No, it was not at all obvious.
It's regrettable that you've chosen the path of self-deception.
Your vulgarity and blasphemy are both offensive and immature. Fortunately, the "ignore" function offers me a solution. Ready...ignore!
I would definitely consider that an update.
Agree to disagree, I suppose. I think it was more likely a canned response. But it's moot at this point.
Assuming this applicant emailed the general XCOM admissions email address, wouldn't it be just the general secretary or staff quickly looking up the answer and shooting him an email back? I didnt imagine they had a significant impact on the process to where an applicant should be worried about their perception of them on something like this. Would they be in a position to say something at an adcom meeting or make a note in the applicant's file?
Probably not. That's why I advised to reaffirm interest without asking for an update. If there's been a clerical error, such a message should help rectify it. If there hasn't been, then the applicant is already on the adcom's radar and asking for an update won't accomplish anything.
My comment about it possibly harming the applicant's chances had nothing to do with adcoms being fragile and volatile; rather, it was common sense. Let's consider two facts:
1) Barring an (extraordinarily unlikely) clerical goof, we can assume the OP is not at the top of this school's list. If they were, they'd have heard back already. I know this from experience: schools that waitlisted me took weeks -- sometimes months -- to update me, whereas my acceptance letter from the school I ultimately attended was dated less than a week after my interview. (I'm not saying all acceptances happen that quickly. I'm saying what happened to me indicates that the school was very, very interested -- I was a positive outlier to them, not a middle-of-the-road guy like at the schools that waitlisted me.)
2) Medical schools can pick and choose. They receive thousands of applications and have no trouble filling their lecture halls.
Now marry those two things together. The OP is not a clear outlier to the school in question in either a positive or a negative way -- obvious "accepts" and "rejects" hear back quickly. That means the OP is in the running with many other applicants who are similarly qualified. Think like a faculty member or adcom for a moment: if you had a sea of qualified applicants for a handful of seats, wouldn't you be likely to use small things to differentiate between them? In fact, that's what happens: if someone contacts them and seems neurotic, the school can say, "I have twenty other people that look exactly like this guy and
aren't neurotic." It may seem petty, but schools are trying to decide between hundreds of excellent interviewees. In such circumstances, seemingly small details become magnified.
I'm partly asking because I sent post-interview thank you notes to a school's med admission email a few weeks ago but I never got a confirmation response so I was thinking about calling to make sure they were received but at the same time I would hate to appear neurotic or worrying about something so small...
It was both gracious and professional for you to send them. Don't follow up to see if they were received. You probably received no response because of the sheer amount of work and correspondence going through the admissions offices right now.
