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How would you do it? 🙂
If you could change the admissions process...
- Thread starter AllDaWEI
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NO MATH IN BCPM GPA!
Keep it at BCP. 😀
Oh, and have the application dates start at July or August instead of June.
Keep it at BCP. 😀
Oh, and have the application dates start at July or August instead of June.
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The checklists.
Solution: Every candidate gets hooked up to a lie detector and asked the question - "Why do you want to get an MD?" 😀
Solution: Every candidate gets hooked up to a lie detector and asked the question - "Why do you want to get an MD?" 😀
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- Eliminate the personal statement
- Make LORs optional
- Be more transparent in your expectations of applicants (enumerate your 'required ECs', state your MCAT/GPA cut-offs, etc)
- Make the content of the MCAT more science heavy (and include upper level stuff)
- Post ridiculously specific status updates (1st cursory review of app - hold for review, 2nd detailed review of app - no interview, 1st cursory review of app - holy moly here's an interview, etc)
... in general try to make the process more objective
- Make LORs optional
- Be more transparent in your expectations of applicants (enumerate your 'required ECs', state your MCAT/GPA cut-offs, etc)
- Make the content of the MCAT more science heavy (and include upper level stuff)
- Post ridiculously specific status updates (1st cursory review of app - hold for review, 2nd detailed review of app - no interview, 1st cursory review of app - holy moly here's an interview, etc)
... in general try to make the process more objective
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Changing bed linens as a hospital volunteer should not be mandatory. Shadowing should not be mandatory, it selects against kids whose parents have no doctor friends.
Eliminate the personal statement and LORs??? I hope you're kidding. Those two components are just about the ONLY thing that lets the admissions committee know anything about you as an individual. At that point, you might as well eliminate the interview.
Enough weird people get into medicine that really shouldn't be doctors as is. There's more to being a competent physician than just your stats.
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I can see how making LORs optional can make it more objective but I see it doing more bad than good.
How about making committee LORs optional? Or killing the criteria for LORs (two science, one non-science) ?
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From having gone through the application process twice and being around the block a few times I can confidently say that those two items are the biggest steaming piles of crap in existence. They tell you precisely nothing about the applicant, as both the applicant and letter writers invariably write what they want AdComs to hear. I have yet to encounter a truly satisfying method to 'learn about the individual' (except for a seasoned interviewer).
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This.
Although I believe that AMCAS should have a "Letter of Intent" part of the process in which you can put give your LOI to the school you really wish to go to, and only one school can be used for that.
Just my opinion since a lot of people apply to like 30+ schools hoping they would get into one, disregarding the mission statement and other factors involved.
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Yep I would definitely change up volunteering. As mentioned above, the process should be more transparent. Its obvious volunteering is a "requirement," and not something people do because they actually wanted to.
I say to follow a similar model as high schools that have mandatory community service requirements for graduation. There should be universal sheets for AMCAS that must be signed by the volunteer staff to verify the experience. A reasonable minimum number of hours should be placed, maybe 20. This should give enough experience to witness clinical setting. If pre-meds feel the need to do more, they can. Since it needs to be verified, the pre-meds that would have significantly embellished hours would no longer be able to do so. Since so many experiences actually suck, this type of verification would help to stop this "numbers game."
As for altruism, how many pre-meds would have volunteered had it not been an unwritten rule?
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How about an interview ticker indicating the number of interview slots available as the cycle progresses? That would be nice.
D
deleted261193
i hope more schools will screen. i feel like we could save a lot of money on apps if not every school was like, hey please fill out our secondary and pay $80 even though you have no chance of getting in here!
+1
That would be incredible.
Also, no calculus prereq. And I agree with making LOR's optional. I didn't want to go to office hours just to go to office hours. I can't be a good physician if I don't have meaningful relationships with my science professors? Besides, I know professors that just let students write their own....
And, making MMI or some more objective interview process standard. It's ridiculous that one person decides your fate after talking to you for just 20 minutes.
And, schools are obligated to give you SOME notification of some sort within a certain amount of time (2 months?) from application submission. Maybe like more competitive applicant pooling and/or faster rejections. It's frustrating to pay schools $100 to look at your app and then not hear from them for 5 months or more.
I could go on about this for days.
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Not going to happen... Secondaries are a huge cash cow. I wonder how "low" in stats Harvard medical school (never applied there) can go in offering secondaries that will surely lead to rejection.
Well then again, if you help out the Chinese community once a month, your sure to get in anywhere! Then you'll be one very happy Chinese girl! 😀
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If you think the personal statement is useful to admissions committees, you would be wrong. Most of them are pretty useless.
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I feel the way it is now is pretty fair--
each school is different. Some schools notify you soon, some don't. Maybe we all just need to be more patient. LORs are extremely important. Obviously if you have a highly respected professor write you a good LOR that means a lot. I imagine that those professors who "let students write their own" are either not very highly respected, or they trust the student "that" much. Either way I'm sure schools know how to smell foul, and they know who means something and who doesn't.
Volunteering is important. Maybe schools would actually rather see that you simply filed charts, and changed bed sheets. Maybe they want to see that you're willing to do the "grunt" work to get where you want to even if it means going through a whole lot of BS.
Personally I have no idea how the personal statement is used by admissions. They have never brought it up... Maybe it plays a very insignificant role. At the very least, it challenges us as applicants to discover who we are and why we are applying.
I used to think that committee letters were useless and that working through such a medium was just another hurdle. Maybe that's not a bad thing. Think of how many applicants. This just further separates the men from the boys so to speak. I think schools are looking for applicants that are really dedicated, willing to play by the rules, good at establishing lasting relationships, and obviously smart. Unfortunately one does not prove this easily.
just my $0.02
each school is different. Some schools notify you soon, some don't. Maybe we all just need to be more patient. LORs are extremely important. Obviously if you have a highly respected professor write you a good LOR that means a lot. I imagine that those professors who "let students write their own" are either not very highly respected, or they trust the student "that" much. Either way I'm sure schools know how to smell foul, and they know who means something and who doesn't.
Volunteering is important. Maybe schools would actually rather see that you simply filed charts, and changed bed sheets. Maybe they want to see that you're willing to do the "grunt" work to get where you want to even if it means going through a whole lot of BS.
Personally I have no idea how the personal statement is used by admissions. They have never brought it up... Maybe it plays a very insignificant role. At the very least, it challenges us as applicants to discover who we are and why we are applying.
I used to think that committee letters were useless and that working through such a medium was just another hurdle. Maybe that's not a bad thing. Think of how many applicants. This just further separates the men from the boys so to speak. I think schools are looking for applicants that are really dedicated, willing to play by the rules, good at establishing lasting relationships, and obviously smart. Unfortunately one does not prove this easily.
just my $0.02
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Fewer MCAT score levels (e.g., 6-point scale to prevent overuse of MCAT -- <8 becomes 1, 8 becomes 2, 9 becomes 3, 10 becomes 4, 11 becomes 5, 12+ becomes 6) on each section. Since so few people would have above a 5 and because they cannot be further evaluated above that level, it renders ridiculous MCAT scores less valuable and favors balanced individuals and the use of other requirements that actually predict physician success (esp. in primary care areas that are so desperately needed).
Less reliance on GPA with a stronger emphasis on recent GPA.
Verification of ECs and shadowing.
Addition of a personality test component to the MCAT (something like the CPI with the addition of falsification subscales and, perhaps, some MMPI-2-like pathology subscales).
More emphasis on ECs. Less emphasis on professor LORs, more on professional LORs (i.e., from supervisors in the field, esp. physicians). The banning of "shadowing LORs" (which are absolutely ridiculous...).
Also, use of the MMI and a standardized interview as the standard in US schools (much as schools such as OHSU have begun to do).
Less reliance on GPA with a stronger emphasis on recent GPA.
Verification of ECs and shadowing.
Addition of a personality test component to the MCAT (something like the CPI with the addition of falsification subscales and, perhaps, some MMPI-2-like pathology subscales).
More emphasis on ECs. Less emphasis on professor LORs, more on professional LORs (i.e., from supervisors in the field, esp. physicians). The banning of "shadowing LORs" (which are absolutely ridiculous...).
Also, use of the MMI and a standardized interview as the standard in US schools (much as schools such as OHSU have begun to do).
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This is really what I would like. The cost of medical school applications is extremely prohibitive. Even had I been ready for medical school at the end of college, I don't think I could have shelled out $2000-$3000 for secondaries in my junior year. Of course, this cycle, it was more like $4000 total . . .
I do think that some of the academic barriers are prohibitive as well, but to be honest, since half of all applicants don't get accepted anyway, I just don't see any other way to weed them out. I hear the people who say more reliance on RECENT GPA than TOTAL GPA, but I think that might lead to more people who are statistically qualified not being admitted than already are.
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I don't think LORs should be completely done with. I just think that REQUIRING it to come from science professors can be difficult. Not everyone is a science major, and for those who took the basic pre-reqs, I doubt all of them got to know their professors well during office hours. It would be better to choose the professors regardless of subject.
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I see what you mean. And yes, LORs can be quite ridiculous (as pointed out above by someone) esp. from "shadowing experience". But then again, I'm sure schools know all the BS that goes with "shadowing experiences"....
But then again, is there really a formal requirement for any LOR to be from a professor?? I didn't know of such a "requirement".
So you guys think that MMI or w/e it's called should be a standard for interviewing? I say "maybe"
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I completely disagree, not to step on your toes too blatantly.
If you want the prestige of being a physician..you better be ready to start somewhere. There are many things to learn from changing bed linens. Like: how to deal with sick people, how to deal with emergency situations, how to network. It's what you make of it.
And shadowing? OMG.. of course it is necessary and might as well be mandatory. Honestly, you will look like a complete fool if you go through medical school not knowing what you're getting into. Volunteering and shadowing do both these things for you. And, who said parents had to network for you? I've made many a friend through extracurriculars that are VERY successful physicians completely willing to give undergrads a chance.
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I agree that you need some experience. But, is it necessary to have hundreds or thousands of hours? I probably had everything I needed by the time I had fifty hours shadowing, or even less. Pre-meds are pushing the bar higher and higher, so now you need hundreds of hours. The law of diminishing returns applies quickly here, and all it ends up doing is wasting a lot of time.
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I knew I had been asked this question somewhere.............. haha
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I agree that there is some redundancy in play but there's few ways to stand out from the other thousands of applicants. If I were on an admissions committee..the kid who volunteered 300 hours of bed-sheet cleaning with children threatened by cancer is going to win my vote over the applicant who has 300 hours of bed-sheet cleaning for the standard hospital. Yes, I realize applicants are "ranked" individually and not compared.
With all this being said.. I think that research is more important than anything even despite the school. We are constantly evolving in every aspect of health care and research IMHO is the number one way to express that you realize this.
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Are you sure you would rather pick pre-med from cancer center than the regular hospital? Some of my classmates worked at "cool" sounding things, like the ICU, hospice, and other place other than the ER. They all shared the same thing in common, they b*tched and moaned about how much they hated volunteering.
Here is something relevant I posted earlier relating to subject:
Clearly gunners will apply for the more prestigious schools. Gunners are less likely to be typical cookie cutter pre-meds. These are people you will see with many activities. The typical cookie cutters will apply for the other schools. Just like when you were in high school, not every college will cater to each student. Top students typically chose Ivy League schools, not fourth tier schools no one has heard of. Same with pre-meds. Even though you get same degree, the best of the best apply to Harvard, not Tom Simpleton with his 3.5 GPA and 30 MCAT.
Gunners can volunteer for all the hours they want. Cookie cutters will try to reach minimums. Hours can also be inflated. Adding another one hundred hours seems like nothing on application, but do you know how much one hundred hours in a crappy volunteer position sucks?! The cookie cutters applying to these schools will have their numbers come back to reality, and maybe 100 hours will become the norm. Even though 100 hours is already a lot, its better than 300, 500, 1000, or even more!
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Divorce the transcript verification process from the AMCAS application so students can send in their transcripts early, have it verified, and then as soon as they submit their AMCAS app (whether it's in June, July, August or even later), the application is readily accessible to schools--no six weeks wait!
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That would be so nice. UMass . . . Ugh.
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If anything, the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction.
Things like the growing use of MMI in interviews and the importance of LORs (which often have soft skill or personality comments, and not always positive ones despite what requesters think) are aimed at trying to allow better visibility to the non-objective factors schools want to consider for screening purposes. How about the choices made in determining final offer decisions, to try to achieve diversity of matriculating classes?
It's a subjective process no matter how you look at it.
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- you need three things to get into med school: GPA, MCAT, and a set number of hours of volunteering experience in different medical fields
- eliminate all other factors from med school admissions
- make the MCAT even harder and even more grueling and give it even more weight against the GPA
- make it like the korean/japanese system: all the med schools are ranked 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > .... then everyone takes a completely impossible MCAT, requiring current-MCAT-type skills on not just the basic chem, bio, and physics, but also super-duper problem-solving skills on difficult and obscure upper-level and grad-level stuff like cancer bio, immunology, and all that. then, the highest 100 scorers get into school 1, 100-200 get into school 2, etc.
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No silent rejections.
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Seriously. I want to know when my application is read and when any decision has been made, as soon as they occur.
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- you need three things to get into med school: GPA, MCAT, and a set number of hours of volunteering experience in different medical fields
- eliminate all other factors from med school admissions
- make the MCAT even harder and even more grueling and give it even more weight against the GPA
[*]make it like the korean/japanese system: all the med schools are ranked 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > .... then everyone takes a completely impossible MCAT, requiring current-MCAT-type skills on not just the basic chem, bio, and physics, but also super-duper problem-solving skills on difficult and obscure upper-level and grad-level stuff like cancer bio, immunology, and all that. then, the highest 100 scorers get into school 1, 100-200 get into school 2, etc.
That would suck for students who want to stay in particular schools regardless of scores.. US is a pretty big country compared to Korea...
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well obviously you'd have a choice, e.g. if you score high enough, you can attend school #1 but can also go to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. assuming that everyone goes to the best school they're offered, this would work with just a fixed number of seats at each rank. but, a lot of people might choose schools lower than the best school they got into, which would imply you'd need more seats per school the lower down on the list you went.
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Does this mean that private schools would have no say in who they accept?
- you need three things to get into med school: GPA, MCAT, and a set number of hours of volunteering experience in different medical fields
- eliminate all other factors from med school admissions
- make the MCAT even harder and even more grueling and give it even more weight against the GPA
- make it like the korean/japanese system: all the med schools are ranked 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > .... then everyone takes a completely impossible MCAT, requiring current-MCAT-type skills on not just the basic chem, bio, and physics, but also super-duper problem-solving skills on difficult and obscure upper-level and grad-level stuff like cancer bio, immunology, and all that. then, the highest 100 scorers get into school 1, 100-200 get into school 2, etc.
That seems pretty un-American to me.
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I find hospital volunteering useless, and can't find shadowing for the life of me. And who doesn't really know what practicing medicine will entail? Seems pretty apparent to me.
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No charging for secondaries. Period. Stop viewing applicants as cash cows.
Less restriction on LORs. Stop with the 3 Science professor, etc format. They're not the best judge always. Let applicants choose their best letters that reflect their ability and character, not just from freshmen year professors that teach 100 students at the same time. Different schools having different letter requirements are pretty annoying to deal with as well.
Less restriction on LORs. Stop with the 3 Science professor, etc format. They're not the best judge always. Let applicants choose their best letters that reflect their ability and character, not just from freshmen year professors that teach 100 students at the same time. Different schools having different letter requirements are pretty annoying to deal with as well.
Definitely more transparency in the process.
LORs are already more flexible than many people realize; "science" does not necessarily mean BCPM.
The MCAT has not been compellingly shown to be a great predictor of future success in medicine, and I wouldn't be comfortable with it having a greater role in the process.
Better financial support for applicants who come from more limited means, for sure.
LORs are already more flexible than many people realize; "science" does not necessarily mean BCPM.
The MCAT has not been compellingly shown to be a great predictor of future success in medicine, and I wouldn't be comfortable with it having a greater role in the process.
Better financial support for applicants who come from more limited means, for sure.
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I wish it was 100% MCAT. I'd be on easy street right now....
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How cool would it be to get a weekly/daily digest email with your status on all schools? Very specific digest, like "awaiting committee meeting 10/12".
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I like a lot of the ideas that have been posted already. I have one to add:
What if we had a second interview like some jobs do? For example, you get invited to an interview (MMI I'd say works best), and then if you do well you can be invited for a second one on one interview so that schools can be more selective of who they want in. I think this would keep the weirdo's out.
What if we had a second interview like some jobs do? For example, you get invited to an interview (MMI I'd say works best), and then if you do well you can be invited for a second one on one interview so that schools can be more selective of who they want in. I think this would keep the weirdo's out.
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And be prohibitively costly, especially if you're already interviewing at 5-6 schools.
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I agree that it would be too costly. I definitely can't afford to fly around the country multiple times for interviews.
I disagree that it would help keep out "weirdos". If you can put on the song and dance for a group, it should be even easier to put it on for a single person.
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Incorporate a talent competition aspect to the interview process, like in beauty contests.
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Have a binding Early Decision option that doesn't delay all of your other applications until October (or whenever it is). If accepted Early all your remaining apps get withdrawn automatically. With so many schools focused on whether they are really your first choice, this seems like a no-brainer.
K
kpcrew
I like this suggestion.
