To reply to Pyrrion89, I would say that his hypothesis is very true... That is exactly what happens to very top students in this country, and not only for med school. One of my colleague at work, told me that it is what happened to him when he applied to engineering grad school in the US from Singapore. He was a very top student who got a mention at the international Physics Olympiads. He told me that he was admitted to several top US universities ( He went to Stanford for grad school) and got rejected by all his "safeties" schools, something that puzzled him at the time. More recently I have an obvious example for pre-med students. My son is a very top pre-med student ( MCAT and GPA above, the average scores of any admitted classes at universities like Harvard, Hopkins etc ) . So he basically took the US rankings of Med schools and populated his own list of applications with all the top 10. He applied to 26 med schools, with let's say the last 13 on his list being his safeties, some of them not exactly being top tier med schools ( UC Davis, UC Riverside) to make sure that at least he would get something ( he is from California)... We are close to the end of february, and he got one admission so far, and 6 decisions pending after the interviews. All of the 7 interviews he got where in the top 13 universities of his list ( including Harvard where he got an interview, and is now waiting for the decision first week of march). What about his 13 "safeties" ? The record here is dismal: 10 straight rejections so far, and still not a word from 3 universities, which undoubtedly that late in the game, will send a negative response. saying that they had too many applicants, without explaining why they don't give interviews to students whose application file is far superior to the ones of the students who will at the end be admitted to their school. No doubt that if they feel that a student is highly likely to be admitted by a very top school of medecine, they won't bother with that particular student. My son even told me that if he had known he wouldn't have bothered with safety schools, saving on the cost of applying to all these schools, and more important saving on time he took, spending 2 to 3 days on each application he sent ! Fortunately , he says " I got an admission that came quite early in the process, so that I would be very scared at this time !" Looking after the fact , I almost think that the good strategy for a very top student would be "underplay" the applications to his "safeties" , by omitting a few details that make the applicant look very strong besides just the grades and MCAT scores that cannot be "understated". I am thinking that a very top student can understate things like the number of foreign languages spoken fluently, or the research done as an undergrad, or some of the other relevant activities a top student always has... That could increase the student's chances to get a couple interviews among his safeties, just for the case where the student wouldn't pass the interviews he got with the very top schools. That strategy could counter the game the universities are playing, because the system is unfair to the student, when every year it looks like some top students fall through the cracks, when much lesser students get admitted to "minor" med schools. And I am not even talking about the legacy admissions who are affecting the game for those students who don't have connections... I would let the mathematically inclined people to draw the conclusion , from one simple example: Last year Harvard average MCAT score for the new class was 36.5 I believe, I also know that a 39/45 MCAT score put you in the top percentile... Roughly 100 000 pre med applicants each year, so you should have roughly 1000 students with a 39 MCAT score and above, from which Harvard could easily draw its class of 165 students minus the 25 or so admitted on "diversity " grounds ( Harvard says that it represents 16% of the class) . So if Harvard was considering 140 students among the 1000 students with MCAT at least at 39, Harvard could get a MCAT average close to 40, If the 16% of "diversity" students were admitted with MCAT scores as low as 30, it would still only bring down the average score to 38.5 , but it is only 36.5. A large disconnect, that I can only explain with a large number of "legacy" admissions, with less than superb MCAT score to bring the average MCAT score an other 2 points. All this is unfortunate, and I know coming from an other country, that there are admissions systems abroad which are purely based on academics, and where legacy doesn't exist. In England the son of the prime minister Tony Blair was rejected for admissions at Oxford and Cambridge, but was admitted at Yale. The current king of Belgium, was well known to not be a super star academically and still was admitted at Stanford when he was the prince of Belgium in 1983. In France the admission to the most 2 prestigious universities ( Ecole Polytechnique, ENS Paris) are purely based on a grueling national competitive exam that students take at the end of their 2nd year of university. That exam is so hard , with so many tests over several weeks that it doesn't leave any room to chances. You could be the son of the french president, and if you don't rank ( in sciences) in the top 500 in France, you won't be admitted to the 2 top schools, fame, wealth or your parents' power won't help. In France , the medical school system is different, but at the end of the 5th year of university, the med students take a national ranking exam that will determine where they will go. You are ranked number one in France, you get to chose where you want to study, etc. You are the last one being admitted , you get to go to the last opening, in the last med school that still has a place... Basically the higher rank , the more choice you have. No "diversity" and even better no "legacy" that I find completely unfair. If I can understand the rationale for "diversity" to take into account the disadvantages one might have encountered in life, why giving an extra advantage to the already privileged, through the secret legacy admission ( note that US universities don't publish the number of students admitted on legacy, like Mr Bush who was admitted at Yale with SAT scores well below the normal minimum threshold that most students need to satisfy to be admitted at Yale at the time)
