Medical How do I stay patient while waiting to hear back from schools?

[GoSpursGo]

Stats: MCAT 519, GPA 3.7 with strong upward trend (3.4 freshman year > 4.0 senior year)
Undergrad: Majors in biology and Spanish, minor in Latin American studies (graduated a semester early - December 2018)
Gap years: Peace Corps youth development volunteer for nearly a year (evacuated due to COVID), now working as a legal assistant
Research: 3 years in undergrad working in developmental genetics lab (465 hours)
Volunteer: food pantry volunteer (180 hours), homeless outreach (260 hours), other smaller things as well
Employment: summer camp counselor, life guard, cvs retail associate - mainly in pharmacy
Shadowing: relatively minimal - 40 hours in the US-2 physicians, 40 hours abroad
State of Residency: Indiana
At this point in the cycle, I’ve had two interviews and one acceptance. While I’m very thankful to have an acceptance, my two interviews have been at the two schools I am least excited about. I only applied to 12 schools and quite a few reach schools, knowing it was possible I would only hear from a few. I have already received 3 pre-IIs (one yesterday from my #1 choice) and one pre-II hold (which is reportedly essentially a rejection), but still have complete silence from the other 6 schools since July. Is there something missing from my app that they’re hoping to see in an update or anything I can do at this point other than wait and see?

I'm not sure what you want us to say beyond what you already identified. As you said, you applied to a low number of schools, many of which are highly competitive. While your application is good, so is everyone's who gets accepted to the competitive schools and there doesn't have to be anything "wrong" with your application to not get love from them. It just means others' applications were more compelling than yours. If you have to ask what you should send in an update, that means you probably don't have anything worth updating about--short of a publication, significant award, etc, there's little that one can send in an update that would move the needle.

There's nothing wrong with being disappointed when you were hoping to go to a different school, but at the end of the day you're going to take your acceptance and run with it. So there's no sense in trying to do a post-mortem of what went "wrong" when there's nothing you can do about it now.

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[Goro]

Most applicants to med school get rejected, and every year we see high stat, very competitive candidates wonder "why aren't I having more success in IIs and accepts?"

The answer is that is an Olympic caliber event. You might win the French Open, but not win at Wimbledon.

So in the mean time, be thankful you have an accept..in four years, you will be a doctor. So stay busy. This isn't the time to wonder "why X, Y and Z will go to the Prom with me, but M and N won't."

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

You have an acceptance. Medical school is so competitive now that even stellar applicants don't get in all the time. Be thankful for what you have gotten and move forward with your career! Congrats!

 

[AlteredScale]

I’m sure it’s tough not getting the school of your choice. But as others have said be thankful for what you have. Perhaps there’s still a chance for interviews at other places but around now usually those have dried up. If you were WL on doen then perhaps you may have a fighting chance still.

If you’re wondering why you’ve only gotten 1 acceptance and two interviews already answered it, you applied to a low number in comparison to the average applicant, your yield will be low. There’s really no guarantee for a single acceptance beyond those who extra ordinary applications (talking 99th percentile in everything with super unique experiences) which are few and far between