sdn reputation

[Gigantron]

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Maybe SDN used to have a better reputation with ADCOMS because this person put down SDN assistant mod as one of her 15 AMCAS activities and got accepted to schools like WashU, Baylor, Hopkins, and Vanderbilt:

http://mdapplicants.com/profile.php?view=viewprofile.demographicsapplications&id=10813&cycle=

Good god.

(but she was accepted to so many awesome schools that it doesn't seem to matter lol)

 

[ksmi117]

Oh hey, people are talking about me...

Yes, I did put SDN on my AMCAS. Yes, it did come up in interviews. No, I don't regret doing it. But yeah, my time on SDN is spent quite differently than most of yours...

I found/find this website to be extremely useful, and that's why I'm still around. I've put a lot of work into the site, and I felt that was something that reflected well on me.

The long and short of it is... every adcom is going to know what SDN is. And yes, it does have a reputation for being a bit high strung and full of crazies. But the adcoms knew who I was on the site, could see that I wasn't one of said crazies, etc. At the time of my application, most of my SDN time was spent in revamping the MCAT forum as I took it over from the previous lead mod of that forum. I lead review sessions via SDN chat, helped with MCAT strategies, rewrote a lot of the stickied threads there, etc. I also organized all the application threads the year I applied as well.

I felt that if a school couldn't appreciate that, then I didn't want to be there. In fact, the dean of admissions at my school continually thanks me for all the questions I answer about WashU on SDN and for being so willing to be available to the applicants and incoming students.

The schools don't hate SDN. The only way SDN will reflect badly on you is if you say stupid stuff, troll, be a huge douche, say bad things about interviewers, complain about the schools, etc. Being invested in knowing what you can about the medical school application process isn't a bad thing. Being a crazy is.

I know people think I'm a bit ridiculous for mentioning it on my application but I'm not ashamed of my affiliation with this site. I did spend a lot of time improving the site so it was meaningful enough to me. And frankly I don't really care if people think it was a bad decision. Because hey, I'm go to a great med school. It obvi didn't screw me over as much as people thought it might.

Edit: Also, I am of the opinion that the professionalism of at least the PA forum has deteriorated over the past two years. The annoying pictures posts are just that: annoying. Not useful at all. Not sure what really happened. We didn't really change our moderation policies to be more lenient. People just seem to get a kick out of being completely useless now or something.

 

[Truzzi]

Oh hey, people are talking about me...

Yes, I did put SDN on my AMCAS. Yes, it did come up in interviews. No, I don't regret doing it. But yeah, my time on SDN is spent quite differently than most of yours...

I found/find this website to be extremely useful, and that's why I'm still around. I've put a lot of work into the site, and I felt that was something that reflected well on me.

The long and short of it is... every adcom is going to know what SDN is. And yes, it does have a reputation for being a bit high strung and full of crazies. But the adcoms knew who I was on the site, could see that I wasn't one of said crazies, etc. At the time of my application, most of my SDN time was spent in revamping the MCAT forum as I took it over from the previous lead mod of that forum. I lead review sessions via SDN chat, helped with MCAT strategies, rewrote a lot of the stickied threads there, etc. I also organized all the application threads the year I applied as well.

I felt that if a school couldn't appreciate that, then I didn't want to be there. In fact, the dean of admissions at my school continually thanks me for all the questions I answer about WashU on SDN and for being so willing to be available to the applicants and incoming students.

The schools don't hate SDN. The only way SDN will reflect badly on you is if you say stupid stuff, troll, be a huge douche, say bad things about interviewers, complain about the schools, etc. Being invested in knowing what you can about the medical school application process isn't a bad thing. Being a crazy is.

I know people think I'm a bit ridiculous for mentioning it on my application but I'm not ashamed of my affiliation with this site. I did spend a lot of time improving the site so it was meaningful enough to me. And frankly I don't really care if people think it was a bad decision. Because hey, I'm go to a great med school. It obvi didn't screw me over as much as people thought it might.

Edit: Also, I am of the opinion that the professionalism of at least the PA forum has deteriorated over the past two years. The annoying pictures posts are just that: annoying. Not useful at all. Not sure what really happened. We didn't really change our moderation policies to be more lenient. People just seem to get a kick out of being completely useless now or something.

Absolutely fantastic post.

 

[Longshanks]

Edit: Also, I am of the opinion that the professionalism of at least the PA forum has deteriorated over the past two years. The annoying pictures posts are just that: annoying. Not useful at all. Not sure what really happened. We didn't really change our moderation policies to be more lenient. People just seem to get a kick out of being completely useless now or something.

A lot of youngin's think they're cool by posting 4chan or reddit memes, or take acceptable behavior there, and transplant it here. That is the biggest difference from two years ago, when I joined and you were being super awesome in the MCAT forum, and today.

I'm guilty of some picture posts... but I think, or hope, I filter it or only at proper humorous moments.

 

[ksmi117]

A lot of youngin's think they're cool by posting 4chan or reddit memes, or take acceptable behavior there, and transplant it here. That is the biggest difference from two years ago, when I joined and you were being super awesome in the MCAT forum, and today.

I'm guilty of some picture posts... but I think, or hope, I filter it or only at proper humorous moments.

I'm guilty of posting them too. But when that's the majority of what someone posts and when *everyone* is doing that in every thread, it's just not as funny anymore.

Also, it is summertime, so people are bored and SDN is always a little less professional during this time. A lot of people are playing the waiting game with applications and stuff so it's a bit understandable I suppose.

 

[Velocity]

The medical school staff who had a bad opinion of SDN, in my experience, had a negative view about it because people used it to complain about and/or trash certain programs. Go figure: it's an anonymous forum, people feel free to vent, and those complaints will be around forever. Staff can make changes to their program to address the changes, but few to no people will ever come to this site to remark on positive aspects. You know the saying in business? It's something like, "A satisfied customer will say good things about you to his friends; a dissatisfied customer will say bad things about you to everyone." That's what it is here.

The neuroticism and such probably doesn't concern staff too much.

 

[StudyShy]

I 😍 SDN. I'm on my own when it comes to getting into medical school. So far, I believe that SDN has set me on a great track. I love the people...even the trolls. The trolls break the scariness of the pre-med journey up a bit.

Why you no love SDN, UofM?

 

[deleted393595]

I 😍 SDN. I'm on my own when it comes to getting into medical school. So far, I believe that SDN has set me on a great track. I love the people...even the trolls.

+1. If it weren't for SDN, I would have been completely clueless about volunteer work, research, etc. and never would have had a shot at med school.

Thank you everyone (except the trolls) for giving me boatloads of advice and making the path to med school a little bit less scary.

 

[minerva3121]

Oh hey, people are talking about me...

Yes, I did put SDN on my AMCAS. Yes, it did come up in interviews. No, I don't regret doing it. But yeah, my time on SDN is spent quite differently than most of yours...

I found/find this website to be extremely useful, and that's why I'm still around. I've put a lot of work into the site, and I felt that was something that reflected well on me.

The long and short of it is... every adcom is going to know what SDN is. And yes, it does have a reputation for being a bit high strung and full of crazies. But the adcoms knew who I was on the site, could see that I wasn't one of said crazies, etc. At the time of my application, most of my SDN time was spent in revamping the MCAT forum as I took it over from the previous lead mod of that forum. I lead review sessions via SDN chat, helped with MCAT strategies, rewrote a lot of the stickied threads there, etc. I also organized all the application threads the year I applied as well.

I felt that if a school couldn't appreciate that, then I didn't want to be there. In fact, the dean of admissions at my school continually thanks me for all the questions I answer about WashU on SDN and for being so willing to be available to the applicants and incoming students.

The schools don't hate SDN. The only way SDN will reflect badly on you is if you say stupid stuff, troll, be a huge douche, say bad things about interviewers, complain about the schools, etc. Being invested in knowing what you can about the medical school application process isn't a bad thing. Being a crazy is.

I know people think I'm a bit ridiculous for mentioning it on my application but I'm not ashamed of my affiliation with this site. I did spend a lot of time improving the site so it was meaningful enough to me. And frankly I don't really care if people think it was a bad decision. Because hey, I'm go to a great med school. It obvi didn't screw me over as much as people thought it might.

Edit: Also, I am of the opinion that the professionalism of at least the PA forum has deteriorated over the past two years. The annoying pictures posts are just that: annoying. Not useful at all. Not sure what really happened. We didn't really change our moderation policies to be more lenient. People just seem to get a kick out of being completely useless now or something.

Thanks for the follow-up, and thanks for everything you've contributed to SDN! You did a great job keeping the school-specific threads up to date...I often refer back to your cycle's threads for the secondary prompts so I don't have to dig through tons of pages to find them in my cycle's threads 😉.

 

[ponyo]

+1. If it weren't for SDN, I would have been completely clueless about volunteer work, research, etc. and never would have had a shot at med school.

Thank you everyone (except the trolls) for giving me boatloads of advice and making the path to med school a little bit less scary.

Same here! Sometimes it's easy to forget how much I've learned here until I talk to people who haven't found the same resources.