Reasons NOT to Withdraw from Other Schools after Acceptance: Scholarships?

[maroonspinstress]

I was recently accepted to one of my top choice schools (yippee CA resident staying in CA)! I've heard conflicting advice from the current med school students that I met on interview days, and wanted to see how others have gone about deciding which schools to withdraw from.

Some of the students I met said that you should withdraw from any school that you would not attend over your acceptance, even if they gave you a full scholarship. This seemed like good advice. However, to quote one student, "If you withdraw from everywhere else and hold only one acceptance, schools have little to no incentive to offer you a merit scholarship because it is obvious that you will go to their school. I leveraged acceptances and scholarships at schools I knew I wouldn't attend in order to get a scholarship at the school I really wanted to go to."

How often does this happen? I was under the impression that schools have so many people on the waitlist willing to take your spot that if you weren't going to get a scholarship from them anyway, you wouldn't get one just by virtue of the fact that you have other acceptances. It's unclear whether or not this student would have gotten a scholarship anyway and incorrectly attributed the cause to his multiple acceptances. How does one even go about negotiating scholarships--via email to Admissions?

That said, since there are still schools on my list (some have given me IIs) that I would choose over my current acceptances, continuing to attend interviews could be good practice for those future interviews.

I am leaning towards withdrawing my application because it seems like the right thing to do/I'm tired of travelling/I could but don't really want to spend more money on this cycle. At the same time, I just want to make sure that I am not disadvantaging myself with respect to scholarships by giving up an interviews at these schools.

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[bearintraining]

I was recently accepted to one of my top choice schools (yippee CA resident staying in CA)! I've heard conflicting advice from the current med school students that I met on interview days, and wanted to see how others have gone about deciding which schools to withdraw from.

Some of the students I met said that you should withdraw from any school that you would not attend over your acceptance, even if they gave you a full scholarship. This seemed like good advice. However, to quote one student, "If you withdraw from everywhere else and hold only one acceptance, schools have little to no incentive to offer you a merit scholarship because it is obvious that you will go to their school. I leveraged acceptances and scholarships at schools I knew I wouldn't attend in order to get a scholarship at the school I really wanted to go to."

How often does this happen? I was under the impression that schools have so many people on the waitlist willing to take your spot that if you weren't going to get a scholarship from them anyway, you wouldn't get one just by virtue of the fact that you have other acceptances. It's unclear whether or not this student would have gotten a scholarship anyway and incorrectly attributed the cause to his multiple acceptances. How does one even go about negotiating scholarships--via email to Admissions?

That said, since there are still schools on my list (some have given me IIs) that I would choose over my current acceptances, continuing to attend interviews could be good practice for those future interviews.

I am leaning towards withdrawing my application because it seems like the right thing to do/I'm tired of travelling/I could but don't really want to spend more money on this cycle. At the same time, I just want to make sure that I am not disadvantaging myself with respect to scholarships by giving up an interviews at these schools.

I don't know this for sure, but I think the acceptance list given in April contains all acceptances, regardless of whether you have withdrawn.. but @LizzyM, @gyngyn would know.

 

[LizzyM]

I don't know who sees what when....
If you have an offer and you are tired of traveling, withdraw all applications from schools where you have not yet interviewed and hang up your suitcase.

On the other hand, it costs you nothing to hold offers until the financial aid offers come through from MD schools and you can make an informed decision taking costs into account.

 

[gyngyn]

Question for you LizzyM and others who work in admissions:
Do you have any idea if TMDSAS schools can see what other acceptances their applicants have outside of Texas?

We can see theirs, I presume that they can see ours.

 

[gyngyn]

I don't know who sees what when....
If you have an offer and you are tired of traveling, withdraw all applications from schools where you have not yet interviewed and hang up your suitcase.

On the other hand, it costs you nothing to hold offers until the financial aid offers come through from MD schools and you can make an informed decision taking costs into account.

After it opens, the multiple accepts list is updated daily. We can see where someone has dropped if we archive results.

 

[gyngyn]

Awesome! Thank you so much! And those can only be seen by medical schools after a certain date in the spring?

Multiple Accepts comes out in February.

 

[22031 Alum]

Since the adcoms have already been summoned to this thread, I'll ask my question here. I'm curious to know how common it is for merit aid to be offered off the waitlist. Need-based grants and loans, I can wrap my head around. But I have seen a lot of threads where applicants seem to be counting on the possibility of scholarships at schools where they are waitlisted and this strikes me as odd. In my experience (granted, only myself and a small number of peers at a specific set of schools over a decade ago), scholarships are handed out to post-interview acceptances, not waitlisted applicants.

 

[gyngyn]

Since the adcoms have already been summoned to this thread, I'll ask my question here. I'm curious to know how common it is for merit aid to be offered off the waitlist. Need-based grants and loans, I can wrap my head around. But I have seen a lot of threads where applicants seem to be counting on the possibility of scholarships at schools where they are waitlisted and this strikes me as odd. In my experience (granted, only myself and a small number of peers at a specific set of schools over a decade ago), scholarships are handed out to post-interview acceptances, not waitlisted applicants.

Quite uncommon.
It's called a recruitment scholarship for a reason.

 

[bararaboi]

A question to the adcoms on here: do you ever factor an applicant's other acceptances in your decisions?

 

[gyngyn]

A question to the adcoms on here: do you ever factor an applicant's other acceptances in your decisions?

At schools with unranked waitlists, there may be a preference to call one among very similar candidates based on the odds that a quick, favorable decision is likely (especially close to August...).

 

[starlight15]

Since the adcoms have already been summoned to this thread, I'll ask my question here. I'm curious to know how common it is for merit aid to be offered off the waitlist. Need-based grants and loans, I can wrap my head around. But I have seen a lot of threads where applicants seem to be counting on the possibility of scholarships at schools where they are waitlisted and this strikes me as odd. In my experience (granted, only myself and a small number of peers at a specific set of schools over a decade ago), scholarships are handed out to post-interview acceptances, not waitlisted applicants.

Uncommon but possible. Was offered full COA scholarship at top school after getting off wait list. It definitely took initiative on my part to ask for it but I also had a (not quite as large) scholarship at the school I would have gone to ("middle tier" if one looks at rankings)

 

[maroonspinstress]

Uncommon but possible. Was offered full COA scholarship at top school after getting off wait list. It definitely took initiative on my part to ask for it but I also had a (not quite as large) scholarship at the school I would have gone to ("middle tier" if one looks at rankings)

Congratulations on that scholarship! It's great initiative on your part, and amazing that the school had the funding to accommodate your situation. Did you just email admissions? If so, at which point did you ask for the scholarship after getting off the waitlist (i.e. right away in response to the acceptance, or after you had accepted the offer), and how did you word the email?

I'd imagine it'd be something to the effect of "I love your school so much but financially, I would have to side with another offer as the difference in cost between these two schools is so great. [More about why you love their school] [...] I would be extremely appreciative if I could receive a scholarship or financial aid to offset the difference in cost of attendance."

Accurate? As I said in my original post, I don't know how to word those emails without sounding entitled because there are so many students who would be happy to take my place AND pay full tuition. That said, coming from a low-income family means that you often need to make decisions based on finances, even if it means turning down a school you absolutely love. 🙁 Or, sucking it up and going to dream school despite the financial difference. Can't blame someone for trying to make it all work. I guess the worst that could happen is the school says "no."

 

[TooMuchPressure]

Out of curiosity, what is the most acceptances you've seen from an applicant?

 

[gyngyn]

Out of curiosity, what is the most acceptances you've seen from an applicant?

I stop counting at 20.

 

[LizzyM]

I stop counting at 20.

 

[starlight15]

Congratulations on that scholarship! It's great initiative on your part, and amazing that the school had the funding to accommodate your situation. Did you just email admissions? If so, at which point did you ask for the scholarship after getting off the waitlist (i.e. right away in response to the acceptance, or after you had accepted the offer), and how did you word the email?

I'd imagine it'd be something to the effect of "I love your school so much but financially, I would have to side with another offer as the difference in cost between these two schools is so great. [More about why you love their school] [...] I would be extremely appreciative if I could receive a scholarship or financial aid to offset the difference in cost of attendance."

Accurate? As I said in my original post, I don't know how to word those emails without sounding entitled because there are so many students who would be happy to take my place AND pay full tuition. That said, coming from a low-income family means that you often need to make decisions based on finances, even if it means turning down a school you absolutely love. 🙁 Or, sucking it up and going to dream school despite the financial difference. Can't blame someone for trying to make it all work. I guess the worst that could happen is the school says "no."

I asked after I got my financial aid info (which came a few days after getting off the waitlist), asked for an increase in need based grants and/or merit, waited about 2 weeks, asked for an extension in accepting since they said they are still considering merit awards. Going to the cheapest school was my goal so I knew I had nothing to lose by asking. And I wrote an email to admissions similar to the one you just wrote out - just basically why I want to go there, why right now I can't accept, can I be considered for any more aid. Good luck - you never know if you don't try!