evil adcoms??

[mkitty09]

so i was wondering...do adcoms send out an interview invite to ppl they dont really imagine accepting?? would they send out an interview invite to an applicant they would never accept, for some grand alterior motive such as appearing, i dont know, less pompous?? i think this is especially true for the ivys..i feel they might be sending out invites to different people so they could boast about how neutral they are in the selection process, meanwhile the ppl theyre inviting have no chance at acceptance. what do you guys think???

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[fizzle]

Not evil, but yes, I think they do invite people who have a very small chance (of course, you can never say "impossible") of getting in. Let's face it...if everyone they interviewed had perfect interviews, are they supposed to accept everyone? Seeing as some cuts need to be made, these cuts will more likely be made after reviewing the whole application--which means that even with a great interview, the rest of your application can still cause you to be a very long shot.

 

[Nomdeplume]

I'm not sure how plausible that sounds. It doesn't directly cost a school money to give interviews to people, but it does cost them time, which might equate in some business models to money via salaries.

It seems to me like wanting to post a statistic about who they invite to interview isn't worth the effort, anyway. I would imagine that they only invite applicants who they feel would be able to best succeed in the coursework.

 

[bluesnowbunny]

I was thinking about this the other day myself. But then I thought, out of thousands of applications, and a smaller percentage of interviews, do they really have the wiggle room to waste invites on someone whom they would never even consider accepting. Wouldn't it also be a waste of their time?? I mean, medical school admissions aren't charity cases.

I would like to think (though I don't know if this is right) that people who are given interviews have something in their application, which the adcom saw and thought, "Oh this person might make an interesting contribution to our entering class next year, let's try meeting them in person".

 

[HumidBeing]

If you are invited for an interview, then you are under consideration as a candidate for that school. The people who sit those committees and volunteer as interviewers are busy professionals in their own right, and have far too many potentially suitable applicants to waste their limited time interviewing people they know have no chance of being accepted.

There is no ulterior motive. If you've been invited, then they have reasons that they want to know more about you before finalizing their decision.

It's also not only based on choosing who would best succeed with the coursework, though being considered able to successfully manage the coursework is part of the consideration. Each school has it's own mission, and is searching for students who will fit well into their visions for the school.

 

[airplanes]

If you are invited for an interview, then you are under consideration as a candidate for that school. The people who sit those committees and volunteer as interviewers are busy professionals in their own right, and have far too many potentially suitable applicants to waste their limited time interviewing people they know have no chance of being accepted.

There is no ulterior motive. If you've been invited, then they have reasons that they want to know more about you before finalizing their decision.

It's also not only based on choosing who would best succeed with the coursework, though being considered able to successfully manage the coursework is part of the consideration. Each school has it's own mission, and is searching for students who will fit well into their visions for the school.

 

[175961]

not sure....but I highly doubt they go around saying "man, this guy is an idiot! haha, did he actually think we would accept him?? yeah, lets give him an interview for sure!"

 

[bioteach]

I'm sure don't invite people that don't have a snowball's chance in, but you're not always on equal footing come interview time. I interviewed but got waitlisted at one of my top choice schools. At the end of the season we were allowed the opportunity to go and see what they liked/didn't like about us. Turns out my interviews were incredible but my low uGPA is what kept me out. Seems to me that if my interviews were so great, I wasn't going to getting in anyhow with that GPA regardless of how well they went. I suppose if everyone else absolutely tanked their interviews I might have had a shot, but it was pretty slim to begin with. I'll bet the admissions committee could have looked at my file and seen that I had a slim-to-none shot of getting in even without bothering with the interview.

 

[fizzle]

I'm sure don't invite people that don't have a snowball's chance in, but you're not always on equal footing come interview time. I interviewed but got waitlisted at one of my top choice schools. At the end of the season we were allowed the opportunity to go and see what they liked/didn't like about us. Turns out my interviews were incredible but my low uGPA is what kept me out. Seems to me that if my interviews were so great, I wasn't going to getting in anyhow with that GPA regardless of how well they went. I suppose if everyone else absolutely tanked their interviews I might have had a shot, but it was pretty slim to begin with. I'll bet the admissions committee could have looked at my file and seen that I had a slim-to-none shot of getting in even without bothering with the interview.

Exactly; it's only wishful thinking that everyone with an interview has a decent shot at getting in. It's nice to pretend that the schools are too busy to interview people who don't have a good chance of getting in, but just looking at the reality of it--schools invite three, four, five, or more times more interviewees than they can accept--shows that the interview in many cases isn't going to make much of a difference for a lot of people. It's not like a job interview, where the interviewer is usually the one who decides whether you are in or out. The medical school application plays a smaller role, and the interviewer plays a much smaller role in whether you get in or not.