Do Medical Schools Look at SDN Forums?

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YLFounder

YLFounder

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Do medical school boards look at what you have posted on the SDN forums? I'm not sure if this is another form of social media, so can it be held against you?
 
Yes. Be careful to conceal your true identity. :lurking:
 
Just don't link your name to your account, but if you do, for the love of god don't say racist idiotic stuff like the guy that lost his acceptance.
 
ommnomm said:
Link?
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There isn't really all that much in the actual thread. Some guy posted racist stuff on SDN and he was either using his real name or his account was linked to his Facebook. Someone reported him and he got his acceptance taken away. At least that's what I remember happening...
 
And we're sure this isn't a moral legend?
 
To be fair, that dude was rescinded for posting racist stuff in his incoming class FB group, not on SDN. But he had a prolific posting history on SDN too so if they wanted to dig up additional dirt on him it wouldn't have been too hard. His public apology on SDN was like watching an automobile accident in slow motion though... the rescindment came in on a friday afternoon and he couldn't verify the authenticity of the loss of his only acceptance until monday morning.

It was :corny: on SDN all weekend long. Good times.
 
To those that know me, I have ZERO anonymity on here (Freezer isn't a nickname). I always figured that if I can't put my name behind a post, then don't post. All in all, I feel this philosophy served me well when applying. My top choice school was Virginia Tech Carilion and I posted regularly on their forums. Being a new school, a lot of us were sorting the good information from the bad, dealing with a lot of ridiculous criticism (seriously, we had a guy try to steer us away from the school because it was built on a flood plain), and discussing many unknowns about the developing school. All in all, when I arrived on interview day, almost the entire staff knew who I was and had very positive responses my posts on SDN. If your 2 tasks to getting into medical school is to perform academically and be memorable, I have to admit, SDN didn't hurt in the later.
 
Freezer said:
To those that know me, I have ZERO anonymity on here (Freezer isn't a nickname). I always figured that if I can't put my name behind a post, then don't post. All in all, I feel this philosophy served me well when applying. My top choice school was Virginia Tech Carilion and I posted regularly on their forums. Being a new school, a lot of us were sorting the good information from the bad, dealing with a lot of ridiculous criticism (seriously, we had a guy try to steer us away from the school because it was built on a flood plain), and discussing many unknowns about the developing school. All in all, when I arrived on interview day, almost the entire staff knew who I was and had very positive responses my posts on SDN. If your 2 tasks to getting into medical school is to perform academically and be memorable, I have to admit, SDN didn't hurt in the later.
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I'm glad this worked out so well for you but I wouldn't encourage others who are reading this to do that. You never know what the adcom members will think of SDN/online forums. It's not worth the risk when anonymity is so easy here. I certainly understand the sentiment though.
 
Freezer said:
To those that know me, I have ZERO anonymity on here (Freezer isn't a nickname). I always figured that if I can't put my name behind a post, then don't post. All in all, I feel this philosophy served me well when applying. My top choice school was Virginia Tech Carilion and I posted regularly on their forums. Being a new school, a lot of us were sorting the good information from the bad, dealing with a lot of ridiculous criticism (seriously, we had a guy try to steer us away from the school because it was built on a flood plain), and discussing many unknowns about the developing school. All in all, when I arrived on interview day, almost the entire staff knew who I was and had very positive responses my posts on SDN. If your 2 tasks to getting into medical school is to perform academically and be memorable, I have to admit, SDN didn't hurt in the later.
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Actually has the potential to be a useful admissions strategy - particularly if the school in question is new or "low tier" or otherwise not 'universally loved' on SDN. Kind of hope the idea doesn't catch on though...

But as to your core point -- I agree completely.

"I always figured that if I can't put my name behind a post, then don't post."
 
I think my SDN identity is reasonably well-known, at least at my school, which is why I only post things here that I would say in real life. I often ask myself before posting, "Would I say this to an attending?"

Then, I usually post anyway.

But in all seriousness, take a look at my post history. Although most things I say are pretty idiotic, I somewhat use sarcasm as a mechanism in order to keep me involved in SDN without having to actually craft an opinion on certain subjects. I don't use profanity and I try my best not to say anything negative about another user unless it's in the context of constructive criticism. I never argue politics or religion here. I avoid URM threads without exception. I'd recommend everybody else does the same too, but then SDN would be way less entertaining. :naughty:

On the plus side, I think my school tolerates my antics here because being involved in both SDN and the recruitment process (recruitment not admissions, they're different so don't ask me to get you in) puts me in a position to really sell the school to potential applicants. SDN, like the force, can be used for good or for evil.
 
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YLFounder said:
Do medical school boards look at what you have posted on the SDN forums? I'm not sure if this is another form of social media, so can it be held against you?
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Yeah, dude. To any new members who have their real photo and real name here, I advise you to make a new account.
 
It's not "improbable". Schools monitor their forums, at least the school specific and interview feedback sections for general trends.
 
DokterMom said:
Actually has the potential to be a useful admissions strategy - particularly if the school in question is new or "low tier" or otherwise not 'universally loved' on SDN. Kind of hope the idea doesn't catch on though...

But as to your core point -- I agree completely.

"I always figured that if I can't put my name behind a post, then don't post."
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Yeah, my case was very situational and definitely not a recommended strategy.
 
I know of a couple adcom members at my school that post on SDN regularly.

Probably half of my class lurks on here but only 5 or 6 are regular posters (excluding myself).
 
I've heard two medical school deans directly reference specific threads on SDN.
 
ouch that's unbelievably harsh. Racism is bad, but holding people accountable for something online that may or may not even be their own beliefs or that they may changed their opinion about is really unnecessarily harsh. This reminds me of how the CEO of mozilla had to resign because it was found out he voted for prop 8 years ago (or at least that's the rumor). Lots of people post stupid things online and they can change their beliefs or might not be serious in the first place. If a person was advocating violence or crimes that's obviously different, but I think this other stuff is taken too seriously.

Every action has consequences, but I think taking away an admission that took years of work, genuine passion, and dedication is unnecessarily harsh. I also fail to see how it serves any justice as all it selects for is for people that keep their maladaptive beliefs to themselves (it's not like purging students who post dumb stuff purges the system of individuals with maladaptive beliefs) and where do you draw the line over what evidence is actually meaningful enough to rescind admission?. Will people get their admissions repealed for trash talking in call of duty 5 years ago? It's also pretty easy for people to abuse the fact that adcoms do this and use it as a way to ruin others. I'm not defending people's bad actions, but at the same time there's more to this than just a person posting bad stuff => he shouldn't be at our school.
 
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mrh125 said:
ouch that's unbelievably harsh. Racism is bad, but holding people accountable for something online that may or may not even be their own beliefs or that they may changed their opinion about is really unnecessarily harsh. This reminds me of how the CEO of mozilla had to resign because it was found out he voted for prop 8 years ago (or at least that's the rumor). Lots of people post stupid things online and they can change their beliefs or might not be serious in the first place. If a person was advocating violence or crimes that's obviously different, but I think this other stuff is taken too seriously.

Every action has consequences, but I think taking away an admission that took years of work, genuine passion, and dedication is unnecessarily harsh. I also fail to see how it serves any justice as all it selects for is for people that keep their maladaptive beliefs to themselves (it's not like purging students who post dumb stuff purges the system of individuals with maladaptive beliefs) and where do you draw the line over what evidence is actually meaningful enough to rescind admission?. Will people get their admissions repealed for trash talking in call of duty 5 years ago? It's also pretty easy for people to abuse the fact that adcoms do this and use it as a way to ruin others. I'm not defending people's bad actions, but at the same time there's more to this than just a person posting bad stuff => he shouldn't be at our school.
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It's called common sense and tact; important traits for future professionals.
 
mrh125 said:
ouch that's unbelievably harsh. Racism is bad, but holding people accountable for something online that may or may not even be their own beliefs or that they may changed their opinion about is really unnecessarily harsh. This reminds me of how the CEO of mozilla had to resign because it was found out he voted for prop 8 years ago (or at least that's the rumor). Lots of people post stupid things online and they can change their beliefs or might not be serious in the first place. If a person was advocating violence or crimes that's obviously different, but I think this other stuff is taken too seriously.

Every action has consequences, but I think taking away an admission that took years of work, genuine passion, and dedication is unnecessarily harsh. I also fail to see how it serves any justice as all it selects for is for people that keep their maladaptive beliefs to themselves (it's not like purging students who post dumb stuff purges the system of individuals with maladaptive beliefs) and where do you draw the line over what evidence is actually meaningful enough to rescind admission?. Will people get their admissions repealed for trash talking in call of duty 5 years ago? It's also pretty easy for people to abuse the fact that adcoms do this and use it as a way to ruin others. I'm not defending people's bad actions, but at the same time there's more to this than just a person posting bad stuff => he shouldn't be at our school.
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Actually, if you can't behave in an adult manner when you are in public, whether online or in person, schools absolutely should drop you. Being online is not some magic arena where nothing you say or do really counts. Why would a school take someone who makes overtly racist comments, or behaves in any other blatantly inappropriate manner, over someone who DOESN'T behave in that manner? Schools take this kind of thing seriously because this ISN'T a group of 12 year olds playing call of duty: schools are selecting individuals who in a few short years will be directly responsible for the lives of others. Being a decent human being, even when you don't think anyone is watching, is important for everyone, and especially so for a physician....
 
theseeker4 said:
Actually, if you can't behave in an adult manner when you are in public, whether online or in person, schools absolutely should drop you. Being online is not some magic arena where nothing you say or do really counts. Why would a school take someone who makes overtly racist comments, or behaves in any other blatantly inappropriate manner, over someone who DOESN'T behave in that manner? Schools take this kind of thing seriously because this ISN'T a group of 12 year olds playing call of duty: schools are selecting individuals who in a few short years will be directly responsible for the lives of others. Being a decent human being, even when you don't think anyone is watching, is important for everyone, and especially so for a physician....
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It's not like this sort of behavior is restricted to one sort of individual or is enough to characterize them as juvenile. if you observed every individual in every setting you would find each one guilty of some sort of undesirable behavior that would revoke their med school admissions at some point in their life. Where do you draw the line? Broad sweeping generalizing about how one's online behavior may appear to superficially fill in the gaps in the adcom's thought processes but it really says very little about they way one will behave in a clinical setting without resorting to slippery slope arguments.
 
mrh125 said:
It's not like this sort of behavior is restricted to one sort of individual or is enough to characterize them as juvenile. if you observed every individual in every setting you would find each one guilty of some sort of undesirable behavior that would revoke their med school admissions at some point in their life. Where do you draw the line?
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Yes, but how immature, how undesirable, how noticeable, how public?
 
mrh125 said:
It's not like this sort of behavior is restricted to one sort of individual or is enough to characterize them as juvenile. if you observed every individual in every setting you would find each one guilty of some sort of undesirable behavior that would revoke their med school admissions at some point in their life. Where do you draw the line? Broad sweeping generalizing about how one's online behavior may appear to superficially fill in the gaps in the adcom's thought processes but it really says very little about they way one will behave in a clinical setting without resorting to slippery slope arguments.
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We aren't talking about someone making benign joking comments on facebook, we are talking about blatant racism. Either that individual actually believes what they stated, in which case the shouldn't be in medical school, or they really are immature/clueless/whatever enough to say that even though they don't believe it, in which case they shouldn't be in medical school. People need to start realizing that actions have consequences; this is medical school we are talking about, not high school or even college.
 
WillburCobb said:
Yes, but how immature, how undesirable, how noticeable, how public?
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you'd find behavior ranging from extremely immature to mildly offending from nearly every person in every setting and being a doctor doesn't make a person less guilty of that. Also, I wouldn't doubt for a second that those adcoms are equally as guilty in a similar or different way of behaving inappropriately. It also depends on how incredibly pervasive the political correctness is in that institution and remarks can mean totally different things out of context. How about just evaluating individual based off of their qualifications and actual context of who they are instead of "oh <applicant #1> said some sexist or racist or off-color joke once. get him out immediately"? Labeling an individual as immature based off one comment is overdoing it.

Actions have consequences but overblown political correctness takes it too far. It's like saying you wouldn't accept Dave Chapelle to medical school because he makes the light of serious subjects and that may be taken offensively.
 
theseeker4 said:
We aren't talking about someone making benign joking comments on facebook, we are talking about blatant racism. Either that individual actually believes what they stated, in which case the shouldn't be in medical school, or they really are immature/clueless/whatever enough to say that even though they don't believe it, in which case they shouldn't be in medical school. People need to start realizing that actions have consequences; this is medical school we are talking about, not high school or even college.
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Okay, for the purposes of discussion if some was a KKK member and posted racist tirades online that'd totally be a good reason to expel them, but as move farther away from black and white cases, especially when we dont have a context it becomes more subjective and potentially less and less fair. Employers browse people's facebooks and if they see a picture of the person holding a beer that can be grounds for denial of employment. i'm just wondering where the line is drawn if anything you say can be found and used against you.
 
Like you said context is important. Exhibiting tact and maturity shows that you know how to behave in a socially acceptable manner in a given context. Don't throw out red flags or anything that could be interpreted as such.
 
mrh125 said:
Okay, for the purposes of discussion if some was a KKK member and posted racist tirades online that'd totally be a good reason to expel them, but as move farther away from black and white cases, especially when we dont have a context it becomes more subjective and potentially less and less fair. Employers browse people's facebooks and if they see a picture of the person holding a beer that can be grounds for denial of employment. i'm just wondering where the line is drawn if anything you say can be found and used against you.
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I'd say that line is pretty black and white as is. And if someone has an issue seeing that I'd question their maturity and common sense.
 
mrh125 said:
It's not like this sort of behavior is restricted to one sort of individual or is enough to characterize them as juvenile. if you observed every individual in every setting you would find each one guilty of some sort of undesirable behavior that would revoke their med school admissions at some point in their life. Where do you draw the line? Broad sweeping generalizing about how one's online behavior may appear to superficially fill in the gaps in the adcom's thought processes but it really says very little about they way one will behave in a clinical setting without resorting to slippery slope arguments.
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Because when you have hundreds of qualified applicants and only 150 spots, why would you take the person with concrete evidence of extremely immature/racist/etc behavior?

A similar situation...Rarely, an applicant on interview day acts unprofessionally. Usually it's in the admissions office "holding tank" when they're talking to other applicants or when they're on tour, once it happened in an interview I was conducting. Even if this is their only unprofessional slip up in their life, unfortunately they did it at a pretty unfortunate time when the stakes are high, and you can bet they will be judged harshly for it, as there are 800 other people who were able to conduct themselves professionally for the entire 8 hour interview day. I don't see any difference between how you should conduct yourself online vs in real life. If something is not suitable to say in "real life," it's not suitable to say online.
 
YLFounder said:
Do medical school boards look at what you have posted on the SDN forums? I'm not sure if this is another form of social media, so can it be held against you?
Click to expand...

I've actually asked an Adcom about this and heard what some others have to say about this. Some will actually try to look at your online presence. There are ways of finding out who a person is even if they change their last name so don't be one of those annoying people that changes their last name on FB to tell the whole world their applying to professional school. It'll look worse if they find you. As for FB, just keep it alcohol free, stay covered in your pictures, and don't say anything that calls into question your ability to be a decent human being. As for SDN, Adcoms definitely monitor pages, especially their School-Specifics. It's the most popular site for medical school admissions. However, no one's going to look up a particular member that remains anonymous if they're not being exceptionally rude or defacing a particular school. Why is all of this important? Recently (in the past decade), medical schools have been emphasizing PROFESSIONALISM. While work and social life are separate, you need to act in an exceptional manner in both instances. Medical School ADcoms need to emphasize this idea because medicine is one of the few professional fields where applicants don't really need "real-world" experience (unlike law, business, engineering) before they start practicing. I remember seeing a thread where some applicants saw others texting during interview day when the dean was talking. That's a professionalism issue. Also, in an MMI there was a situation (not telling what school and the format) but it involved online presence and my opinion. Ya, professionalism is big and some schools (notably Miami Miller SOM will look into it).
 
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But can't SDN be used in your favor for admissions? What if they see how hard you're trying to get into medical school, shouldn't you declare who you are then?
 
YLFounder said:
But can't SDN be used in your favor for admissions? What if they see how hard you're trying to get into medical school, shouldn't you declare who you are then?
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I can't tell if you're serious or not, but no. I would be very surprised if schools actively did detective work to figure out who anyone on SDN is unless they are really sticking out like a sore thumb. So for everyone who is a somewhat decent human on SDN, it won't matter. It would seem to be much easier to slip up on facebook where you have your real name and questionable pictures or comments.
 
YLFounder said:
But can't SDN be used in your favor for admissions? What if they see how hard you're trying to get into medical school, shouldn't you declare who you are then?
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If that's the case then mrh's 1 new thread a day will make him a shoo-in for the CA schools!
 
YLFounder said:
But can't SDN be used in your favor for admissions? What if they see how hard you're trying to get into medical school, shouldn't you declare who you are then?
Click to expand...

If an internet forum convinces an entire committee that I deserve to be admitted into the medical profession then I don't want to go to that medical school. Well, except maybe if I crafted the entire SDN spreadsheet by myself. Thats a huge service to the community, and time consuming.

Conversely, if my posts come off as sociopathic, selfish, and offensive then I fully deserve to be rejected.
 
ProfessorKhan said:
Wow... that should be illegal.
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I agree, that whole incident left a bad taste in my mouth. That happened YEARS AGO and they dug it up a week ago, it also takes time for social beliefs to change throughout society (not every member of society is going to accept or understand it as fair right away), and he could have easily changed his beliefs in that time. It also says nothing about his qualifications to run a job. If he was in westburo baptist church or something then it'd be fair, but he didn't even say anything against people of alternate sexual persuasions in the first place.
 
mrh125 said:
I agree, that whole incident left a bad taste in my mouth. That happened YEARS AGO and they dug it up a week ago, it also takes time for social beliefs to change throughout society (not every member of society is going to accept or understand it as fair right away), and he could have easily changed his beliefs in that time. It also says nothing about his qualifications to run a job. If he was in westburo baptist church or something then it'd be fair, but he didn't even say anything against people of alternate sexual persuasions in the first place.
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free market capitalism!

the free hand of economics said he was not fit to lead, who are you to judge the market's beliefs
 
darkjedi said:
free market capitalism!

the free hand of economics said he was not fit to lead, who are you to judge the market's beliefs
Click to expand...
I actually agree......assuming you don't also want to force people to bake cakes 😉


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
sdn.jpg

^^ from the original thread about the rescindment... created in memoriam.
 
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