Is SDN an anomoly? or am I missing something

[DMBFan]

It seems like everyone on this board has accepted multiple places or at the very least waitlisted...However, in my real world experience, every individual that I have known couldn't get into ANY medical school that they applied to...they just got flat out rejected everywhere..So they all had to go to the Carribean, London etc...It seems like on this forum everyone has had to DECIDE which med school to go to rather than consider an alternative country! I know like 10 people that have to do this...They were happy to get in pretty much anywhere..

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[indianboy]

Anyone know what I am talking about?

No. I try not to have such people around to disrupt my chi.

Hope that Helps.

P 'Feng Shui for Living' ShankOut

 

[CalBeE]

On SDN, there are people who post and people who don't. People who haven't got any waitlist/acceptance yet are probably not gonna be very willing to post and share their experience, compared to those with multiple acceptances

 

[DrBodacious]

SDN is a informative resource for every aspect of the application process, some people apply pretty much willy nily. I wouldn't be suprised that even after "adjusting" for lurkers who understandably don't want to post about not getting in, SDNers have a significantly higher acceptance rate.

 

[jlee9531]

we have a good number of people on sdn who are reapplicants as well who have been trying hard year after year to gain acceptance to a medical school and some of who post regularly.

but as calbee said...we have many lurkers to sdn that just read whats going on without registering or posting. people who have not been accepted will prolly not be as active on this site.

 

[bigbaubdi]

Originally posted by DMBFan
It seems like everyone on this board has accepted multiple places or at the very least waitlisted...

The people who come on SDN are typically the people who are most driven to enter medicine and are much more likely to have stronger applications. The average SDN poster is highly unrepresentative of the average pre-med.

The probability of becoming a student at any one particular medical school is pretty slim - looking at AAMC data, the average medical school received 3,112 applications for 131 spots, which means that an average of only 4.2% of applicants end up matriculating at any given medical school. With these types of odds, most people apply to a whole bunch of places, in the hope that they will obtain at least one or two acceptances.

 

[premedi-kid]

word

Originally posted by bigbaubdi
The people who come on SDN are typically the people who are most driven to enter medicine and are much more likely to have stronger applications. The average SDN poster is highly unrepresentative of the average pre-med.

The probability of becoming a student at any one particular medical school is pretty slim - looking at AAMC data, the average medical school received 3,112 applications for 131 spots, which means that an average of only 4.2% of applicants end up matriculating at any given medical school. With these types of odds, most people apply to a whole bunch of places, in the hope that they will obtain at least one or two acceptances.

 

[exmike]

actually, its because going on SDN increases your chances of acceptance.

 

[coldchemist]

I really believe that. Being part of a huge network like this makes an enormous amount of information available to us that others just don't have.

 

[AlternateSome1]

Originally posted by exmike
actually, its because going on SDN increases your chances of acceptance.

Just like Hunter Green suits.

 

[musiclink213]

actually, the reason there are such high acceptance rates is cause when you go for interviews, the interviewers know that you are onSDN and will know that there is somebody on there who was already interviewed by said person, and probably has some form of blackmail. this information is readily available amongst the multitude of other useful information found on the site. Knowing this, the ADCOM has no choice but to admit you to XYZ med skool.

 

[uclacrewdude]

i didnt post till like 3 weeks before i actually started med school. didnt figure i had any right to unless i was on my way to becoming a doctor.

 

[bgreet]

Well I mean seriously just look at how much information people on here acquire. I can confidently say that I pretty much know more thanks to this site than I would have by just shooting from the hip. Just by learning from this website really makes you all that much better of an applicant. And as a response to the "lurker" position, they are able to read an acquire just what normal posters are, and many of us begin posting/browsing long before the actual application process. We are definantly a large minority among all the other applicants, but as can be seen it really makes a large difference of frequenting here than not.

 

[Mr Reddly]

Originally posted by jlee9531
we have a good number of people on sdn who are reapplicants as well who have been trying hard year after year to gain acceptance to a medical school and some of who post regularly.

I think he's talking about me.

To the OP, I almost wish I had applied to London/Carib. I might be a 4th year right now. It took me 5 years and 4 app cycles to get that 1 accept. Wish I had found SDN sooner. It might have helped.


Is SDN an anomoly? No.
Am I? Probably.

 

[ChE_Babe]

The probability of becoming a student at any one particular medical school is pretty slim - looking at AAMC data, the average medical school received 3,112 applications for 131 spots, which means that an average of only 4.2% of applicants end up matriculating at any given medical school. With these types of odds, most people apply to a whole bunch of places, in the hope that they will obtain at least one or two acceptances.

Whoa! Watch your numbers people! You're going to scare the heck out of some poor, unsuspecting pre-med! School acceptance rates based on number of applications are not a fair barometer of matriculation rate, yet people (including many schools) bandy them about as though they are representative of the numbers of students matriculating. Most students apply to multiple programs, so the numbers given by bigbaubdi, while accurate, make matriculation rates look miniscule (4.2%) when they are actually around 50%

According to AAMC a total of 392,118 applications were completed by 34,786 applicants in 2003 (an application representing data submitted to a single school or program), meaning that each applicant applied to an average of 11 schools. Of those applicants, 16,538 matriculated. This means that 16,538/34,786, or 47.5%, of applicants went to medical school that year.

 

[Paws]

SDN is totally awesome!! Awesome, I tell you -

I would be miles behind if I hadn't found this site and it's thanks to what I have learned from everyone here that I have been able to go through this application year and feel like I was applying to the right schools, and writing the right things and even interviewing in a decent way. I would be sooooooooo lost without SDN.

No lie - in fact I might have given up in frustration or despair if I hadn't had this resource for support.

Priceless - like the MasterCard adds say.

 

[Nvr Ending Jrny]

I know more then a few people who for a FACT (I have seen their transcripts and mcat scores) who have been rejected with 3.5+ 30+. They all have good extra currics and do have a genuine interest in medicine. Like the OP said they will be going to the caribbean, london, hungary, etc. They don't want to delay the path to being a doctor by waiting to reapply so they will do what they have to do.

 

[finnpipette]

for starters, to the op, i love dave. i love chillin on the lawn and dancing along til late in the nite. lets be honest here guys...sdn'ers...especially the people who post here frequently are freaks, myself included. we spend hours...i must've spent over 1000 hours reading these pre-allo forums...we've all got hundreds, some thousands of posts. the people here put that kind of intensity into their applications too...their classes, EC, recs, personal statements, secondaries, preparing for the interviews, etc. we are OCD and call the schools all the time to check the status of our applications and all that jazz. we don't make careless mistakes and we refuse to compromise any aspect of our applications...if you do that, i promise you, that you'll get into med school. why do we do this, cuz we really want to get into med school. period.

 

[BerkeleyPremed]

Originally posted by Mr Reddly
I think he's talking about me.

To the OP, I almost wish I had applied to London/Carib. I might be a 4th year right now. It took me 5 years and 4 app cycles to get that 1 accept. Wish I had found SDN sooner. It might have helped.


Is SDN an anomoly? No.
Am I? Probably.

Which med school were you finally accepted to? And what did you do in between the application cycles to help improve your app? I really applaud your persistence and dedication though...that's really admirable man. You really deserve lots of credit...most people would've probably given up after the 2nd cycle and decided to head to the Caribbean to start their medical career. Whichever med school you attend, I hope you enjoy your 4 years there and congratulations on your admission.

 

[Mr Reddly]

Originally posted by BerkeleyPremed
Which med school were you finally accepted to? And what did you do in between the application cycles to help improve your app?

accept - case
wl - uci/ucd/uvm

changes- not much during first 3 cycles. Taking a break was the smart thing it allowed me to focus on work and allowed my changes to grow instead of being incremental. My engineering work was medically related (was in the OR a bunch as a company rep and interacted with patients/docs), that helped, if only for my essays. Also, my MCAT went from a 31 to a 35 (the 31 expired).

 

[TheRussian]

My application process went very smoothly without the aid of SDN. The only thing I used SDN for was to get interview feedback and I stopped doing that because I found a lot of the comments to be untrue. All that the interview feedback part did was make me scared and aprehensive about my interviews when I there really was no reason for me to feel that way. I didn't discover these forums until last week, after I already completed the interview cycle. It definetely helps during the waiting game but I don't think it was terribly informative during the process.
Then again I had great pre-med advising at my school that got me going in the right direction as early as the fall of my junior year.

 

[exmike]

Originally posted by Mr Reddly

Also, my MCAT went from a 31 to a 35 (the 31 expired).

that was the key

also it seems to me that Case is one of those schools that is willing to overlook your past if you have shown recent achievement.

 

[Mr Reddly]

Originally posted by exmike
that was the key

I think it's stupid if it was. I took a prep class before both of them, but I didn't take anymore classes between the two (and they were 4 years apart!), so the 35 doesn't mean I became smarter or worked any harder.

 

[exmike]

Originally posted by Mr Reddly
I think it's stupid if it was. I took a prep class before both of them, but I didn't take anymore classes between the two (and they were 4 years apart!), so the 35 doesn't mean I became smarter or worked any harder.

yeah, but for a school's averages.. it makes a difference