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deleted877060
How common is it that schools send January/February IIs where the best outcome for the interviewee is getting waitlisted? Anyone aware of any specific school that does this?
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I am aware of one school that does not do this. It is absolutely possible to interview in February and get an offer a few weeks later (no waitlist).
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I am pretty sure this totally depends on the school, the cycle, and how spectacular those that came before were, and varies year to year. Also, it would never be in a school's interest to admit this, so, given how so many schools run admissions with a total lack of transparency, I wouldn't get my hopes up with respect to getting accurate, reliable information here (i.e. I'm sure it happens more than the offending schools will publicly admit, so asking them would be a dead end). 😎
All schools certainly start out aiming to keep some seats open for awesome candidates they don't have an opportunity to meet earlier in the cycle, but how this plays out school to school and year to year can only really be ascertained by looking at old, school specific threads and looking for clues there. If people in the past posted about interviewing in February and receiving an A in March, that would be a great sign. On the other hand, some schools have significant WL movement every year, by design (i.e., some schools are intentionally very conservative in handing out As, planning all along to make liberal use of the WL), so interviewing for the WL really isn't the worst thing in the world, at least at those schools.
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At my own school this cycle, this is now the case.
You're not going to be able to quantify this, especially given there are some 180+ medical schools in the US. If you get an II, just go and give it your best shot, and hope for the best.
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deleted889094
Anecdotally, I went from silence to acceptance at my school in under 2 weeks in March. Last interview day of the year. So def possible at some schools.
What exactly do you mean? Your school is automatically waitlisting students post-interview, not even giving them a chance to be accepted outright?
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Pretty much, yes. This is a major black swan event for us, BTW. Keep in mind that tons of the people we have accepted already will bail on us for MD schools once May/June roll around, so we'll have tons of waitlist movement.
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This is very school-dependent, so you're best off looking at the school-specific threads from years past for any insight into this. Some will give late interviewees a fair shot at outright acceptance even into March, whereas at some schools they WL/R just about everyone past January or so. With that being said, I think the consensus is that an early interview date is always "safer."
I wish someone would compile a list of schools that frequently do this. If you already have an acceptance in hand, it would (almost always) be a waste of resources to attend an interview for the waitlist. Dream schools are possibly excepted.
You mentioned that most of your applicants had >=510 MCAT scores IIRC and there were Ivy Leaguers. What is the mean of accepted students so far? (You won't out yourself as the data for matriculants that is posted is likely to change at all schools after wait list movement).
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You can get an acceptance from a jan or feb interview at my school.
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Don't know
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This is anecdotal, but everyone I know who has interviewed at Wayne State in the new year has gotten waitlisted as an initial decision. Many of them did eventually get accepted because Wayne State has a ton of waitlist movement.
