Dude stands outside med school protesting admissions process: Aaaaaand go!

[darkjedi]

while it may be a super mystery box as an applicant, there is much more openness and transparency at some schools once you are a student as adcoms are much more open to feedback when you're part of the school already.

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[alpinism]

Yeah then why not reject those 4500 applicants early on? I don't think anyone's trying to argue here that there's NO sense of structure to admissions, but that the secretive nature is unnecessary (kind of like a pointless tradition that some just can't let go of). And to all the attendings and whatnots; being pre-med now is different from when you were a pre-med and standards are different, so while you might've had a good time applying (or bad), it doesn't mean everyone else is just whiny. I just graduated undergrad and I already know for a fact I wouldn't have had such an easy time getting into schools had I applied to undergrad now

Some schools do start rejecting applicants early on (late summer and early fall) which IMO is better for everyone involved. The ones that string you along till April/May usually have very poor yield (tons of people turn down interview invites and acceptance offers) and the adcoms are paranoid about not having enough apps to choose from if everyone withdraws. Many also for whatever reason have this policy in place where they don't reject anyone till interview season is over.

Per the secretive nature at some places, much of it is a combination of tradition (holding meetings "behind closed doors" for privacy reasons) and an imbalance of supply v. demand (the school holds all the cards).

Some schools (UCLA) are notorious for this while others (UCF) are very transparent and open about their admissions decisions.

 

[Espadaleader]

I agree that schools should be more transparent. Canadian Schools follow this model. Most medical schools that i have interviewed at have algorithms to select their students based on objective/subjective criteria. These usually boil down to a point system etc. people vote etc. UPitt is very good at being subjective. They post their by laws online for the public. McMaster University (creator of MMI) they actually post their algorithm (x% MCAT, %) American schools should do the same. Pre-meds that have interviewed understand that schools use algorithms. They sometimes will tell you on the interview "we add up the scores from the interviews as vote etc."

http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/mdprog/selection_process.html

 

[Espadaleader]

I mean UPitt good at being objective

 

[SunsFun]

And that is OK.
Lack of transparency and somewhat arbitrary decisions will be a part of life from here on out.
Get used to it.

Correct me if I am wrong here. You seem to acknowledge that there is a lack of transparency in the process and you seem to acknowledge that it is not really a good thing. But you generalize it as a part of life and that he should just "deal with it". So in other words even though you feel that he has a point, you think that his protesting is worthless because there are many other instances in life when things are done not in a fair manner. So are you against any sort of social activism in general? Or do you feel this specific issue is less deserving than, say, animal rights?

 

[SunsFun]

Protesting is for hippies and losers.

I know you're mostly trolling here but this "deal with it" attitude resonates with a lot of people. I am a person in favor of affirmative action so it is very likely that people protesting admissions have a very different view of what's fair from mine. Yet, I think the ability to protest without groundless ridicule and bring their point across is a cornerstone of an open democratic society. People are more than welcome to argue that he shouldn't be out there because his ideas are bad but I am not sure why so many people just seem to be really annoyed with him being out there raising awareness about the issue. Or course, it's likely self-serving but that doesn't make it illegitimate.

 

[Goro]

Again, it helps to understand when you've actually been part of the process. Of the 5-10,000 applicants, the vast majority of them have no business even thinking of medical school, much less applying to one.

Any process that selects 100-200 people out of 5-10+ thousand applicants on subjective criteria has to have some arbitrary component to it.

 

[sourdoughllama]

Again, it helps to understand when you've actually been part of the process. Of the 5-10,000 applicants, the vast majority of them have no business even thinking of medical school, much less applying to one.

Yes I agree that of course, the majority of people applying probably have extremely weak applications so the true pool of competition is much smaller, but there is still an arbitrary component since it's such a high volume of apps. Lots of people on here say that "once you've been through it you'll know," and I agree that it'll look different from where you're sitting than from where we're all sitting. But as someone who's been on multiple interviewer positions (obviously not med school), the amount of hindsight-inflated confidence that goes on in the admissions side is very high.

If ad coms want to claim "subjective but methodical," there should only be 1 app reader. If anyone has learned anything from research (which 99% of applicants claim to have done so), then there should be no problem understanding the fact that you cannot have a controlled environment with 10 treatments. Apps might be methodically chosen by individual people, but no two people choose apps the same way. Who your apps land on and how they choose, therefore, are arbitrary.

 

[Jabbed]

Again, it helps to understand when you've actually been part of the process. Of the 5-10,000 applicants, the vast majority of them have no business even thinking of medical school, much less applying to one.

Please elaborate. Considering the cost/time of applying, I assumed that there would be a good deal of self-selection among applicants.

 

[Narmerguy]

I know considering "fit" may sound stupid, but it is really a school's prerogative to do so. I'm personally glad that they do. I don't want them to skim the top x% of MCAT/GPA, and I also don't want them to just throw together a class where background, interests, and perspectives are mostly homogenized.

Unfortunately, "fit" is hard to make transparent--if schools indicated what they consider a good fit, every applicant would show up rehearsed and ready to go. Ironically schools already do this in some sense through website information, mission statements, and the activities/experiences they fund and facilitate for students.

There are plenty of things I consider flawed in the admissions process. I'll spare you the details. However, if you look at it like a job interview, things like transparency become less bothersome. Sure they should give you general guidelines on the competencies they're looking for and what their particular institution is about, but for the most part you have to just show up, do your best, and see what happens. Some people get offers, and many more qualified applicants won't. None of us are entitled to a seat, so you just have to accept that you can genuinely do what you think is a "good enough" job and still not get a seat. That's life, it's the life everyone else is a part of, and you have to learn how to thrive in that system.

 

[Status Sciaticus]

Correct me if I am wrong here. You seem to acknowledge that there is a lack of transparency in the process and you seem to acknowledge that it is not really a good thing. But you generalize it as a part of life and that he should just "deal with it". So in other words even though you feel that he has a point, you think that his protesting is worthless because there are many other instances in life when things are done not in a fair manner. So are you against any sort of social activism in general? Or do you feel this specific issue is less deserving than, say, animal rights?

Med School Admissions isn't Burger King.... you cant always have it your way.

I will agree that knowing the tier of the wait-list. But a lot of schools already do this.

 

[cookiemonsters]

Please elaborate. Considering the cost/time of applying, I assumed that there would be a good deal of self-selection among applicants.

I think SDN can skew one's perceptions of the typical med school applicant. The median MCAT of MD applicants is something like a 28 I think? So that means 50% of all applications to med school are 28 or lower.

 

[Bacchus]

That guy needs a good slapping with a big smelly fish!

<3

 

[Gene Parmesan]

What is the point of those spambots? They have been showing up a lot more lately.

Slowly but surely taking over the internet, and inevitably the world. You fools sitting here arguing about the transparency of the medical school admissions process are fitting right into their plan, completely distracted from the slow growth of their army. The machines are TAKING OVER! It won't be long before they learn how to mimic all of our behaviors and speaking patterns. Soon, they will replace all of our professions and we will become slaves to our spambot overlords. We must fight back before it is too late. The spambots must be destroyed!

 

[IlDestriero]

Correct me if I am wrong here. You seem to acknowledge that there is a lack of transparency in the process and you seem to acknowledge that it is not really a good thing. But you generalize it as a part of life and that he should just "deal with it". So in other words even though you feel that he has a point, you think that his protesting is worthless because there are many other instances in life when things are done not in a fair manner. So are you against any sort of social activism in general? Or do you feel this specific issue is less deserving than, say, animal rights?

Lack of transparency and somewhat arbitrary decision making based on subjective information is a part of life. Is he also planning to protest all the jobs he didn't get? All the promotions that the other guy beat him on? Perhaps he will.
There's nothing wrong with this lack of transparency. It is all about the fit. When we pick fellows, hire faculty, offer career enhancing collateral duties, committees, etc. you don't debrief the losers. Get used to it.
That has nothing to do social activism. He needs to pick better windmills to tilt at.
You can't be completely objective in your evaluation of 8000 applicants, cut offs, interviews, etc all have shifting targets. The evaluation itself may be different for different people in the same pool as well based on their individual application.

 

[Mt Kilimanjaro]

Uh what? How could you even study this? Convince some American schools to change their admissions process "for science"?

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2007/RAND_WR460.pdf

This is the best citation I know of.

A school could screen for interviews the same way they always do, then secretly "flag" some randomly chosen interviewees for guaranteed admission while the others are evaluated using the current method. Interiew everyone to maintain the facade, then compare the two groups based on grades, Step I/II scores, clerkship evaluations, tests for empathy, problem solving, etc.

Probably would never get approved, but it could be done.

 

[boboyahoo]

did he make that sign in front of the building he was protesting or did he hire a truck?

Does CHOMSKY support this?

What does it mean by 'academic ability'? Did he have a 4.0 gpa and not get accepted?

The board he made is so vague.....this is not a good protesting technique

 

[pietachok]

I know considering "fit" may sound stupid, but it is really a school's prerogative to do so. I'm personally glad that they do. I don't want them to skim the top x% of MCAT/GPA, and I also don't want them to just throw together a class where background, interests, and perspectives are mostly homogenized.

Publishing minimum cutoffs for MCAT/GPA would not mean they have to skim the top -- a school that hasn't taken an applicant w/ an MCAT below 30 in years, could say their cutoff is 27 and still save plenty of people heartache and money without excluding anybody they realistically will accept. Given that all of the application process happens online now, you could fill out your AMCAS and the system could use minimum criteria like GPAx10 + MCAT + bonus points for undergrad major/institution/URM/socioeconomically disadvantaged >=65 (which wouldn't even have to be made public) specified by each school to exclude you from applying to those that would not even consider your application.

I don't think the admissions process is completely screwed up, but I do think it cruelly preys on the hopes and finances of some people who don't have a chance (or at least no chance of the schools they're applying to). The medical school where I was previously employed had a strict (and high) MCAT cutoff at the time -- it wasn't published, of course. They didn't send out rejections to folks below the cutoff early after submission, either. Instead, those applicants whose apps had never even been looked at sat hoping for interview invitations until mid-way through the season.

The only reason I can think to keep such information secret or not integrate it into AMCAS as I suggest above is that they want applicants to apply who are not qualified. Is there any reason to do that other than to get their $ or the prestige of inflated selectivity? I cannot figure out a way to justify stringing people along or taking their money for a service you aren't actually rendering (screening out an application with a filter to me would mean you are not giving it the review that they are paying for). If it's a matter of financing the application process, I'd rather have been charged $200 per secondary to schools that truly considered it than $100 to more schools b/c many would never read it.

 

[Goro]

There's a considerable amount of self-delusion among applicants. My colleague gyngyn has referred to applicants with single digit MCAT scores applying to UC schools, for example.

See also Alpinism's post, which explains selection criteria a lot more eloquently than I can.

Please elaborate. Considering the cost/time of applying, I assumed that there would be a good deal of self-selection among applicants.

 

[Mt Kilimanjaro]

Again, it helps to understand when you've actually been part of the process. Of the 5-10,000 applicants, the vast majority of them have no business even thinking of medical school, much less applying to one.

Is it really the vast majority? Since the basic requirements (GPA/MCAT) are fairly easy to get online, I find it hard to believe that >50% of people who actually put together a primary and a secondary are not at all competitive. Maybe people are just more delusional than I think.

 

[sourdoughllama]

Lack of transparency and somewhat arbitrary decision making based on subjective information is a part of life. Is he also planning to protest all the jobs he didn't get? All the promotions that the other guy beat him on? Perhaps he will.
There's nothing wrong with this lack of transparency. It is all about the fit. When we pick fellows, hire faculty, offer career enhancing collateral duties, committees, etc. you don't debrief the losers. Get used to it.

Yeah why don't we sit back and let gender inequality go by too? It's the way it is now, so why bother? Who cares about African American racial discrimination prior to the 60's? Let's all get used to everything. Who needs to cure cancer when it's the way of life anyway right? Yeah I bet when your 3.7/34 kid is a reapplicant you'll just tell him to suck it up too.

The "it's just how life is" and "you just don't get it until you're on this side of the process" excuses are ridiculous. At least those of us who are complaining have specific points we're trying to argue with.

 

[mcloaf]

Yeah why don't we sit back and let gender inequality go by too? It's the way it is now, so why bother? Who cares about African American racial discrimination prior to the 60's? Let's all get used to everything. Who needs to cure cancer when it's the way of life anyway right? Yeah I bet when your 3.7/34 kid is a reapplicant you'll just tell him to suck it up too.

Yeah, because medical school admissions not being transparent enough to please everybody applying is as important as gender inequality, racial discrimination, and cancer.

 

[sourdoughllama]

Yeah, because medical school admissions not being transparent enough to please everybody applying is as important as gender inequality, racial discrimination, and cancer.

You know plenty well what the point of my post was, and nitpicking at it is unnecessary. If you want me to spell it out for you, letting things that CAN BE FIXED stay the way they are because "it's just the way it is" is a bad excuse.

And again, if you can provide a good reason as to why keeping applicants in the dark for forever or deflecting questions like if the wait list is moving or how many people are in it are beneficial for anyone, please share with everyone.

 

[Goro]

Yup, it sure is. And don't think it applies only to students; people seeking faculty jobs do exactly the same thing. For example, when a department has an ad out for "faculty position for teaching anatomy with preference for neuroanatomy", we get people who are Drosophila geneticists, virologists or physiologists. From all the faculty search committees I've been on, at least half are from people who are NOT qualified to answer the position.

I guess a lot of people think "what the hell, maybe they won't get any takers."

Is it really the vast majority? Since the basic requirements (GPA/MCAT) are fairly easy to get online, I find it hard to believe that >50% of people who actually put together a primary and a secondary are not at all competitive. Maybe people are just more delusional than I think.

 

[mcloaf]

You know plenty well what the point of my post was, and nitpicking at it is unnecessary. If you want me to spell it out for you, letting things that CAN BE FIXED stay the way they are because "it's just the way it is" is a bad excuse.

And again, if you can provide a good reason as to why keeping applicants in the dark for forever or deflecting questions like if the wait list is moving or how many people are in it are beneficial for anyone, please share with everyone.

I get your point, but the ridiculous hyperbole about cancer etc. is unnecessary and makes people less, rather than more, sympathetic to what you are saying. Using caps lock and being condescending doesn't further anything.

I don't believe I ever claimed that the admissions system is perfect because I don't think that. I went through it last year, and I know it sucks. My classmates and I talk about how much it sucked at times and how glad we are to be done with it.

I don't know why a school wouldn't tell people whether or not a waitlist was moving, though I understand why they might prefer to keep the actual numbers to themselves. Generally speaking, I think schools should be able to be honest with applicants about where their file is in the review process and should let applicants know as soon as they're no longer being considered, but a lot of the complaints on SDN have an air of entitlement that I think tends to rub people on the other side of the admissions table the wrong way. Implicit in much of this (i.e. why can't the school be available to hold my hand and talk me through why I got rejected even though they have to reject 7500 applicants every year) is the idea that admissions staff sit around smoking cigars all day and laughing about how they're keeping applicants in the dark. Not only that, everybody seems to think that admissions offices have unlimited staff and money. Most people in admissions that I have met work damn hard every year and take their jobs very seriously (not to mention many of them have numerous obligations outside of the admissions office); if I had a bunch of premeds implying I couldn't do my job and was lazy and just taking their money for kicks I probably wouldn't be super open-minded to changing either.

Another thing to consider is that from an admissions standpoint I'm not sure what schools gain by being more transparent or publishing more about their processes. The more info they put out there the less flexibility they have to do what they want and bend guidelines as they see fit (i.e. say they published GPA cutoffs and had an application from someone they really wanted but couldn't accept because they were 0.1 below the cutoff, and I also think this flexibility is why admissions offices like to keep some files open for most of the cycle before making final decisions since you never know how the cycle is going to shape up). Personally I'm sort of ambivalent on this point, but I see why they might be reluctant to publish hard and fast rules. I also think that the nuts and bolts of what it takes to get accepted somewhere are pretty well known (academics, MCAT, ECs), and not as nebulous as people on SDN try to make them sound. Regarding applications not getting acted on for months at a time, I think admissions offices could probably agree to accept that they might be closing files they wish they hadn't later in the interest of making the process a little kinder to applicants.

Overall, I think the reality lies somewhere in the middle. There's certainly room for improvement (and probably at some schools more than others), but by and large the admissions people do their jobs and most people who should be in medical school end up there. Any process that accepts less than 100% of the overall applicant pool will leave some people pissed off. It's important to separate the inherent unpleasantness of a system that rejects more people than it accepts (and discounting the large number of people who should probably know better than to apply, all schools still end up rejecting plenty of well qualified people) from legitimate gripes that could improve the system for everyone without putting an undue burden on already overworked admissions offices.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness novella, I've got some essays to do that I'm putting off as long as I can.

 

[sourdoughllama]

being condescending doesn't further anything.

You're right, sorry

 

[touchpause13]

while it may be a super mystery box as an applicant, there is much more openness and transparency at some schools once you are a student as adcoms are much more open to feedback when you're part of the school already.

I'm curious about this. Is it okay to ask after the fact what they liked about you? Like after you are actually in school there

 

[IncognitoGuy]

I'm curious about this. Is it okay to ask after the fact what they liked about you? Like after you are actually in school there

I doubt most places will even remember. Before one cycle ends, the next one has started.

IMO, it would feel weird to ask.

 

[Reckoner]

I'm curious about this. Is it okay to ask after the fact what they liked about you? Like after you are actually in school there

I think we all know it's your fez. I'm more interested in what got me rejected right away at some schools. I know it will never happen, but I actually wouldn't mind if schools rejected with a frank explanation of what they didn't like.

 

[alpinism]

I think we all know it's your fez. I'm more interested in what got me rejected right away at some schools. I know it will never happen, but I actually wouldn't mind if schools rejected with a frank explanation of what they didn't like.

+1

Personally, this was one of the most annoying things about getting rejections. Although it would take way more time than most admissions depts. have to send out personalized rejection letters with that info.

 

[darklabel]

+1

Personally, this was one of the most annoying things about getting rejections. Although it would take way more time than most admissions depts. have to send out personalized rejection letters with that info.

Could be from a list of checkboxes? Like the common ones "MCAT, GPA, Lack of ECs, Doesn't Fit School mission, Poor interview"...etc

And a little transparency is nice. I know I'm not owed a medical school spot, but for a primary fee and a ~100$ secondary fee, it would be nice to get some kind of regular update and that if I am on a waitlist spot, I am actually being seriously considered and not strung along. Heck, during my stint as a waiter, you won't believe what customers expect from me for a ~35$ meal.

 

[sourdoughllama]

Could be from a list of checkboxes? Like the common ones "MCAT, GPA, Lack of ECs, Doesn't Fit School mission, Poor interview"...etc

For real. I realize that having individual feedback is cool, but completely unrealistic and ad coms can't be expected to get back to thousands of applicants. But big categorical reasons could be helpful if you start seeing a pattern from schools so you can fix your app

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

I think we all know it's your fez. I'm more interested in what got me rejected right away at some schools. I know it will never happen, but I actually wouldn't mind if schools rejected with a frank explanation of what they didn't like.

Negative feedback is very hard to accept for a lot of people. I cannot see a situation where this wouldn't blow up in a school's face. And eventually probably would get them sued

For the exact same reason, any HR person would have a heart attack if a company told a potential hire after an interview why they wouldn't be getting the job.

 

[Reckoner]

Negative feedback is very hard to accept for a lot of people. I cannot see a situation where this wouldn't blow up in a school's face. And eventually probably would get them sued

For the exact same reason, any HR person would have a heart attack if a company told a potential hire after an interview why they wouldn't be getting the job.

Oh yeah, it's definitely a pipe dream. I also wouldn't wish the job of writing all those rejections on anyone. I just get tired of hearing what a qualified applicant I am as they reject me

 

[darkjedi]

I'm curious about this. Is it okay to ask after the fact what they liked about you? Like after you are actually in school there

I'll be honest and say I haven't really thought about it after the fact. I was just so happy to be in the school, and so happy to be over with the whole process, that I just put it all behind me.

Maybe during residency applications, I might ask for some feedback to maybe see what I did right/wrong, but I'm not sure they would even keep my file that long.