Prioritizing Acceptances

[MermaidMD]

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Good LAWD the title of this thread makes me sound like an obnoxious overachiever (I assure you, I am not). HOWEVER, I've had the rather exciting experience of receiving my first couple of interview invites in the past few weeks and have slowly developed a new source of distress...

One of the schools that has offered me an interview lists a "2 week maximum" to acceptance offers, which they apparently begin sending out in early 2012. Are medical students in the application cycle really expected to play the odds and accept/deny spots at schools without full knowledge of where they will get in?

I'm definitely of the "I'll go anywhere they take me" mentality, but I'd at least like to pick the best possible option out of the schools where I'm offered a spot! I'm also big on carefully made, fully informed decisions and while it seems careless to just jump on the bandwagon for the first school that accepts you, it seems too risky to turn down a sure thing in hopes of a potentially better one.

I truly apologize if this is common knowledge, but I did a little forum sweep and couldn't find anything on the subject. Can someone share some insight as to how/when people decide with multiple acceptances decide where to go?

 

[stefspets]

You can hold multiple acceptances until a certain date, so you can accept the seat and then later withdraw if you decide for sure not to go there. I think the etiquette is to withdraw if you're sure you don't want to attend, but after May 15th you have to choose one.

 

[MermaidMD]

Ah yes! Is this the deal where you pay, say, $100 to "hold your spot" in a class and then forfeit the money at the schools where you eventually withdraw?

 

[FrkyBgStok]

I want to say that stefspets advice works for MD schools, not DO schools. If you aren't talking about DO schools, don't worry about it. If you are, that is a huge frustration as people end up paying numerous deposits in some cases and it is really crappy. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do. If the two week school is DO, you gotta weigh how bad you want to gamble.

 

[LupaCupcake]

I would like to begin by saying that I am obsessed with mermaids. I absolutely love mermaids to the point I have a large mermaid tattoo on my leg😀 So your name is awesome!

anyways...

This is where you get to roll the dice...it is like Vegas meets med school. If you can afford it, throw out the $ to reserve a spot even if you are hoping another school says yes. If you can't afford it....that is a hard one. Really look at your chances with other schools

 

[ejw5075]

Do schools keep the deposits if you withdraw before the May deadline? I withdrew in writing less than a month before the deadline and got my deposit back, maybe it is school specific.

 

[theseeker4]

Ah yes! Is this the deal where you pay, say, $100 to "hold your spot" in a class and then forfeit the money at the schools where you eventually withdraw?

Pretty much, assuming the deposit is non-refundable at the particular school. Look at it as just another of the long list of fees that we have to over-pay. After all, if you knew ahead of time what school would take you, you would only have one application fee, one secondary fee, one set of payments to go to a single interview (if traveling, etc.). None of those are refunded by the schools that reject you, let alone those that accept you but you choose not to attend. The deposit is just one more in the long line of fees you have to pay to hedge your bets on getting in somewhere. Obviously if your first choice is the first to offer you an acceptance, you don't have to pay anything else. Other than that, make sure you have your list well-defined, or as well defined as possible, as far as what school is your first, second, etc. choice to minimize the number of deposits you pay. Good luck!

 

[theseeker4]

Do schools keep the deposits if you withdraw before the May deadline? I withdrew in writing less than a month before the deadline and got my deposit back, maybe it is school specific.

Probably school specific. Wayne State specifically states online their deposit is non-refundable.

 

[MermaidMD]

I would like to begin by saying that I am obsessed with mermaids. I absolutely love mermaids to the point I have a large mermaid tattoo on my leg😀 So your name is awesome!

Mermaid love *splish splash* 🙄 (What a nerd.)

 

[SisterDisco08]

I'll add this:

I have a DO acceptance with a deadline of Dec. 1 to send in matriculation papers and a largely non-refundable deposit. As soon as I got this, I sent an email out to the MD schools that I applied to, telling them about this deadline. The next day I got two interviews. So if I am rejected or accepted by these schools, I'll have an answer by Dec. 1...however, if I'm waitlisted, I'll put down the deposit at the school where I'm accepted, and wait out the cycle to make a decision.

Takeaway: if other schools are interested in you, they will do what they can to accommodate your deadlines. However, if they can't, it's not the end of the world. You can put down the deposit with the potential of losing it; in the grand scheme of your loans, it will only be a drop in the bucket.

 

[LUCPM]

I'll add this:

I have a DO acceptance with a deadline of Dec. 1 to send in matriculation papers and a largely non-refundable deposit. As soon as I got this, I sent an email out to the MD schools that I applied to, telling them about this deadline. The next day I got two interviews. So if I am rejected or accepted by these schools, I'll have an answer by Dec. 1...however, if I'm waitlisted, I'll put down the deposit at the school where I'm accepted, and wait out the cycle to make a decision.

Takeaway: if other schools are interested in you, they will do what they can to accommodate your deadlines. However, if they can't, it's not the end of the world. You can put down the deposit with the potential of losing it; in the grand scheme of your loans, it will only be a drop in the bucket.

If you don't mind, could you tell us how you explained your DO acceptance to the MD schools?

 

[SisterDisco08]

I sent a letter saying (more formally):
-I'd been fortunate to receive an acceptance early in the cycle, however, it put me in an non-ideal situation as far as the rest of my applications are concerned, because of its Dec. 1 deadline, and that I simply wanted to let them know of this development. I didn't say anything about interviews or the like. Most schools, I think, realized that it had to be a DO school because it was before Oct. 15, and MD schools have a May 15 deadline. However, a few schools did question me, and to those schools I did reveal that it was a DO school.

Interestingly, both of the schools that subsequently offered me interviews were ones that questioned me.

It's really important to remember that these AdComs and AdStaff aren't scary demi-gods. They're (mostly friendly) people; they're not terribly difficult to have conversations with.

 

[Lefty Doodle]

For the two MD schools I got accepted to that required a deposit, the deposit was refundable and only $100. And I had till May 15 to decide (declined them though).

On a related note, when I read about people on this forum who had "15 interviews and 12 acceptances" or whatever, it annoys me. Even though the AAMC has virtually no way of enforcing their rule to withdraw once you know you won't go somewhere, I still think it is the right thing to do. So, most people wouldn't need to go on so many interviews and wait to hear back from so many places. I canceled two of my interviews and told two of the schools that I'd interviewed at not to consider me further, once I knew I wouldn't go to those places. Sure, I was curious how it would have all panned out but I was lucky enough to get into a couple of schools early that I liked more than some of the others, and want other people to have a better shot at the same. Obviously unrelated to your current plight, but just to encourage you to be honest with yourself about your options as they come 🙂.

 

[SisterDisco08]

Yeah, that's exactly why I sent those emails too; last cycle I was on a waitlist unsure if I'd have to drop everything and move across the country until days before orientation. It was a pretty awful experience, and I don't want to be doing that to someone else from the other side of the fence by holding onto a DO acceptance for the duration of the MD cycle.

Ideally I'll have all the information I need in a few weeks to make an informed decision and settle on a school.