Do Ivies Conspire?

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Does anyone think that ivies conspire on med school admissions? Does anyone think they make collective "who will we interview" decisions, or is it possible that come decision time adcomms sit down and say "ok you can have gdbaby, but we get shyrem and flopotomist." ? I have this image of applicants being traded like baseball cards.

Wild rumors, anecdotes, and speculation are all welcome.

My anecdote (and a bit of encouragement for some). I thought my interviews were about over, I def. hadn't heard from any schools in a while. Friday I got a Dartmouth invite in the mail, Monday a Columbia invite in the mail, and today (Wed) a Brown e-mail invite. I'm def. thankful, but the timing seems a bit suspect. I was complete at all these places in August (except DMS, that was mid-sept). Was Columbia like, oh man, Dartmouth is interested in him? Hmm, maybe we should see if he's any good. And Brown is like, hmm, two other ivies, we'd best get on the bandwagon!

Edit: I'm mostly curious about the ivies, but speculation about "Top 10" schools or others conspiring is also welcome.
 
Dakota said:
My anecdote (and a bit of encouragement for some). I thought my interviews were about over, I def. hadn't heard from any schools in a while. Friday I got a Dartmouth invite in the mail, Monday a Columbia invite in the mail, and today (Wed) a Brown e-mail invite. I'm def. thankful, but the timing seems a bit suspect. I was complete at all these places in August (except DMS, that was mid-sept). Was Columbia like, oh man, Dartmouth is interested in him? Hmm, maybe we should see if he's any good. And Brown is like, hmm, two other ivies, we'd best get on the bandwagon!

brown does not get on bandwagons, it makes its own. 😛
guess where i went undergrad....
 
Dakota said:
Does anyone think that ivies conspire on med school admissions? Does anyone think they make collective "who will we interview" decisions, or is it possible that come decision time adcomms sit down and say "ok you can have gdbaby, but we get shyrem and flopotomist." ? I have this image of applicants being traded like baseball cards.

Wild rumors, anecdotes, and speculation are all welcome.

My anecdote (and a bit of encouragement for some). I thought my interviews were about over, I def. hadn't heard from any schools in a while. Friday I got a Dartmouth invite in the mail, Monday a Columbia invite in the mail, and today (Wed) a Brown e-mail invite. I'm def. thankful, but the timing seems a bit suspect. I was complete at all these places in August (except DMS, that was mid-sept). Was Columbia like, oh man, Dartmouth is interested in him? Hmm, maybe we should see if he's any good. And Brown is like, hmm, two other ivies, we'd best get on the bandwagon!

Edit: I'm mostly curious about the ivies, but speculation about "Top 10" schools or others conspiring is also welcome.

Yes, you're correct. But now they're going to have to kill you. Sorry. 🙁
 
And I imagine you believe there was a man on the grassy knoll too don't you?
 
Dakota said:
Edit: I'm mostly curious about the ivies, but speculation about "Top 10" schools or others conspiring is also welcome.

I have bad news for you -- it's not just the ivies or top 10 schools. It's all schools. And SDN folk are in on it too. Whenever people are not online, they are likely at a meeting. Don't tell them I told you...
 
What exactly are the Ivy med schools? The same as the undergrads that are considered Ivy?
 
potato51 said:
What exactly are the Ivy med schools? The same as the undergrads that are considered Ivy?

Presumably he meant all the members of the Ivy league, i.e. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn, Dartmouth, Cornell and Columbia - all fairly highly ranked med schools, but not all in the top 10. Except Princeton which doessn't have a med school. But they are surely part of the conspiracy as well. Maybe even the ring leader.
 
guess what? any of these school can check your status online if they have your aamcas id and birthdate (except for the schools that have passworded checks).... but they must really have a lot of time on their hands... i just realized that when i was contemplating this issue 🙁
 
potato51 said:
What exactly are the Ivy med schools? The same as the undergrads that are considered Ivy?
Law2Doc said:
Presumably he meant all the members of the Ivy league, i.e. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn, Dartmouth, Cornell and Columbia - all fairly highly ranked med schools, but not all in the top 10. Except Princeton which doessn't have a med school. But they are surely part of the conspiracy as well. Maybe even the ring leader.
Law2Doc pretty much summed up the answer to your question, but just to elaborate, there isn't any "consideration" (implying a selection criteria, etc) for the Ivy League schools. It is an actual formal alignment of schools, just like the conferences you know in sports. A school is considered a Big10, Pac10, SEC, ACC school if it is a member of that conference. The same goes for the Ivy League schools.

...I hope that was helpful
 
Richard Silverman at Yale mentioned that there's a consortium of about 13 "upper level east coast" schools that get together (I think quarterly?) to discuss various goings-on - curriculum developments, who's doing what and if it's working, sports, that sort of thing. I'm sure that some applicants come up, for example if they send multiple letters of intent or if some hugely scoring person ended up being a complete ass in interview, but I doubt they go through everyone. He mentioned this to say that there was some pair of hockey-playing twins a few years back that were almost drafted by the NHL but they decided to go the med school instead and ended up at Yale - so they talked about the twins in that there meeting.

*shrugs*
 
Is it odd that whenever I read the title of this thread, "Do Ivies Conspire", that I think to myself "as they dream...by the fire"? 'Tis the season. 🙂
 
tacrum43 said:
Is it odd that whenever I read the title of this thread, "Do Ivies Conspire", that I think to myself "as they dream...by the fire"? 'Tis the season. 🙂

Yes, that is a bit odd, but it made me laugh!
 
SpiderMD said:
Yes, that is a bit odd, but it made me laugh!

Yes, well I am cramming for a final right now. Plus I think I am just a bit odd. It keeps things interesting I guess.
 
tacrum43 said:
Yes, well I am cramming for a final right now. Plus I think I am just a bit odd. It keeps things interesting I guess.

Good luck with studying!
 
SailCrazy said:
Law2Doc pretty much summed up the answer to your question, but just to elaborate, there isn't any "consideration" (implying a selection criteria, etc) for the Ivy League schools. It is an actual formal alignment of schools, just like the conferences you know in sports. A school is considered a Big10, Pac10, SEC, ACC school if it is a member of that conference. The same goes for the Ivy League schools.

...I hope that was helpful

I understand that it's "just" an athletic conference, and many of the best medical schools are not ivies. I was, however, still curious as to what others thought. Remember the discussion a few weeks back about Wash U, Harvard, and a few others sharing their average board scores with one another? Much like what seilienne mentioned. That's the type of thing I was thinking about, just wonder how deep it goes . . .
 
LizzyM said:
Your status at each school is confidential. There is no way that the schools share that information with one another.

Someone in the know has to spoil my fun theory . . . or maybe she's just trying to hide the truth! (Ok, in all seriousness guys I'm not an actual crazy conspiracy theorist . . .)
 
Dakota said:
Someone in the know has to spoil my fun theory . . . or maybe she's just trying to hide the truth! (Ok, in all seriousness guys I'm not an actual crazy conspiracy theorist . . .)

haha actually when i was interviewing at one school i heard that some ivies, if you are a super qualified applicant, will put you on the waitlist rather than outright accept you to see if you really want to go there. thus students who get into harvard and hopkins will somehow be waitlisted at a bunch of other top schools. who knows. i dont think i'll be having this problem anyway=)
 
pallcare said:
haha actually when i was interviewing at one school i heard that some ivies, if you are a super qualified applicant, will put you on the waitlist rather than outright accept you to see if you really want to go there. thus students who get into harvard and hopkins will somehow be waitlisted at a bunch of other top schools. who knows. i dont think i'll be having this problem anyway=)

aha, maybe that explains all my waitlists... :meanie:
 
argonana said:
aha, maybe that explains all my waitlists... :meanie:

i heard that the deans of all the ivy leagues are all masons.
 
Dakota said:
You've got it all wrong, they're illuminati.

Someone has been reading too many Dan Brown books.
 
tacrum43 said:
Someone has been reading too many Dan Brown books.

It's not like I suggested they were protecting the holy grail as well . . . altho now that I think about it . . .
 
Law2Doc said:
Except Princeton which doesn't have a med school. But they are surely part of the conspiracy as well. Maybe even the ring leader.

Maybe that explains why Princeton doesn't have a medical school. This way they get to be the pupetmaster!
 
pallcare said:
haha actually when i was interviewing at one school i heard that some ivies, if you are a super qualified applicant, will put you on the waitlist rather than outright accept you to see if you really want to go there. thus students who get into harvard and hopkins will somehow be waitlisted at a bunch of other top schools. who knows. i dont think i'll be having this problem anyway=)

I actually heard this rumor too- but it came from Hopkins and Harvard students, so who knows if it's really true. They may just want to justify not getting in to certain schools..
 
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