Jeffy: Maybe alllow users to be more specific when choosing their major, ethnicity, etc. Not that they matter, but if you're looking to add to the site . . .
>>> I do wish I could figure out the appropriate options for the ethnicity drop-down; I'm afraid I don't understand how Hispanic functions as an ethnicity + URM/non-URM.
btowngirl: what about letting people choose their school from a list, instead of writing it in? If you search for UC Berkeley students, Berkeley exists as UCB, University of California Berkeley, UC Berkeley and a few others, depending on what the student who made their file typed in. To see all UC Berkeley student files, you have to type each different school name in separate searches. I am sure other schools have this problem, especially the other UCs. Just a thought.
>>> Unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of schools in an ever-changing list if I tried to do that.
alexander pink, m.d.: Allow an anonymous email system to contact people with profiles (if they chose). Also, have a box that distinguishes between URM and non-URM, and disadvantaged applicants (we can type those things, but some don't. Not all hispanics are URM, for example, like me). Distinguish between some of the Humanities majors.
>>> The anonymous e-mail idea is one that I had, though setting up a double-blind sort of thing like that is a small technical challenge. I also worry that, considering some of the offensive fake profiles I've deleted, that people would use the veil of anonymity to send abusive e-mails to minority profiles, high-scoring profiles, etc.
pratik7: I would like to see a search option for MD, DO or both.
>>> I could probably find a way to do that....
UCLAstudent: How about allowing us to search for waitlists and rejections (rather than just interviews/acceptances)? Just a thought.
>>> You just want to see everyone who got rejected? Misery loves company? 😉
LoveDoc: is their a way to recover your password?
also i'm not african, i'm african-american and i can't find
that option.
>>> Pretty much e-mailing me is the only way to recover the password; as for the ethnicity options, they're all theoretically supposed to have the "-American" suffix. I just thought it looked sort of redundant.
exmike: that "show completed profiles" checkbox is confusings, especially since some people who are partially complete may never complete them, even though their info is still relevant. Maybe you should change the checkbox function to "exclude incomplete profiles" so users unfamiliar with the site will get the max amount of info.
>>> Sure.
mwhou: A section for "Follow up" or "My Choice" specifically geared for their thoughts on the med school they chose, why, and perhaps how they like it once they start.
>>> I left that out originally because I figured it was sort of an identifying piece of data; it wouldn't be terribly hard to go back to mdapplicants.com and look at the My Choice to identify the profile of someone in a small, 100-person medical school class.
Some options for consideration:
More checkboxes: "display only records that include: _ profile _summary of application process _ My choice" or somethings similar. Sometimes, I use the site to read just the profiles from schools, other times I want to see the summary text.
>>> Hmm...perhaps I can do something like this or something similar in the search results display where the most-complete profiles are ranked higher.
Displaying GPA & MCAT on the database returned link list might be helpful.
>>> Does that already, along with the time elapsed during search (that's mostly just for me to check on server load).
A link to the "advanced search" should be added to the main page under quick search. Some people may assume the menu link just allows them to get back to the quick search page - and miss the 'fancy' feature.
>>> Sure.
ely: a way to search and/or signify MD/PhD applicants.
>>> Ah, yes. Unfortunately it makes the simple checkbox logic of indicating how your application is faring at a particular school much more complicated when you try and break it down to being rejected from MD/PhD but accepted MD, etc. And, applicants don't globally apply to just MD/PhD or just MD programs, either. This might be one of those things that never gets fixed.
LaurieB: I'm sure you'd be swamped with the ideas already out there, but I'll throw out one more suggestion. I think it would be nice to show more chronology in the site so that people can see how the timeline went for other folks. For example, you could have folks enter dates for each step of the process rather than just putting checkmarks to show how far they got with each school. This would help folks know about how long people had to wait for interviews, to find out about waitlists, if a profile was current or not, etc.
>>> I have thought about including a timestamp automatically added to indicate when a profile was last updated; as for the waitlist/interview/secondary dates, I'll look into updating the interface for that. I feel like a lot of what I'd like to do requires me to learn CSS already. 😉
Psycho Doctor: Next to MCAT score, let us indicate the date of the MCAT, perhaps multiple scores b/c i don't care what anyone says, schools see them all.
>>> Sounds reasonable, I shall think about it.
