

[Shredder]

Basically the question is do you have an alter ego on SDN?

I would say for the majority of the major posters around here that the answer would be no and hence wouldn't mind.

The fringe posters who pop in to vent or just say whacky things probably wouldn't.

yeah, for those with few posts it probably wouldnt be too cool. much like running a study with a small sample size and trying to draw a conclusion. significance becomes greater with more samples/posts. then again if you have 10 beaming, ideal posts it might very well be cool. well regardless of how the question is phrased, you see the premise so thats good. but i still like the original question to bring adcoms into the picture, to give it some relevance vs a random thread

 

[QofQuimica]

maybe the question is: do you feel you have established yourself well enough on sdn to be judged accurately by your posting record? and thus, would you feel okay about a fantasy adcom scrutinize it? if adcoms did figure out who everyone is, would you wring your hands or shrug it off? or smile, even?

The admissions people at the schools where I've applied *do* know who I am on SDN if they visit here. One admissions director and I even had a discussion about the MCAT subforum on SDN when I visited that school. But I don't really try to hide who I am; anyone who knows me in real life could easily figure out that QofQuimica is me. 😉

 

[Centinel]

I'll argue that you cannot extrapolate, even from thousands of SDN posts, an entire personality. Discussion on this site is less banal, more controversial, more hysteric, and more obsessive than most real life discussion (probably entirely because the common theme that we all share is 'med school application').

In real life, I don't talk about any of this stuff. But that isn't my main contention. The major plank in my anti-personality-reconstruction argument is this: when we post on SDN, we write as if we were speaking. The written word, though, lacks the intonation that informs others when we are joking, being academic, or speaking hypothetically. This is one of the reasons why it takes most of us quite a bit of effort to craft an essay: many things said with good intent during daily life would be too easily misinterpreted on paper.

(Other reasons for difficulty with essay writing include 1. that we just don't sit around constructing valid arguments on a daily basis, 2. that we typically never give a full background before telling a story, and 3. that we rarely justify our wants and needs.)

 

[Shredder]

good post drinklord, thanks its that kind of talk i was seeking. still, from thousands of posts, you can extrapolate quite a bit i think. not all posts are hysterical, theres a good number that arent, especially if youre not the OP. hysteria may be overrepresented, but that would only be understandable considering the setting. plus, if other applicants were somehow put on a level playing field in that aspect, it would even out. as far as posts lacking intonation--that would be true if posts were standalone, but theyre all part of discussions and are usually responded to. if there are gross misinterpretations of intonation, its typically cleared up

i guess you raise a good point--would the posts be considered in their contexts, or on their own. not sure, but since its all hypothetical anyway i suppose anything goes

 

[atrovariousg]

"is the real you represented by your posting record on sdn?" maybe thats better and more clear

I doubt anyone gets onto such an anonymous forum and fakes it, on the other hand I think there are those who are "genuinely fake" and don't have a real bone or original thought in their entire body.
Am I embarassed by some of the things I say here? Sure.
But that's the real me, and my freinds choose to take the good with the bad, so I keep dishing out some bad with my good.
Could you "know" me by reading what is here? You could certainly draw some conclusions. Some would be accurate others would not.

 

[Shredder]

But that's the real me, and my freinds choose to take the good with the bad, so I keep dishing out some bad with my good.
Could you "know" me by reading what is here? You could certainly draw some conclusions. Some would be accurate others would not.

exactly, its the real you, and ideally adcoms would know the real good and bad sides of ppl rather than what they see in apps and interviews. then you know that if things dont work out, at least you put your best foot forward. but its true even here there is not 100% genuineness. you can draw conclusions, with the accuracy increasing with the number of posts, i believe. instead of adcoms reading posts, sdn moles amongst us may be a better way of thinking about it.

 

[mshheaddoc]

again, this isnt about whether adcoms actually do this or not. this topic has been raised time after time on pre allo. i try to avoid creating silly threads. if they somehow could, in theory, string together posts and try to figure out who you are based on them, would you be up for it. if you take certain posts out of context, it certainly can make a user look bad. but if you take the aggregate of posts things become more clear, especially as you rack up more of them.

maybe the question is: do you feel you have established yourself well enough on sdn to be judged accurately by your posting record? and thus, would you feel okay about a fantasy adcom scrutinize it? if adcoms did figure out who everyone is, would you wring your hands or shrug it off? or smile, even?

You'd be surprised that some schools HAVE figured out who people are on here. I know of 5 people whom they found out who they were. Oh well. More often its not to monitor you but what is being said about the school. Additionally some of those people have been asked to be school advocates.

 

[Shredder]

You'd be surprised that some schools HAVE figured out who people are on here. I know of 5 people whom they found out who they were. Oh well. More often its not to monitor you but what is being said about the school. Additionally some of those people have been asked to be school advocates.

hmm, slightly creepy. i took my mdapplicants off for that reason, it makes IDing so much easier. location too. hard to imagine ppl sifting through posts and IDing ppl--i guess if you run the right searches it makes it easier though. w/o search its impossible

 

[mshheaddoc]

hmm, slightly creepy. i took my mdapplicants off for that reason, it makes IDing so much easier. location too. hard to imagine ppl sifting through posts and IDing ppl--i guess if you run the right searches it makes it easier though. w/o search its impossible

They were all matriculated students who were "advertising" and answering questions for the school anyway. I do not know any applicants that we recognized.

 

[CerealBox]

How about you Shredder? You have said before that you would definitely not be as direct in an interview as you are on here... Do you think your SDN posts would hurt your chances?

I am definitely less tactful on here than I am at interviews... But I am the same around my friends as I am on SDN, so I guess this is the real me. The only thing I think would reflect badly upon me is when one time I got upset with a rude person in the admissions office at a school and I made a post on here venting about it. It turns out it is a school that admits to surfing SDN for its name. And I think at the time my mdapplicants profile was linked to my posts so it would be super easy to figure out who I am.

So I decided not to vent about specific schools on here. And I should probably get rid of my mdapplicants profile too. I would like to continue having honest discussions here.

 

[Shredder]

How about you Shredder? You have said before that you would definitely not be as direct in an interview as you are on here... Do you think your SDN posts would hurt your chances?

I am definitely less tactful on here than I am at interviews... But I am the same around my friends as I am on SDN, so I guess this is the real me. The only thing I think would reflect badly upon me is when one time I got upset with a rude person in the admissions office at a school and I made a post on here venting about it. It turns out it is a school that admits to surfing SDN for its name. And I think at the time my mdapplicants profile was linked to my posts so it would be super easy to figure out who I am.

So I decided not to vent about specific schools on here. And I should probably get rid of my mdapplicants profile too. I would like to continue having honest discussions here.

id be ok with it if they read them all, and didnt conveniently decide to stop after finding one or a few that they didnt like. bc there would be a lot of those. if they didnt think i was legit after all of that, i guess id throw up my hands in defeat. you cant be as direct in interviews or apps bc you only have so much space/time, so theres limited opportunity to recover if you stumble. you have to put on somewhat of a show to avoid risk. im sure that no matter what people do or say, they can justify it, its only a matter of having an opportunity to do so.

i suppose i started this thread bc i feel theres much more to me than whats reflected on apps and interviews. but i know that packaging yourself up and selling yourself like that is a skill in itself. although its a little frustrating, kind of like judging books by covers. IDing is a scary thought bc a few errant posts here and there could spoil your candidacy if theyre used to extrapolate. small sample size leads to faulty conclusions