Is this all just a crap shoot?

[eastsidaz]

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Of course it's somewhat of a crapshoot. Without consistent standards applied across the board with regard to GPA and MCAT, there will always be a lot of variance. And timing is sooooo important. A 3.4 may land you an interview one day but be too low the next. Also, an adcom who has seen 2000 apps could easily reject someone identical to someone else who was accepted 1500 apps earlier in his review, not out of malice, but out of forgetfulness. You just do the best you can and take what you can get.

I also get the impression that waitlists are a bigger part of the picture than any of us realize. I hope I'm right about this come waitlist season.

 

[DNM503]

From my experience, when people say you are a "shoo-in" for med school, they don't mean you will be guaranteed a spot, it means if you apply high and low, you will be guaranteed a spot somewhere. That means someone with excellent stats such as the OP will be a shoo-in for a med school if he/she applied to top schools and lower-tiered schools and applied to a lot of them. I find that some of my friends with really good stats think they are 'shoo-ins' because they passed the 32+ and 3.6+ borderline, so they apply to all top med schools, and then find themselves waitlisted and rejected. Well, most people who have top stats aren't shoo-in for top med schools, I think those group of people are a selective elite onto themselves. Just my two cents. 🙂

My interviewer at Stanford told me I was a shoo-in. I got the rejection letter today.

I'm starting to think this process is less of a crap shoot and more just crap. But I can't complain too much because at least I am going to be a doctor!

 

[Law2Doc]

Of course it's somewhat of a crapshoot. Without consistent standards applied across the board with regard to GPA and MCAT, there will always be a lot of variance. And timing is sooooo important. A 3.4 may land you an interview one day but be too low the next. Also, an adcom who has seen 2000 apps could easily reject someone identical to someone else who was accepted 1500 apps earlier in his review, not out of malice, but out of forgetfulness. You just do the best you can and take what you can get.

I also get the impression that waitlists are a bigger part of the picture than any of us realize. I hope I'm right about this come waitlist season.

First, it's not that GPA and MCAT are looked at with inconsistant standards, it's that those are not the end all be all standards. Having a high MCAT and GPA is great, but it alone doesn't mean you get in anywhere. It's a whole package deal. Thus if you only look to numerical stats it will look random. If you assume that those are but a portion of what gets looked at, you get some sense of the methodology, although without seeing the 10,000 apps the adcoms do, you will never get a good sense of the whole picture. It's like those paintings that when you look at them close, are just a mix of dots -- you need to step back and see that there is a big picture, not just haphazard dots (eg. numerical stats).
As for waitlists, it depends on the school -- some schools take over half their ultimate class off the waitlists, while others take a tiny percent each year, if at all.

 

[NonTradMed]

My interviewer at Stanford told me I was a shoo-in. I got the rejection letter today.

I'm starting to think this process is less of a crap shoot and more just crap. But I can't complain too much because at least I am going to be a doctor!

As I stated, 'shoo-in' students, from my experience, are typically students who are 'shoo-in' at some medical school somewhere, this doesn't mean they are a 'shoo-in' at a particular med school, especially a top tiered one (such as Stanford). I also had a friend who hit it off great during her med school interview and was told she was pretty much going to get in---and then got a rejection letter weeks later. She was also a 'shoo-in' because her stats were very good, so she assumed she would get into a top tiered program. She did end up attending a med school----just not a top tiered one. I think that's where the confusion lays, people assume "since my stats are really, really good, I won't have to bother with lower tiered schools" (not saying you were saying that, just saying some students with great stats think that) and then don't understand why they didn'tn get into a top school.....that portion is a crapshoot. However, I think there is a methodology to getting into a med school somewhere. You will most likely get into med school with a 3.7 in the sciences and a 32 (assuming everything else is ok as well and you are not from cali), so in that way, you are a 'shoo-in'.