Dukes Anonymous :)

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MrBurns10 said:
Gotcha. Also, why do you say OB is easy? Just curious, I haven't heard too much about it and I hear we do notoriously crappy on the shelf.
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I mostly meant the hours are easy, cuz unless you get gyn/onc your schedule usually isn't too bad and you don't have to work weekends. Plus, you're graded based on the best eval you get for each of the 3 blocks, so you really just have to impress one person per block. And the number of points you have for evals/presentation/extra credit are open for you to look at at any time, so you can calculate exactly what you need on the shelf, which can be as low as like 40-50% if you get enough points early on. Also, my roommate just said the shelf wasn't bad if you use the question bank provided by Dr. Livingston, which apparently no one ever uses and that's why everyone does poorly.
 
Hey guys, I've been stalking this thread for a while, and I interviewed pretty recently and it's definitely my top choice, without a doubt (as in I would call and withdraw from every school I applied to within an hour of getting a Duke acceptance). I was searching the old threads and saw that some of y'all had written letters of intent and had success (perhaps not due to the letter of intent itself, but it can't hurt, right?). I guess I'm just curious how it differs from a letter of interest and what your general message was (if y'all don't mind... I haven't done this yet, as you might be able to tell...). Thanks!
 
WildcatMD2 said:
Hey guys, I've been stalking this thread for a while, and I interviewed pretty recently and it's definitely my top choice, without a doubt (as in I would call and withdraw from every school I applied to within an hour of getting a Duke acceptance). I was searching the old threads and saw that some of y'all had written letters of intent and had success (perhaps not due to the letter of intent itself, but it can't hurt, right?). I guess I'm just curious how it differs from a letter of interest and what your general message was (if y'all don't mind... I haven't done this yet, as you might be able to tell...). Thanks!
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A letter of interest and a letter of intent are basically the same, except a letter of intent explicitly says that if you are accepted to that school, you will go there.
 
WildcatMD2 said:
Hey guys, I've been stalking this thread for a while, and I interviewed pretty recently and it's definitely my top choice, without a doubt (as in I would call and withdraw from every school I applied to within an hour of getting a Duke acceptance). I was searching the old threads and saw that some of y'all had written letters of intent and had success (perhaps not due to the letter of intent itself, but it can't hurt, right?). I guess I'm just curious how it differs from a letter of interest and what your general message was (if y'all don't mind... I haven't done this yet, as you might be able to tell...). Thanks!
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A letter of intent basically says that you will withdraw all outstanding applications to go there. A letter of interest is just saying that you really like the school but you don't want to limit yourself just yet. Don't send a letter of intent unless you really do mean it.

The suggestion that I always make to people who are writing a letter of intent is to say what you love about the school, why you feel it's a good fit for you, and why you're a good fit for the school (i.e. what you would contribute to the class). Good luck!
 
diosa428 said:
I mostly meant the hours are easy, cuz unless you get gyn/onc your schedule usually isn't too bad and you don't have to work weekends. Plus, you're graded based on the best eval you get for each of the 3 blocks, so you really just have to impress one person per block. And the number of points you have for evals/presentation/extra credit are open for you to look at at any time, so you can calculate exactly what you need on the shelf, which can be as low as like 40-50% if you get enough points early on. Also, my roommate just said the shelf wasn't bad if you use the question bank provided by Dr. Livingston, which apparently no one ever uses and that's why everyone does poorly.
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Do you know if there's a limit to how much of the extra credit you can do? 50 possible points is an awful lot...
 
MrBurns10 said:
Do you know if there's a limit to how much of the extra credit you can do? 50 possible points is an awful lot...
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50 points? Where did you get that from? I know my roommate got like 3.5, but I'm not sure how. The index cards are worth 1, so I don't know where the rest came from...
 
y'all need lives.

(says the girl who is subjecting herself voluntarily to an extra 2 weeks of surgery)
 
pagemmapants said:
(says the girl who is subjecting herself voluntarily to an extra 2 weeks of surgery)
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1. "What do pathologists do?"

2. "Pain Management"

Neither is terribly exciting, but you don't have to be unexcited for very many hours.
 
19 Days? (Are we counting down to the 7th?)
 
amers24 said:
19 Days? (Are we counting down to the 7th?)
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Okay, so I'm probably not as excited as the applicants to see who gets acceptance letters, but I do really want to see who among the applicants I interviewed will get offers.
 
amers24 said:
19 Days? (Are we counting down to the 7th?)
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We had been counting down to the 10th (since the last day of interviews is the 7th, I figured the earliest we would here is the following Monday), which is only three weeks away!!! 😀
 
nevercold said:
Okay, so I'm probably not as excited as the applicants to see who gets acceptance letters, but I do really want to see who among the applicants I interviewed will get offers.
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It would have been interesting to know which interviewers yield the most acceptances.
 
Completely off-topic: One thing I don't get about Duke is that they overlook "any one thing" when granting interviews. This per our orientation session. If you check MDApps, there are plenty of great candidates with impressive resumes who, despite less-than-stellar MCAT scores, are granted interviews to Duke and maybe one or two other highly selective schools. So it seems to me that, yes, Duke will overlook a poor MCAT if everything else is in order.

But when the final class is selected, their MCAT average is still scarily high (last year's is rumored to have been 36-37, making only Columbia and WashU comparable). And they grant a pretty small amount of interviews (700ish for 200 ? acceptances). Point being, they'll suspend judgment on "poor" MCAT performances to a certain degree, but must heavily weight the MCAT in the final selection process. Strange.

Not a criticism, really, just a collection of thoughts based on the interview day, a close friend who applied last year (30 MCAT, no other top school interviews despite great experiences, ultimately rejected), and what I've read here. Yes, I am obviously very anxious for March. 🙂
 
DulyNoted said:
Completely off-topic: One thing I don't get about Duke is that they overlook "any one thing" when granting interviews. This per our orientation session. If you check MDApps, there are plenty of great candidates with impressive resumes who, despite less-than-stellar MCAT scores, are granted interviews to Duke and maybe one or two other highly selective schools. So it seems to me that, yes, Duke will overlook a poor MCAT if everything else is in order.

But when the final class is selected, their MCAT average is still scarily high (last year's is rumored to have been 36-37, making only Columbia and WashU comparable). And they grant a pretty small amount of interviews (700ish for 200 ? acceptances). Point being, they'll suspend judgment on "poor" MCAT performances to a certain degree, but must heavily weight the MCAT in the final selection process. Strange.

Not a criticism, really, just a collection of thoughts based on the interview day, a close friend who applied last year (30 MCAT, no other top school interviews despite great experiences, ultimately rejected), and what I've read here. Yes, I am obviously very anxious for March. 🙂
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So as an interviewer, at the end of the season I get to see all the stats and such (we're blinded to GPA, MCATs, and courses before the interview otherwise, with the exception of a few of the main admissions committee people). I can tell you that when I looked at who did and did not get offers, it was a broad array of scores. I remember seeing a 30 and a 31 and seeing a 41 and a 42. Duke gets a lot of really great applicants, which is why the average MCAT remains so high (the same can be said for Harvard, Hopkins, UCSF, etc).

Here is an important point: Duke does not admit all of the students that would be acceptable additions to the incoming class. There are 100 slots. There are probably 300 interviewees that we would be very happy to have here. There are probably another 300 or so that would be fine to admit. And the remaining 200 usually fall short of the expectation level after the interview process. We have a high yield on our offers, so we never make it through all 300 of that top, prized group, let alone get into the next 300 that we would be fine having here. It is competitive, for sure.

Because of that competitiveness, everything stays important to the end. Distinctions have to be made so that we don't have 200 people in our entering class. Sometimes the distinction is the MCAT (between two otherwise charming candidates), sometimes it's the interview (a great, humanistic candidate with a lower MCAT would be better than an arrogant, unpleasant candidate with a high MCAT). All you can do as an applicant is try to make the best of yourself in every dimension of the application, from scores to essays to the interview.

But long story short, people get in with a 30 MCAT here (usually GPA is high) or 3.5 GPA (MCAT high), but they do have ground to make up in the interview. What we try to recognize is that when it comes down to truly differentiating candidates, you don't want to overlook someone really special b/c of the numbers if they're good enough to handle the science.
 
hey thanks a lot to all you students from Duke. I've learned so much more about it just by paying attention to this thread over the last couple weeks. Unfortunately I wont get to meet/interview with any of you or see the campus because I've got a regional interview. Duke has a revisit right?

Also, has anyone who got a regional interview had it scheduled yet? I'm still waiting and March 7 is slowly drawing nearer 🙁.
 
Just out of curiosity, how would you med students rate Duke's matchlist? I was looking at the one they gave us, and some of the old ones on SDN, and they didn't strike my untrained eyes as particularly impressive (when I take into account the full year to beef up research resumes and the consistently high residency director rating on US News). Am I looking at it all wrong?

Not that matchlist is one of my primary concerns (near the bottom of the list), or that I somehow think a place like Duke would put me at a disadvantage (lol), I'm just curious.
 
chinny5187 said:
Duke has a revisit right?
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Sure does! I had a lot of fun at mine. I don't know how far away you are, but if you get an admission offer, usually people are quite accommodating about helping you get more chances to see Duke if you need it.
 
hra87 said:
Just out of curiosity, how would you med students rate Duke's matchlist? I was looking at the one they gave us, and some of the old ones on SDN, and they didn't strike my untrained eyes as particularly impressive (when I take into account the full year to beef up research resumes and the consistently high residency director rating on US News). Am I looking at it all wrong?

Not that matchlist is one of my primary concerns (near the bottom of the list), or that I somehow think a place like Duke would put me at a disadvantage (lol), I'm just curious.
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I think the match list is pretty impressive. For whatever reason, last year's graduating class had a lot of people match peds. Does this mean they couldn't match in anything more competitive? Of course not, it just means they really like kids. Considering that Duke has one of the best hospitals in the country and is ranked highly in several residency programs, and that close to one-third of students end up staying at Duke for residency, I'd say they match well. Also, location plays a lot into the decisions people make, so someone might take a spot at a lower ranked residency program than a higher one out of choice. After all, you're still going to be a blank.
 
hra87 said:
Just out of curiosity, how would you med students rate Duke's matchlist? I was looking at the one they gave us, and some of the old ones on SDN, and they didn't strike my untrained eyes as particularly impressive (when I take into account the full year to beef up research resumes and the consistently high residency director rating on US News). Am I looking at it all wrong?

Not that matchlist is one of my primary concerns (near the bottom of the list), or that I somehow think a place like Duke would put me at a disadvantage (lol), I'm just curious.
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To be quite honest, I think it is really hard to interpret a match list, especially as an undergrad. So many people are not interested in matching at the biggest name and I think because we feel well prepared and well represented by the Duke name, we feel comfortable picking and choosing what we really want. The people who do want competitive specialties tend to do very very well in them. The next thing is, the big names for med schools are not always the big names for a particular residency program. Finally, I got very positive comments on the interview trail because I am from Duke.
 
I've been lurking on this thread for a while reading the comments of all the current Duke students, and this has been helpful. Thanks for all the info!

Like meowkat44, I, too, got into the MSTP, which was very exciting. I had a wonderful interview visit and I especially like that Duke mudphuds get to do a full year of clinical rotations before going off to do their PhDs. The current students I met were among the coolest and most laid-back I met on the interview trail, and they seemed to have the work-life balance figured out. Good luck to the rest of the (MD-only) applicants waiting until March. :luck:
 
I wouldn't put too much weight on looking at match lists. If you know you want to go into a particular specialty, you might want to look at people who matched into that and see what kind of programs they got into. However, keep in mind that you don't really know what is going on in those people's minds when it comes to residency. You will find that people put a lot of weight on geography.
 
19 days to the 10th now? I guess it depends if we count today?
 
I think it's funny that you think our match list isn't that impressive, because when I looked at it, it made me very relieved to go to a school that matched so well... I guess it depends upon what you're looking at.

In other news, does anyone know at about how many miles you should get the brakes on your car checked?
 
diosa428 said:
I think it's funny that you think our match list isn't that impressive, because when I looked at it, it made me very relieved to go to a school that matched so well... I guess it depends upon what you're looking at.

In other news, does anyone know at about how many miles you should get the brakes on your car checked?
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Usually you should get your brakes inspected about once per year or else if you begin to feel pulsation on braking or if you start to hear a lot of screeching when you apply the brakes. You likely won't have to replace them more than every 20,000 miles and if you have higher quality pads, sometimes only every 50,000 miles.
 
i can drive like whoa. i should come to duke just to disprove your name.
 
diosa428 said:
It doesn't matter, no one in NC can drive. Especially when it rains or snows.
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I just want one person to use a turn signal or perhaps TRY to accelerate up to at least close to the speed limit when merging onto a highway.
 
nevercold said:
I just want one person to use a turn signal or perhaps TRY to accelerate up to at least close to the speed limit when merging onto a highway.
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Hah... I wish people knew that merging doesn't mean coming to a complete stop until someone lets you in.
 
FemalesCANTDriv said:
Hah... I wish people knew that merging doesn't mean coming to a complete stop until someone lets you in.
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I wish people knew that the left hand lane is for PASSING, and if you're not passing the person next to you, but rather going the exact same speed as them or slower, you should get out of the lane. Don't these people have driver's ed?
 
diosa428 said:
I wish people knew that the left hand lane is for PASSING, and if you're not passing the person next to you, but rather going the exact same speed as them or slower, you should get out of the lane. Don't these people have driver's ed?
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But driver's ed teaches you not to speed at all, so assuming they're going 60 in a 55, it must be okay to be in the left lane. I also love it when people slow down to 5 miles an hour to make a turn, especially in their huge SUVs. That's always fun.
 
wow, and I thought LA was bad.... sorry you guys have to deal with that!

edit: just booked my revisit tickets 🙂
 
meowkat444 said:
wow, and I thought LA was bad.... sorry you guys have to deal with that!

edit: just booked my revisit tickets 🙂
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Too bad you won't have a car, because then we could really see how well you "can" drive. 😉 😀
 
meowkat444 said:
wow, and I thought LA was bad.... sorry you guys have to deal with that!
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I don't think LA begins to compete with some places of these places. Here people know that if you wanna change lanes, you take charge. You speed up, pass, and then merge over. People in the other lane, for the most part, aren't a-holes who will go out of their way not to let you pass them.

I hate it when you want to pass someone driving slowly, and they make it their duty to stop you. They don't want to go faster, but they'll speed up just enough to annoy you.
 
With all this talk of cities with bad drivers, is there any city that actually has reasonably decent drivers?
 
jsol said:
With all this talk of cities with bad drivers, is there any city that actually has reasonably decent drivers?
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Massachusetts, as a whole, rocks. Everyone drives like 90, and everyone cuts you off, so everyone expects to be cut off, so you can cut people off without worrying about getting into an accident. I guess this may not be one's definition of "decent driving", but I love it.
 
diosa428 said:
Massachusetts, as a whole, rocks. Everyone drives like 90, and everyone cuts you off, so everyone expects to be cut off, so you can cut people off without worrying about getting into an accident. I guess this may not be one's definition of "decent driving", but I love it.
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I would have to agree, Boston has exciting drivers, not bad drivers.

Los Angeles drivers are fantastic compared to Durham drivers, which is sad because there are so far fewer people on the road here. That's my only complaint about Durham.
 
off topic, but has anyone who interviewed at duke recently asked when they'll be mailing the decisions since they pushed the interview dates back?
 
panther42 said:
off topic, but has anyone who interviewed at duke recently asked when they'll be mailing the decisions since they pushed the interview dates back?
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The admissions folks are bugging us interviewers to make sure we've completed all our evaluations so that they can make the final decisions as soon as possible, with the aim of getting the acceptances out after the first week in March. I take that to suggest that right after March 7 is still the goal.
 
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