If I knew then, what I know now...

[Wizard of Oz]

Apply to 15 schools: 5 in your range, 5 above your range, and 5 below.

I see this a lot, but this is advice for either applicants with a lot of in-state choices or people who are well into the 30's by MCAT with great GPA's.

With a very high percentage of my class, there was only one school in our range--the one that we are at. Below our range by the numbers alone would be Caribbean or osteo.

Likewise I could have picked five above the range, but I'd have 120 to pick from and they all would have flat out rejected me after I wasted a bunch of money. Any that would have taken me were likely very costly anyway.

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[OwnageMobile]

Whats an interfolio or like a member posted ( intefolio.com ) . I have another question. So if you get a letter from 3 professors, do you get them from then and send them directly to the schools you want or do they have to send them? Thats where I get confussed....Someone please clear this up for me..

Ed

What is confused or like a member posted ( confussed ) ...

Jk (thanks for the sic anyway!!!)

(Arbitrarily pointing out others spelling/grammatical errors (your post contains more than one, btw) is one of OwnageMobile's greater pet peeves, FYI)

InteRfolio.com is an internet document service that does more than just collect and distribute LORs, but we need not get into that. You basically pay for an account, send forms to your LOR writers and then they send their LORs to inteRfolio. InteRfolio then sends your letters, as a packet or however you want, to your requested addresses or schools. It's a great service, relatively cheap, and well accepted by the med school community. You can even do electronic submission with some schools, which is super nice.

So, the answer to your question is so--you will most likely have your writers send their LORs in (to inteRfolio.com) by themselves. Or if you have a pre-med committee, the LOR game is played a bit differently, but I'm assuming you don't have one.

Good luck with eveRything,

OM

 

[tch001]

Reccomendation letters:
I used interfolio for some of my letters, but some of my teachers were uncomfortable uploading the letter electronically (not the most computer savvy people), and I didn't want to wait for them to send it in to interfolio who would then send it out to each individual school. So, I gave the secretary of each of the departments packets with sticky adress labels I made for each of the schools and a list of when each of them absolutely had to go out by. I told my teachers to give the letter to the department secretary. This system worked out very well for me, the secretary bugged the professors (along with me) if they weren't getting the letters out on time and she was really greatful that she didn't have to hand adress 29 envelopes like she has to for most applicants. This was also nice because I didn't have to pay interfolio to send out all these reccomendations.

Number of schools:
If you have good stats, know you interview generally well, and write a good personal statement, DON'T FREAK OUT! Being on SDN sometimes with a bunch of other high strung, over acheiving pre-meds can make it seem nearly impossible to get into medical school. It's not! I wish I had just had faith in myself and my abilities, and not wasted money applying to so many schools (29) because I was "sure" I wasn't going to get in anywhere.

Interviews:
Be prepared! Look over interview feedback, the school's website, and your AMCAS before each interview. Also, right after each interview I made a +'s and -'s list about the school so I could remember later. I also tried to note my basic impressions, because after a few, they allll start running together.

Be confident! Converse with the other pre-meds, but don't get intimidated by other's acheivments. It was hard for me at first being from a "no name" school and interviewing with ivy league kids, but I quickly got over it because I realized we BOTH got this interview. If people are snotty to you, ignore them!

Send hand written thank you notes.

Staying with a Student Host Vs Hotel:
I've done both and I'd say there are advantages to both. All my student hosts have been really nice and it's a great way to learn about the school and get to the interview on time (they'll usually take you there!). However, you usually are sleeping on someone's couch/floor/air matress and you have to kind of adjust to their schedules (if they're watching tv in the living room, aka your bedroom, you can't go to sleep yet). Sometimes, especially after a long day of traveling, it was nice just to go to a hotel room, take a nice hot shower, watch some tv and sleep! I think a lot of it is personal preference, so don't feel bad if you don't stay with a student host because you just need some downtime.

Organize! I kept a little file crate with a file on each of the school's I applied to, and then just added to the folding when they sent me information or with the stuff I got at my interview. Save all e-mails! You don't want to find yousrself frantic the night before an interview looking through weeks of odl e-mails trying to find the one that tells you which room you need to go to the next day.

Wow, this post was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be! Good to all those applying next cycle!

 

[45408]

Oh, and while this didn't really apply to me, since I was forewarned by others, it DID hurt some of my friends. GET YOUR LORs WAY, WAY IN ADVANCE. When you finish bio/chem/physics/whatever, ask the professor for a letter at that time. Not a year later when they forgot who you are. Doing research for someone? Get a letter. Shadowing a doctor who knows you well? Get a letter. My school's pre-med office securely stored them for us and mailed them out for us when we needed them.

Employers and random people who know you (volunteer coordinators and the like) are probably NOT good people to ask for LORs. They may mean well, and they may think highly of you, but you want someone who has written (and read) a lot of LORs, which means someone in academia. They know what buttons to push, and you don't want someone without experience accidentally shooting you in the foot.


ASK YOUR LETTER WRITER IF THEY WILL WRITE YOU A STRONG LETTER IF YOU ARE AT ALL UNCERTAIN. Don't beat around the bush (but you probably don't need to ask if you know you were #1 in the class and you guys go out for beers on Friday). You will NOT get into med school if you have a letter that says you're mean/stupid/rude/etc. It's extremely unprofessional/unethical for a professor to lie to you about what kind of letter they will write for you, but if you don't ask, they don't have to tell you what they're thinking.

 

[Dr.Watson]

Where you're from regionally can make a difference on where you get your interviews and not just on in-state schools. I'm fairly sure I would have had a different crop of interviews with the exact same application depending on if I applied as a CA, TX, or NY resident. So, just know this and understand it when you're deciding where to apply. Don't get discouraged if you have some inexplicable rejections when your comparing school caliber in absence of region (ie rejected from a 20-something, later accepted to a top 10).

Also, screening happens if you have lower numbers (GPA or MCAT). Some schools (like Wake) love to reject pre-seconday people with these numbers. An early rejection doesn't fortell doom with all schools, even ones ranked higher. Apply broadly and you should get your application through a few screens and read by adcoms. The interviews will start coming.

 

[PZMO]

This is contrary to what most people would say, and I don't mean any offense to anyone whatsoever...
But don't apply to a ****load of schools just because everyone around you is. If you are confident with your application, make well-researched decisions about which schools are reasonably in your range, I don't really see any need to apply to 25% of the schools in the country.

This is mainly to those for which money is a huge issue, as it was for me. Instead of applying widely, I applied narrowly (very- 6 schools) but smartly with the resources I had. I've been very successful and am very glad I didn't waste a ton of money that I would have had to have taken out a special loan for.

 

[Wizard of Oz]

This is mainly to those for which money is a huge issue, as it was for me. Instead of applying widely, I applied narrowly (very- 6 schools) but smartly with the resources I had. I've been very successful and am very glad I didn't waste a ton of money that I would have had to have taken out a special loan for.

It needn't be a huge issue if you don't have somebody subsidizing your application process. It's an issue for everybody. If 6 is narrow, I don't know what you'd call my attempt (4 mudphud programs only, no other schools). I just can't understand why somebody would want to spend all of that money on longshots that will put you out to the tune of $160K for tuition only even if you do get in. I've got enough debt from undergrad/grad school already, thanks but no thanks regarding another quarter mil in loans.

 

[etsuprinthead]

start researching med schools earlier than the week before you submit your AMCAS. especially look at courses that are required or "strongly suggested." i'm now finding myself taking prob/stats (AFTER cal 1&2) my last semester because berkeley wants it (although i'm not actually IN there yet, i want to make my application as promising as possible). taking freshman classes as a senior is a strong incentive for senioritis and/or death-wishes.

think about how to fund interviews. i asked our pre-med office about this, and no one had an answer. i ended up taking out an extra small student loan to pay for the application/interview process, and i am super glad i did so.

don't let interviewers get you flustered. if you have 2 interviews for a school, chances are 1 is supposed to be a "bad guy."

 

[Dancer77]

Also:

Avoid two interviews in two days on opposite coasts. Especially if one of these coasts tends to have weather delays that will cause you to miss the last connecting flight to the other coast so that you'll have to fly into a different city and rent a car and drive up to the city where your interview is at, all on two hours of sleep.

I mean, generally speaking, of course. Totally hypothetical scenario.

haha!!!!

 

[Nomemory]

i dont know how to delete.

 

[Nomemory]

If you generally a shy person, or who doesn't generally interview well, especially for something as important as med school - if you get the chance, DO NOT schedule your top choice school to be your first interview.

If possible, schedule your lower priority schools as your first ones, because after the first one or two, you will realize that there is nothing to worry about.

I was so nervous for my first interview, I really did botch it - it was at a good school too. After that big screw up, I was never nervous anymore and my ideas just flowed and I was able to express myself quite easily.

I couldn't agree more! And if you can't get another interview prior to your top choice then make sure to mock-interview your a** off!

I'm not normally all that shy, I'm pretty outgoing and friendly even though I *feel* shy, but man, having my first choice school be my first interview was WAY too much pressure. I literally couldn't find the words for anything. I couldn't tell them why I wanted to be a doctor, why I loved their school, nothin! I was like a deer caught in headlights. Had I been prepared (i.e., had I done mock interviews) those answers probably would have been accessible enough in my brain for me to find the words even under that kind of pressure.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that because you have genuinely good answers to questions *in your mind* that you'll necessarily be able to get these to your mouth in a few seconds flat.

 

[searun]

Stay with a student host the night after the interview to get a student's perspective on the school. A good night's sleep in a hotel room the night before an interview makes for a better interview. Sleeping on the floor or on a couch leaves me groggy. I have done both, and I vote for the hotel room a short distance from the medical school. Also, eat a good breakfast and exude quiet confidence when you walk into the admissions office. Also, wear a suit that makes you look sharp.