Predictions for II Outcomes & Cycle Outcomes

[miscgirl1000]

There seems to be two camps here this virtual II cycle--
a) Those that will attend all II's because they can and believe they can negotiate better financial results (or generally are gunners by nature and feel the need to attend interviews to schools they will not attend).
b) Those that will stop attending II's after they have received their top choice.

That being said, I think that there are more people who fall into the A category.

What this means for schools is the top students who receive the most interviews will be holding many many acceptances across the board by the time April comes around. Given that in past cycles, the data demonstrates about 20% of the applicants had multiple interviews and multiple acceptances, 20% of overall applicants will likely have many more acceptances than they would otherwise (had they declined interviews due to the cost of travel, as opposed to attending more or all due to the virtual nature).

[60% get rejected
10% get single interview, single acceptance
10% get multiple interviews, single acceptance
20% get multiple interviews, multiple acceptance]


In totality, I predict there will either be a larger than usual movement of the waitlists or under-filled class sizes once these 20% of applicants (also known as 50% of matriculants) with multiple acceptances narrow down to 1 top choice. I suppose time will tell in April!


Also, already, there are more applicants this cycle so with the II's being filled and attended by top applicants & with increased number of applicants, my feeling is overall matriculant acceptance rates will be bound to be lower than previous cycles.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Goro]

There seems to be two camps here this virtual II cycle--
a) Those that will attend all II's because they can and believe they can negotiate better financial results (or generally are gunners by nature and feel the need to attend interviews to schools they will not attend).
b) Those that will stop attending II's after they have received their top choice.

That being said, I think that there are more people who fall into the A category.

What this means for schools is the top students who receive the most interviews will be holding many many acceptances across the board by the time April comes around. Given that in past cycles, the data demonstrates about 20% of the applicants had multiple interviews and multiple acceptances, 20% of overall applicants will likely have many more acceptances than they would otherwise (had they declined interviews due to the cost of travel, as opposed to attending more or all due to the virtual nature).

[60% get rejected
10% get single interview, single acceptance
10% get multiple interviews, single acceptance
20% get multiple interviews, multiple acceptance]


In totality, I predict there will either be a larger than usual movement of the waitlists or under-filled class sizes once these 20% of applicants (also known as 50% of matriculants) with multiple acceptances narrow down to 1 top choice. I suppose time will tell in April!


Also, already, there are more applicants this cycle so with the II's being filled and attended by top applicants & with increased number of applicants, my feeling is overall matriculant acceptance rates will be bound to be lower than previous cycles.

What are your thoughts?

My spidey-sense tells me that you're correct. This is based upon what we're seeing at my own school. We're flooded with people with MD caliber stats. Still! Now, converting them to matriculants is the big unknown, and we won't know this until May/June.

 

[MedSchoolTutors]

I think that state schools will see less waitlist movement than in previous years, something that has already been seen based on the 2019-2020 application year. I believe this is because the pandemic is making students more reluctant to leave home. Many matriculants who were expecting some form of family contribution to paying for medical school are no longer receiving that contribution due to the financial impacts of the pandemic as well. These are some of the reasons cited by people at my school for attending my school over somewhere they might have gone without the pandemic.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[miscgirl1000]

Interesting perspectives!!

@MedSchoolTutors and @Goro Thanks for sharing!

 

[KnightDoc]

There seems to be two camps here this virtual II cycle--
a) Those that will attend all II's because they can and believe they can negotiate better financial results (or generally are gunners by nature and feel the need to attend interviews to schools they will not attend).
b) Those that will stop attending II's after they have received their top choice.

That being said, I think that there are more people who fall into the A category.

What this means for schools is the top students who receive the most interviews will be holding many many acceptances across the board by the time April comes around. Given that in past cycles, the data demonstrates about 20% of the applicants had multiple interviews and multiple acceptances, 20% of overall applicants will likely have many more acceptances than they would otherwise (had they declined interviews due to the cost of travel, as opposed to attending more or all due to the virtual nature).

[60% get rejected
10% get single interview, single acceptance
10% get multiple interviews, single acceptance
20% get multiple interviews, multiple acceptance]


In totality, I predict there will either be a larger than usual movement of the waitlists or under-filled class sizes once these 20% of applicants (also known as 50% of matriculants) with multiple acceptances narrow down to 1 top choice. I suppose time will tell in April!


Also, already, there are more applicants this cycle so with the II's being filled and attended by top applicants & with increased number of applicants, my feeling is overall matriculant acceptance rates will be bound to be lower than previous cycles.

What are your thoughts?

In general, I totally agree and have been predicting this for months, with one caveat -- given the imbalance between applicants and seats, there absolutely, under no circumstances, will be under filled classes. Rest assured, every seat will be filled at every school.

This won't be the disaster for schools that it might appear to be. We premeds are no smarter than adcoms, and schools could easily mitigate this possibility either by interviewing more people than usual, or by being more proactive in yield protecting out applicants who are statistically unlikely to attend.

If schools choose to do neither, they will simply have to go deeper into their WLs, as you predicted. This might make them uncomfortable, but there is little to no risk of any school actually exhausting its WL before it fills its class, so its not a huge deal. Remember, we are still only talking about a relatively small slice of the pool that is so attractive as to be in this position.

 

[miscgirl1000]

@KnightDoc

Good points about yield protection and more interviews distributed this cycle!
As for under-filling classes, I agree, it does seem significantly less likely than utilizing WLs.

Hoping for the best outcomes for everyone on both sides!

 

[Sundowning]

While this is only based on what I've seen in the threads (no hard numbers or anything), there seems to be a greater utilization of the WL, even at earlier times in the cycle. Even Rush, if I interpreted someone's post in the school-specific thread correctly, seems to have introduced a new "high priority" wait-list this cycle.

Based on how this cycle is panning out, @KnightDoc is right on the money