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I noticed someone had on their MDapplicants profile that they actually asked the reason for rejection. Is this actually an accepted practice? I would've thought otherwise.
Asking reason for rejection?
- Thread starter bearintraining
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I would think it to be a good idea. It gives the applicant some ideas on how to improve, but take my input with a grain of salt since I have never applied.
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It depends on the school. Some schools say on their website that they will not provide feedback. Other schools have a system for scheduling appointments with students who were not accepted so they can find out what they need to do in order to have a chance the following year. At the interview I recently went to, during the introduction they told us about their process and that if we were not accepted we should call to get feedback.
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Hmmm. Interesting. I assume it's mostly appropriate POST interview and not pre-interview rejection?
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Once again, it depends on the school. I know that most of the schools that give out reasons will do it for those who were interviewed and also those who were not interviewed. Generally, the schools who do not provide this information are schools who just receive too many applications to be able to respond to every student's request so they just choose not to give out that information to any of the rejected students. If you have specific schools you are curious about let me know or check out their websites. The information is usually there but not always easy to find.
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Are you black? If not, then I'm 60-100% sure why you got rejected.
It is school-specific. And the majority that do so will not tell you until after the application season is over. That way, they aren't too busy dealing with applications and trying to take time answering questions from rejected applicants. If you ask a school after the application season (in April or May), you will stand a much better chance of getting an answer. It is mostly a time issue.
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Yes sir.
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I was put on post-interview alternate list at LECOM-B. I asked the secretary if there was anything in my file that would have been the reason. She looked in my file for about a minute and told me everything in there looked good, but the interviewers stated "not a good fit for this school."
They put at least three others from my interview group on the alternate list as well. All three of them will make great physicians and at least two of them are accepted at AZCOM. I don't know what LECOM-B's problem is.
dsoz
They put at least three others from my interview group on the alternate list as well. All three of them will make great physicians and at least two of them are accepted at AZCOM. I don't know what LECOM-B's problem is.
dsoz
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"not a good fit for this school" means "stats and ECs are too good and he wouldn't choose our crappy school anyway."
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Wow. What was the rationale behind that...?
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The school can probably identify me from this post, but whatever.
When I asked for my rejection reason they said my shadowing and volunteering hours were insufficient (I have ~1200 combined hours). They also asked me to update them with more recent hours so I wrote them back with my new stuff, which really isn't much. I have like 35 more hours since submitting AMCAS. Two weeks ago they emailed me saying my application was being reviewed and a few days ago I got the ii.
So the timeline goes something like this:
Submitted secondary in late June/early July. Rejected late August. II early October.
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That must've been great news for you. Seems like they might've made a mistake when they first reviewed your file.
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My experience was that if you're a good enough candidate for WAMC on SDN to not pick up on the reason, the adcom rep you talk to probably won't have much more to say. The "problem" is often the sheer number of candidates. It's often not that they doubt you can make it but that they have SOOOO many others that they simply cannot accept even a large fraction of the admissible pool. At CU-Denver the Director of Admissions has stated that if her entire first string turned her down and then their ENTIRE waiting list ALSO turned them down (i.e., 2nd and 3rd string candidates -- all 320 of them) and they ended up with their FOURTH choice class (i.e., the top 160 post-interview REJECTIONS), she would still feel "confident" about presenting them to the Dean of CUSOM as the incoming class of M1s and expect few (if any) difficulties! That should tell you something about this process.
Anecdotally, I interviewed at a top 10 school and was wait listed, so I scheduled an apt to speak with an Admissions rep there. She looked through my file and said Academics were superior and my Interview was strong. There were NO red flags or concerns from the interviewer. She suggested working on my interview skills so that I would be even stronger the following year because there was nothing in my file that indicated a wait list status. In other words, don't get your hopes up.....
Anecdotally, I interviewed at a top 10 school and was wait listed, so I scheduled an apt to speak with an Admissions rep there. She looked through my file and said Academics were superior and my Interview was strong. There were NO red flags or concerns from the interviewer. She suggested working on my interview skills so that I would be even stronger the following year because there was nothing in my file that indicated a wait list status. In other words, don't get your hopes up.....
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If they rejected you pre-interview, you really shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out why. From what I see, it looks like you have a 4.0/40. Those are great stats. Think about how those and your ECs line up to a given school. Do they make you desirable? Do they make it seem that you might be less than genuinely interested? Have you applied ONLY to elite schools? Keep in mind that schools in the Top 40, especially, get so many 36+ MCATs and 3.8+ GPAs that they may honestly not be impressed by your numbers at that point. I know CUSOM turned down 1/2 of their applicants from our school who had a 40+ MCAT last year (we had 6 apply with a 40+ MCAT). In other words, I wouldn't start thinking about this until at least next May (and then only if you haven't already been accepted elsewhere).
Yea I guess if it is a top 10 school they don't really need any specific reason to reject people regardless of their stats and activities...
Also how do you know my stats?
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If you are potentially going to be a reapplicant, the classy way to do this is to ask for how you can improve your application for next year -- you should be able to glean where you went wrong from the response. If you aren't a reapplicant (got in somewhere else), then no you should never ask.
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"It's not you, it's us."
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Not really. People like to tell themselves that because it helps them to stomach the rejection, but it's rarely the case.
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So update:
I sent an email to BostonU and UChicago (the only 2 schools that I have heard back from, both rejections). BostonU promptly responded.. a relatively consistent response of having so many great applications, etc etc.. but then the following (which was clearly pasted or typed in and in a different font):
"I have taken another look at your file and have confirmed that, at least by our reading, there is no single fatal flaw."
I guess that's good news.. unless they meant there were multiple fatal flaws. LOL
Anyway, good luck guys/girls.. fingers crossed for some good news.. I still have 16 schools I'm waiting to hear from.
I sent an email to BostonU and UChicago (the only 2 schools that I have heard back from, both rejections). BostonU promptly responded.. a relatively consistent response of having so many great applications, etc etc.. but then the following (which was clearly pasted or typed in and in a different font):
"I have taken another look at your file and have confirmed that, at least by our reading, there is no single fatal flaw."
I guess that's good news.. unless they meant there were multiple fatal flaws. LOL
Anyway, good luck guys/girls.. fingers crossed for some good news.. I still have 16 schools I'm waiting to hear from.
