I'm a permanent-resident (green-card holder), and will be a naturalized US citizen in next year. Do you mean there may have been a possible discrimination between permanent-residents and citizens in post-bacc admissions?
Unlikely. Maybe somebody else can report first hand.
Nope. I've applied to Spring 2010, the cut-off date for the applications was October 1st 2009 (I've applied more than 2 weeks ago).
So that's not it.
Hmmm... like what? They told me on the phone that I'd be a great doctor, and encouraged me a lot. Only thing is that they mentioned that I'd better wait till I become a citizen due to that it's nowadays becomming tougher to obtain (or, maintain receiving) loans, and that private institutions tend to restrict their loans a lot. Their financial aid office also told me via email that many experiencing hard times due to that reason during post-bacc at USC nowadays.
Re letter quality, unless your recommenders did something sneaky, this doesn't sound problematic.
Hard to say whether the fin aid office's advice is specific to your postbac, or if it's about how hard it is to get private loans for nonmatriculated study. Fed loan availability isn't tied to the economy unless I missed a memo.
Below is the original email I received from USC financial aid for post-bacc regarding to my enquiry:
"Students in the Post Bacc Pre-Med Program are eligible to receive up to $12,500 in Stafford Loans for the first 12 months of enrollment, and then are only eligible to receive private loans. It is important to note that many private lenders are tightening their restrictions and many borrowers are experiencing difficulty obtaining these loans. You should contact your prospective private lender for more information on their credit requirements and for information on the terms of the private loan being offered (i.e. interest rate, repayment, co-borrower, etc.)."
I'm skeptical that there's any link between the state of the economy, the state of your citizenship, and the reason for you not being admitted.
There are so many ways to get prereqs done that I'd hate to see you spend any more time on USC. But, just in case there's a red flag in there or there's a substantial obstacle for you, I'd try to get a sit-down appointment with the admissions director at USC where you ask how you can improve your app (whether you'd reapply or not). By asking for this you might get much less, ie a phone call or whatnot. But any info they can give, such as losing their program funding or already having a full program or having an unapologetic anti-immigrant bias, any info is good. Note that they are UNLIKELY to tell you exactly what is wrong with your app, if anything is wrong with it, so you may get no info at all by asking.
Although, someone had told that CSUN had a post-bacc (even has linkages), but unfortunately I couldn't find its particular URL to that program to have a look. Do you mind giving it to me, if somehow you know?
Linkage schminkage. With your GPA you don't need linkage. Plus I find no evidence of such at CSUN. There are postbacs at the UCs that do linkage, and/but these are more specific to URMs.
If you really need structure, there are other structured programs like Mills and Scripps. Again, their linkages aren't very interesting with your GPA.
But I'm pretty happy with CSUN's science offerings (they have upper div micro, physio & cell bio, which not all CSUs would), and they at least have a premed PDF.
http://www.csun.edu/~hfbio002/OLD/prehealth/medicalprereqs1.pdf. I don't see a thing wrong with this, and it looks like they at least have a couple MDs available for advisement (
get second opinions, I don't care if they went to Mayo.)
Meanwhile, see posts from atomi about how insane it is to stop working and do prereqs full time. I couldn't have done that, but if you can, then you substantially reduce your debt burden long term.
bolty
