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- Nov 22, 2013
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Oh and I'm curious @MDforMee what stage are you in the cycle? Undergrad and major? Provide stats if you don't mind
MCW - medical college of Wisconsin
He had great stats and ECs. I think my friend shouldn't be called stupid for thinking he had a chance of landing an interview at at least one of these places with 10% interview rates. Also what's wrong with CSU Fresno?? Please don't be an elitist douche.
My friend and I went to CSU Stanislaus and both majored in chemistry.
Oh and I'm curious @MDforMee what stage are you in the cycle? Undergrad and major? Provide stats if you don't mind
Is CSU really so much easier than UC? I sort of know UC is a little harder to get into but assumed the difference like comparing Penn State and University of Pittsburgh. Although Penn State is a giant state school, it doesn't mean that doing your premed classes there will put you at a huge disadvantage.
It doesn't matter where you go. It's all about the hard work you put in and sure there may be grade inflation (I don't know) but it's certainly not exclusive to the CSU. Good job on the 4.0 but how long exactly did you stay in sac state? What was your major and did you even get the chance to take upper division coursework there? You're saying that the UC system is much more rigorous than the CSU system based on the fact that you finished undergrad at ucla while probably only taking the intro classes at sac state.The truth comes out.
Brace yourself, and try not to get offended, but broseph, I went to CSU Sacramento and earned a 4.0. I dropped out and went to community college before transferring to UCLA where it was a huge bitch to earn a 3.5c and 3.7 in my upper divisions there for Biochemistry. You really have no idea what magnitude of difference in rigor there is between the two. Believe me when I tell you that your GPA is inflated, and that adcoms know this.
I've known a lot of people that have gone to similarly easy CSU's and gotten nowhere in their applications. I give you and your friend credit for doing chem majors, and I even applied to a masters in chem program at CSU Sacramento (and was accepted, but decided to attend a masters program at UCD), and have friends that did biochem and chem at CSU Sacramento and didn't get into medical school.
Ugghh. Look at Touro's admissions statistics for people from CSU's:
University of California: 67
Berkeley 20
Davis 16
Los Angeles 13
Irvine 5
San Diego 5
Santa Cruz 4
Santa Barbara 2
Riverside 1
San Francisco 1
California State University: 10
Bakersfield 1
Humbolt 1
Northridge 1
Riverside 1
Sacramento
1
San Diego
1
San Francisco
1
San Jose
1
Santa Barbara
1
Sonoma
1
It doesn't matter where you go. It's all about the hard work you put in and sure there may be grade inflation (I don't know) but it's certainly not exclusive to the CSU. Good job on the 4.0 but how long exactly did you stay in sac state? What was your major and did you even get the chance to take upper division coursework there? You're saying that the UC system is much more rigorous than the CSU system based on the fact that you finished undergrad at ucla while probably only taking the intro classes at sac state.
Plus even if admissions take into account grade inflation and school prestige, my friend did well on his mcat (the equalizer)
Answer my questions, broseph. The truth, you say? (i.e. Your individual school experience and the admission statistics of one DO school?)I know that what I said isn't easy to hear, and I wouldn't like hearing it any more than you do. But, if you want the truth, you've got to keep an open mind.
I went to UCSD and a CSU and I agree, although it's not that big of a deal. You can get As at either if you work hard, but at CSU you just brown nose your way into it if you can't do the work.It's night and day. UCR, UCSC, UC Merced are kind of the exceptions, though. I'm only speaking from experience having attended a CSU and a big UC. Just look at Touro's admissions statistics.
Answer my questions, broseph. The truth, you say? (i.e. Your individual school experience and the admission statistics of one DO school?)
I can see clearly now the rain is gone.I was at Sac State for a year and a half. I was in the nursing program, there, that's allegedly rigorous. To get into the nursing program, you had to have 2 years of prereqs, which I had at Sac City College. I didn't have any upper division sciences at Sac State.
Actually, I live next to Sac State now, in an apartment complex next to the school. The students here aren't the dorks that you see at UCLA. They're just not. It's the truth.
This is basically the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Your friend is a fool and should have applied more broadly and earlier. Save that name change money for more apps.So I have this friend who applied this cycle and hasn't had any luck in landing any interviews. He doesn't have any red flags, has decent ECs and good enough stats. This friend of mine has grown increasingly restless and bitter in the past few weeks and has often blamed his ORM status for his situation as well as being a CA resident. He has lost all hope for this current cycle and is setting his sights on a huge comeback in the next cycle. However, he's not planning to do any new EC activities or boost his grades. Instead, he is seriously planning to change his legal name into something that sounds more URM (like Jose Lopez). He is Asian but is often mistaken as a Hispanic and so he is set on taking advantage of this in the next cycle.
What do you guys think? I know spinachdip will disapprove
I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
Yes nursing programs can be rigorous but not as rigorous as a hard science major. You're comparing sac state nursing coursework with biochemistry coursework at ucla? If you take upper division chemistry classes at sac state, I'm confident that you will change your opinion about the lower rigor in the CSU. Pchem is no joke, brah. Regardless of where you take it
Thiis all sounds nice to you on the paper until those of us 100% middle eastern (born and and raised there) put Caucasian on the application. All of my friends who are middle eastern and premeds did. Even guys I knew from Lybia and Morocco. Think about how the adcoms will view you being 1/8 Egyptian and claiming that you're Aftican American alongside the other applicants from the Middle East putting Caucasian.
Even though I don't fully support my friend's idea, I do really feel for him. It's refreshing to see another person here understand. The system is very unfair :/
Pacific Islanders. Does it matter if they are from Guam, Micronesia, Vanuatu, Hawaii, Maldives, Phillipines? No, they are pacific islanders, and there aren't too many of these people working as Physicians in the US.
Actually, Filipinos are considered Asian.
I'm glad you were able to hone in on the main point of my post.
If you want to argue with me about semantics, here's your check and mate: "The Philippines (i/ˈfɪlɨpiːnz/; fi-lə-peenz; Filipino: Pilipinas[ˌpɪlɪˈpinɐs]), officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (Filipino:Repúblika ng Pilipinas), is a sovereignisland country in Southeast Asia situated in the western Pacific Ocean." (Wikipedia)
Guilty as charged.Interesting, the ORM/URM threads always have the same people making the same points and the same groups being villified or denigrated. Not pointing fingers at anyone or anything but it's quite a phenomenon/pattern on SDN.
+1.Guilty as charged.
+2Guilty as charged.
Let's not start another cyclical argument. Though if it happens, this time I think I'll be on the "against" side because I haven't done that one in a couple threads.
I have been popping on and off this thread but I was in class.
I'm not sure if someone has made this clarification yet, but it doesn't matter if you are from a North-African country, with regards to inclusion within the URM group. Egypt? Morroco? Tunisia? Etc? These are considered as Arab identifying nations, and thus if you descend from the people of these north african countries, you are not African American, but you are likely ARAB, as in, Egyptian-American or Morrocan-American. Guess what? The whole point of "URM" is not to assign a geneologic-geographic origin for applicants, but to promote inclusion of typically marginalized sects of our society - hispanic, native american, black, etc. Guess who ISNT under-represented in medicine? Egyptians. Lebanese people. Iraqis. Israelis. Morrocans. ARABS, are not under-represented in medicine, so it doesn't matter if EGYPT is on the African Continent, being part or entirely egyptian-American does not make you by default an African-American.
Lets make this very clear.
Who do I see ALOT of in the hospital, as far as physician staff goes?
White dudes & White chicks. Does it matter if they are British, Dutch, Australian, Norwegian, Polish, etc? No. They are white.
Arab men and Arab women. Does it matter if they are lebanese, Egyptian, Israeli, Palestinia, Iraqi, or Saudi or Moroccan? No. they are Arab.
Asian men and Asian women. Does it matter if they are Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Malaysian, etc? No. They are Asian.
South Asian men and South Asian Women. Does it matter if their origins are India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh? No, they are South Asian.
Guess who I don't see alot of in the hospital, as far as PHYSICIAN staff goes?
Black dudes and Black chicks. Does it matter if they're parents are from Jamaica, Kenya, Uganda? No. They are black, and there aren't too many of these people working as physicians in the US.
Pacific Islanders. Does it matter if they are from Guam, Micronesia, Vanuatu, Hawaii, Maldives, Phillipines? No, they are pacific islanders, and there aren't too many of these people working as Physicians in the US.
Native Americans/Native Alaskans/Inuit/Eskimo. Does it matter if they are seminole or blackfoot or cherokee? Does it matter if they are from a tribe near Anchorage or closer to North Slope Borough? No. They are natives of the land and there aren't too many of these people working as Physicians in the US.
I can tell you first-hand that my friend is not racist. And he's not and idiot. This cycle just rattled him to the core. He's not himself and he hasn't actually done anything unethical. Think of what he's going through before you start shredding him to pieces you jerko
My friend is one of the nicest and hard working people I know, and it's really messed up that you hope he doesn't get in. The process has been really rough on him; he has worked so hard for the past four years and schools hasn't even given him a chance to prove himself in an interview. Yeah his idea seems unethical but it's not like he did it or even going to do it. Put yourself in his shoes. Talk about lack of sympathy sheesh
Slipperybutter, what you and Santana90's friend are failing to recognize is that this is NOT a one time lie. You will have to live this lie out for the rest of your professional life.
You better plan to have everybody at that university know that lie and for it to follow you forever if you are discovered. As soon as you are admitted or interview as a URM, you will begin getting immersed in the Multicultural Community:
Trust me that if you do not get uncovered at the interview/admissions point, you WILL get uncovered by the multicultural students in a class. Medical school classes are VERY small, and the URM groups are even smaller. We're talking only 12 or 13 of us in a class of 150 - they know one another.
- Invited to multicultural second look events or pre-interview events;
- Your name will be put on a registry with the school where all of the people in the multicultural center will know you and will know your "background";
- You may be asked to serve on panels and committees where you represent your ethnicity's interests and view point (there aren't that many of us in a school so it happens a lot);
- The president of SNMA (or LMSA) WILL know about you, because they get lists of all of the "multicultural" students and their ethnicity for recruiting and support reasons.
You may never get in trouble for intentionally lying about your ethnicity in order to garner some "URM advantage", but you will know inside that what you did was wrong, and those of us who truly represent our communities, and have been proud "URMs" long before medical school was even in the picture, will know what you did.
If you can live with that then great. Just understand all of the people you will be directly offending by your masquerade, and realize that some may take it extremely personal - and it may not end well for you.
BTW @SlipperyButter - I addressed this to you because you and I both know that the people of Northern Africa and the Middle East are considered "Caucasian" by the census bureau. You know that you are not African-American, and at only 1/8 Egyptian, your argument is even shakier. Are you prepared to look an older Black physician interviewer, who has gone through their fair share of trials and tribulations just by being a POC practicing medicine, in the face and tell him or her, "Yep, I'm African American! My great grand-dad was from Egypt!". It's a slippery slope towards leading a false identity.
Bam!
I really don't think it matters much where you choose to go. I mean different schools may have differing opportunities available but in the end, it mostly comes down to GPA/mcat followed by ECs. Sure there are more competitive applicants coming from the UCs but it's not necessarily because they went to a UC. Rather, you have to remember that more high caliber students go to the UCs in the first place. A good student regardless of where he's graduating from will be competitive for medschool admissions.Major at a CSU counts for a lot. But, there are a lot of students in the CSU system that want to go to medical school. As a California student, your friend needs to realize that they're competing with literally thousands of other UC kids that all look really good on paper. I posted Touro's data as a way of saying the same thing.
I remember going to community college with a friend that wanted to go to medical school. I kept telling him not to go to sac state. He didn't listen to me, and now I run into him from time to time at UCD where he's in their graduate chemistry department doing some type of genome research.
Like I said earlier in the thread, your friend might want to check out things that will augment his application if he's set on becoming an MD. Work experience and masters programs in medically related fields can help. If he's set on MD, he'd better do something. DO isn't so bad. Look at me, similar MCAT, similar major, better school, lower GPA, and I'm applying to 40 medical schools out of state at places I've never heard of.... I have thousands of hours of clinical experience, lots of ECs, and I'll have a publication and poster through my masters program, too, with really strong LORs from UCLA professors and professors in UCD's SOM; I'm looking forward to living in places like Detroit and going to schools like Wayne State. I'm a white guy, too. Not that it matters.
Do I really have to elaborate? There are plenty of examples/reasons posted here on sdn.Could you give a specific reason for why the system is unfair?
StahpJust tell Northwestern you're gay, you would be considered a URM (I think) and it's a hell of a lot easier than a legal name change.
After talking extensively to my friend, he has realized how stupid his idea was, but thanks to some of the clever posters in this thread, he has decided to pretend to be gay in the upcoming cycle. He expects that this may be frowned upon by some institutions, but he foresees a good upside in this new plan in more liberal schools such as the ones in California (fabulous UCSF).
After talking extensively to my friend, he has realized how stupid his idea was, but thanks to some of the clever posters in this thread, he has decided to pretend to be gay in the upcoming cycle. He expects that this may be frowned upon by some institutions, but he foresees a good upside in this new plan in more liberal schools such as the ones in California (fabulous UCSF).
I was joking but now that he's going through with it I feel bad. Sorry.Stahp
I was joking but now that he's going through with it I feel bad. Sorry.