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does being a member of sdn increase your chance of getting into medical school ?
- Thread starter abracadabraone
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Yes, absolutely. The various forums help tremendously! Especially the threads on the specific medical schools, interview feedback, and Summer Research/Enrichment programs i.e. REU, SURP etc. I had no idea that stuff existed before SDN.
This would make for a good poll in late May... Ask everyone who applied this cycle whether they received at least one acceptance. I suspect that a larger percent of SDNers gain acceptance compared to the general applicant pool. It probably has to do with the kind of applicant who seeks out SDN as well as the helpfulness of SDN...
strictly speaking, I think if there is an effect at all, it's correlative. Being a member of SDN imparts absolutely no advantages in the process. However, SDNers are a self-selecting population. Thus by virtue of being an SDN member and also being more likely to engage in the forums, you may become more knowledgeable and thus be in a better position. But this is a correlative relationship, not causative.
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a correlation does not rule out causation. didn't you ever learn that in stats?
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Do ADCOMs care if you're a member of SDN? No.
Is there a lot of useful information on SDN that will help you improve your application? Yes.
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this
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it would be hard to determine causation without experimentation.
You could say that someone join SDN, gets a bunch of advice of how to prepare to apply for med school, and benefits because of it.
You could also say, as previously stated, people who join SDN are already invested in getting into med school, and might be a better med school candidate because of that.
I think both are equally plausible
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SDN helped tremendously - my advisers were worthless. I didn't even have anyone outside SDN read my personal statement.
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Using SDN and seeking help in this forum helped me tremendously. +1 on acceptance
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Without a doubt. My advisor is going to be baffled when I ask him 500 questions when we meet in January(usually I ask 2-3) about the process. SDN has taught me so much about the process and it's a wonderful resource for those of us that are neurotic or just curious.
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Didn't you guys check the box on AMCAS saying that you post here?
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Acting on useful guidance will always help.
Is there evidence that suggest the act of joining SDN in and of itself imparts any advantage in the medical school application process? If so I'd like to see it. With what I know and what my observations suggest, I can only see correlation.
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It depends on what the OP was trying to get at, but similar to you, I would not have known about Cooper Medical School if it weren't for SDN. And that is my top choice school now. It is quite likely I would have stumbled upon Cooper at some point, but I came across it relatively early thanks to SDN and added it to AMCAS. Will that increase my chance of getting into Cooper? I think so. Hard to say without the counterfactual. Being an SDN member, for the information if nothing else, is advantageous. And being a more informed pre-med is always a good thing, right?
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I personally work with someone who is the daughter of of an EM physician who is a fantastic diagnostician and one of the hardest working women I've ever met. Her daughter, though had literally no idea about how the application process worked. I mean, she didn't submit her AMCAS until like 10/31 (right before the deadline) because she wanted to wait to see what her MCAT retake score would be. She thought as long as you submitted by the deadline you'd be okay. She took the last MCAT on 9/18.
She has had to ask for extensions for so many schools its embarrasing. She is basically asking her mother (as I speak) to write her secondaries for her. I'm pretty sure she didn't write her own personal statement.
Either she didn't have a pre-med advisor or she had an awful one. (she went to a small private liberal arts school).
Since starting getting active on SDN 10 months ago, I have not even dared talk to my advisors for fear that they would give me awful advice.
She has had to ask for extensions for so many schools its embarrasing. She is basically asking her mother (as I speak) to write her secondaries for her. I'm pretty sure she didn't write her own personal statement.
Either she didn't have a pre-med advisor or she had an awful one. (she went to a small private liberal arts school).
Since starting getting active on SDN 10 months ago, I have not even dared talk to my advisors for fear that they would give me awful advice.
K
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I go to a smaller school that has no pre-med advisors. The knowledge I've gained from SDN is insurmountable. Don't get me wrong; I've had to weed through the garbage around here too.
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So, so true.
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I wouldn't have known about the school I was accepted to if it weren't for SDN. 
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Being a member? I assume member = registered poster. Honestly, I think it's probably a wash.
A lot of SDN main website is helpful, but you don't need to be a member. The interview question section is really helpful and some of the threads are nice. But, again, you don't need to be a member to be able to see that info.
Being a member just gives you the ability to ask for advice. There's some okay advice, but there's also some really terrible advice. 80% of questions can just be solved with common sense, and most of its use seems to be reassurance for neurotic impulses or imagined paranoia.
A lot of SDN main website is helpful, but you don't need to be a member. The interview question section is really helpful and some of the threads are nice. But, again, you don't need to be a member to be able to see that info.
Being a member just gives you the ability to ask for advice. There's some okay advice, but there's also some really terrible advice. 80% of questions can just be solved with common sense, and most of its use seems to be reassurance for neurotic impulses or imagined paranoia.
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I might add that what seems like common sense for the posters here might not reflect common sense "out there." Many of us take for granted what we've learned about the med school process--a lot of premeds are really really clueless and it's not just something that you can know without typically hearing it elsewhere.
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Agreed. After being on SDN, talking to other pre-meds is definitely an eye-opener - especially those from my school. They are so wrongly informed (our advisers suck) and have a very narrow idea of what it takes to get into a medical school outside of our state university.
D
deleted393595
Does being a member of your gym help you get chicks?
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I could not agree with you more. I mentioned earlier how my small school has no premed advising. There are a few others at my school that are pre-med but they have very little knowledge of what they should be doing or what works to get you in. They don't even know that backup plans exist like SMP's. If you really put many hours into the search function on SDN you can get some great advice and gain helpful knowledge. Some of it is even from experts (LizzyM is the first that comes to mind) and people who have been there and gotten past the same obstacles you have. This is especially true for nontrads and people with below average stats. Again, there is some crap on here that you have to watch out for. But for the most part people with differing opinoins call out the crap so you can get an idea of what information is less reliable.
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The biggest difference for me is how much more confident I have been about the process. It's awesome to go to interviews and talk to those who are clueless about the process! I'm just happy that I know what the USMLE is before I head to med school...just so I can try to tailor my studying that direction (as much as I have time to). I've even talked to several M2's who didn't really seem to understand the importance of it...or maybe they were just set on primary care and the score didn't make as big of a difference to them.
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I could not agree with you more. I mentioned earlier how my small school has no premed advising. There are a few others at my school that are pre-med but they have very little knowledge of what they should be doing or what works to get you in. They don't even know that backup plans exist like SMP's. If you really put many hours into the search function on SDN you can get some great advice and gain helpful knowledge. Some of it is even from experts (LizzyM is the first that comes to mind) and people who have been there and gotten past the same obstacles you have. This is especially true for nontrads and people with below average stats. Again, there is some crap on here that you have to watch out for. But for the most part people with differing opinoins call out the crap so you can get an idea of what information is less reliable.
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