U Penn 2012 application

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Till what time will UPENN be sending IV calls? I mean its already september.. And few people got in start of august even!!! Should we still wait for their call?
 
Till what time will UPENN be sending IV calls? I mean its already september.. And few people got in start of august even!!! Should we still wait for their call?

Below is what my research on UPenn interview calls and acceptances say - based on the posts from last year -2010. I hope this helps all:

Year 2010
1st Interview letter received on Aug 14 – Interviewed on Sep 21 – Acceptance letter on Oct 28 – Applied around mid July

Other interview letter received dates in 2010:
Aug 27
Oct 19

Interview dates from 2010:
Sep 21
Oct 5
Nov 9
Nov 30
Dec 7


Final Acceptance letters from 2010:
Received via UPS – on Oct 28th – interviewed on Sep 21
Received via UPS – on Oct 29th – interviewed on oct 5th

Rejections-2010 mailed around:
Oct5 to Oct 28th…


Other Notes-2010:
Interviews were conducted from early Sep to mid December – only on Tuesdays
7 to 8 ppl were interviewed in a group. Each student faces 3 interviewers


Year 2011:
Interview letter received dates in 2011:
Aug 19
Aug 22

Interview dates from 2011:
Sep 27
Oct 4


Please note that this information is purely based on what fellow SDNrs posted. And since they send all correspondence by mail - some candidates may recieve a letter day or two earlier than others.
 
@sentidental- amazing work at compiling all the useful information. great help to everyone.

i recieved the application complete mail a little over 2 weeks back. It also said that a brochure is enclosed with it. But there was nothing else with the mail. Did any of you recieve it separately or with the app complete mail?? i waited for a while but now i think it was either never attatched with it or it got lost somewhr in transit. So to al those who DID get it, what are its contents?
 
@sentidental- amazing work at compiling all the useful information. great help to everyone.

i recieved the application complete mail a little over 2 weeks back. It also said that a brochure is enclosed with it. But there was nothing else with the mail. Did any of you recieve it separately or with the app complete mail?? i waited for a while but now i think it was either never attatched with it or it got lost somewhr in transit. So to al those who DID get it, what are its contents?

Nothing much on the brouchure really. Its about the school and stuff. Everything that you can find on their website.
 
Nothing much on the brouchure really. Its about the school and stuff. Everything that you can find on their website.

I received the letter stating that my application is complete n I will be notified by postal mail about the decision for iv or no iv.
Let's see

Keep posting the updates guys!!
 
thanks again sentidental. 🙂 .. that makes one less thing to worry bout..
 
Below is what my research on UPenn interview calls and acceptances say - based on the posts from last year -2010. I hope this helps all:

Year 2010
1st Interview letter received on Aug 14 – Interviewed on Sep 21 – Acceptance letter on Oct 28 – Applied around mid July

Other interview letter received dates in 2010:
Aug 27
Oct 19

Interview dates from 2010:
Sep 21
Oct 5
Nov 9
Nov 30
Dec 7


Final Acceptance letters from 2010:
Received via UPS – on Oct 28th – interviewed on Sep 21
Received via UPS – on Oct 29th – interviewed on oct 5th

Rejections-2010 mailed around:
Oct5 to Oct 28th…


Other Notes-2010:
Interviews were conducted from early Sep to mid December – only on Tuesdays
7 to 8 ppl were interviewed in a group. Each student faces 3 interviewers


Year 2011:
Interview letter received dates in 2011:
Aug 19
Aug 22

Interview dates from 2011:
Sep 27
Oct 4


Please note that this information is purely based on what fellow SDNrs posted. And since they send all correspondence by mail - some candidates may recieve a letter day or two earlier than others.

Amazing job! Thanks for your contribution to SDN.

I was trying to post this "timeline" for other schools to, I'll try to find whatever is already posted, and put it all on the same thread (I hope something good can come out of my next thread... lol).
 
Hey Guys! I received my IV call yesterday from Upenn!! So excited!!:xf:
 
@asquare
can u pls share ur stats with us,atleast we all waaiting can figure out wats the criteria they are lookin right nw to invite applicatns
thanks
 
Does anyone know that UPENN would send rejection letters via mail or just mail the invitation letters? Thanks
 
hi dentist 81, did u received the rejection letter? or you just noticed that the rejection letter is through the regular mail. thank you.
 
hi dentist 81, did u received the rejection letter? or you just noticed that the rejection letter is through the regular mail. thank you.
I received my interview letter thru regular mail.Upenn generally corresponds thru regular mail to the best of my knowledge.
 
Reply to asquare312...............Congratulations....could you tell us when you had sent in your application?I sent it maybe a week before the deadline date.Still havent heard anything from them
 
thank you dentist 81 and congratulations! good luck on ur interview! so i guess the rejection letter should be through the regular mail as well.
 
thank you dentist 81 and congratulations! good luck on ur interview! so i guess the rejection letter should be through the regular mail as well.
So you think anyone who hasn't received an invitation letter would be getting a rejection letter?Or is there still any hope?
 
same question? do v still hv a chance?.....i hvnt got a single interview yet....really depressed...
hey dentistnine don't lose hope.Upenn generally interviews till beginning of december. so i guess there is still a good chance that u might get a call.stay positive and good luck 👍
 
hey dentistnine don't lose hope.Upenn generally interviews till beginning of december. so i guess there is still a good chance that u might get a call.stay positive and good luck 👍
Thank you Dentist 81,,,your msg to dentistnine was quite heart-warming to me too.Keeping my fingers crossed.
 
same question? do v still hv a chance?.....i hvnt got a single interview yet....really depressed...

Don't be dishearten, I also have same feelings like you. When we express our rage here and if no one bother to give mental support, the pain grew stronger. Everybody should cheer each other in this venture.
 
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So true!!! Something better is store for everyone!! We are here to support each other!!! Do feel depress!!! Be Happy many of us are in the same situation!!
 
hey dentistnine don't lose hope.Upenn generally interviews till beginning of december. so i guess there is still a good chance that u might get a call.stay positive and good luck 👍

thanks for the support guys......thanks to all.....is there a MS Oral biology program in US that doesnt require a GRE?
 
Very well written "grief and joy" ..And yes i read the whole story .. 🙂 I must say your real talent is "writing" .. You should try writing as a profession or may be side profession.. 🙂 Your story matches with mine here and there. Everyone has problems in his/ her life. Or its said in a quote as - "When you look close enough, every egg has a fracture line" .. But i totally agree with you on that "dont say looser stuff" .. 🙂 And yes, the exams in India are almost always rigged.. 😉 no doubt in that .. 🙂 anyways have a good life man.. 👍
 
nice man.......
Dedicated to all those hardworking students who went on to become good doctors but might have failed to realize a dream or two in their pursuit of higher studies and unfathomed excellence.

Friends!I hope I can address you all as friends?…You see, I am a bit apprehensive in doing so because I have realised the hard way that in principle , people do avoid being friends with a loser (as advocated in TV and newspaper ads) and… Well (let me just say it) I… am a Loser! Well, that’s what people say on the sly about me and also which, even I am convinced of…
Loser- a word which has attained a cult status as an abuse. But why? I mean why use it as a derogatory word? I still can’t fathom why the girl in the TV ad calls her two timing boy friend a ‘loser’ who till then had been in a win-win situation. She could have called him a Dog, an Idiot, but loser? What has losing got anything to do with that guy? Well, I guess I am rambling and making little sense. My apologies, but I do get touchy when I hear that word…So, where was I?
Yes… A loser! That’s what I am and always have been since I can remember. I don’t remember winning any lottery, games, contests…Wait, Did I say contests? Oh yes! I did win a contest once – The third prize in a literary contest. Ah! I can hear a smart retort, saying – there must have been only three contestants, but no, there weren’t three contestants, rather I was the only contestant. Unbelievably funny, isn’t it? But it’s true. My entry was supposedly an inferior one; hence they decided to award me the third prize instead, as awarding the first or the second would have been a gross injustice! What a shame! The win too was a lose for me. Sigh! And that’s what my life has been! – A shame.
I was not sure about doing this, but lying on the bed (yes, I am recuperating in bed from the shock of rejection letters from all but one univ.) Doing nothing, one tends to get retrospective and analytical and watching all the “loser” words flying around on the TV ,made me think some more. Yes, you heard right, the TV. I wish I could be diverted from my focus so easily in real life too… Maybe I would not find the need to write this today then…I still wouldn’t be writing this, but for what my teenage cousin said to me today, when in an emotional moment, I was seriously reconsidering my achievements and about being a loser. He had at that moment said (as is normal in a teenager), “Yeah! I know you are a loser. So? Big deal!” And that shut me up, but opened up my mind and got me thinking- Yes! Big deal. Really! Is it not? Big Deal!
But oh no! This isn’t about ‘damning’ winning or about promoting losing. This is not about glorifying losing or about an excuse. I am not proud to be a loser, but neither am I ashamed of it. I have risen above the fear of losing. The adrenaline rush for a win doesn’t bother me anymore and for the first time in my life I feel a peace and calmness. I think I am at that state of my mind now, where I don’t care anymore about winning and losing and …shouldn’t it be that way?
I can sense many of you nodding your head in assent and murmuring that it’s all about giving your best shot and not winning, (but hang on, I have some reservations about that too.) while some of you are maybe feeling outraged at this preposterous anti progressive statement. “Not caring about a win” is a bit vague a statement and I guess I won’t be clear about what I want to say without some examples (not for nothing was my entry considered inferior). So let me narrate my life story ,for nothing can be a better example than that, for whatever I want to say.

Life becomes a bit tough when you are marked by fate to mess things up and it doesn’t help if you have a super achiever as your brother. While I started out as an average student, good in maths and no where near to being any body’s pet let alone a teacher. I studied, practiced, did everything in my power to come up tops. In fact I took it as a challenge…Hah! Challenges! They say that life throws challenges at you and you should do your best to overcome them. Now that is a very stupid statement. Life does not throw challenges at you, Life just goes on. It is your choice to accept everything as challenges and be on a never ending self declared war with life. That was my first mistake I suppose. I took my situation as a challenge and fed with inspiring stuff like- “If you do not succeed once, try try again” and add to it, my father’s slighting remarks; I kept trying to be a topper and master maths. By the tenth standard I had come fifth in my class and scored a neat 89 percent in maths. I was happy with my achievement and I became the perfect example of the saying “perseverance pays” though it was not exactly a remarkable achievement and not at all anywhere near -coming tops. The first day of a maths class in grade 11 was enough to tell me that what I was good at was not maths but maths till grade 10. So, I changed my stream and took up biology. To my joy I would be the topper for two years and secured 85 % with physics, biology and chemistry. After two years of slogging, coaching classes and studying maniacally, I scraped through an entrance test that was scandalized by cheating, allegations of fake appearances and leaking questions before the exam for money. This is India as we know. I got admission in a dental college 2000 *** away from home in a stream that hardly had takers then, but yes I had to prove myself , didn’t I, and that I did. Finally I too was on my way to becoming an dentist.
I often wonder why we are so full of self doubt that we need to keep on proving ourselves to the world. I mean, no body- civic or governing, had demanded for a proof but I still took it upon myself to prove to the world that I had it in me to be successful.
Though a few days of classes brought me back to reality. The initial high of joining college disappeared and for the first time I felt like a loser. I hated sitting in the class when I realized that I had the caliber to get into medical school and I could have given it another chance. All the while, I was so obsessed with winning and proving that somewhere along the line, I had lost myself and I just didn’t know what I actually wanted. I just knew that this was not what I wanted. But I couldn’t quit just like that, could I? Didn’t they say, – A winner never quits and a quitter never wins? So I just gritted my teeth and went on with what I had. I could have salvaged my life even then, by crossing over dropping a year and hoping that the entrance exam is not rigged this time around, but I wasn’t sure where and secondly- didn’t I have to prove that I had it in me? So I went on. Life went on… Somehow I managed to go on…
In my third year I met Niharika, a vivacious lovely lady and I fell in love with her. We were already good friends and with great hopes, I proposed to her one day, but as fate could have it, I hit a negative even there. She just shook her head slowly and replied, “It’s impossible. I don’t feel that way for you and please don’t pursue this matter any more” Now who was that had said- “Impossible is a word found in a fool’s dictionary” Was it Napoleon? Maybe there hadn’t been toothpaste back then or else I am sure he wouldn’t have said so. Impossible very much exists in every body’s dictionary, after all humans are not limitless, For some, it exists in the first few pages of the dictionary while for others it might exist as footnotes, but it does exist.
This, I realize now, but back then Napoleon was my idol and I tried desperately to be ‘her types’. It’s another matter that I almost made a fool of myself in the process… Shonali my confidante and best friend stood by me like a rock, even when the whole world was laughing at me and what I was doing. She had tried to dissuade me from what I was doing and make me see sense, a couple of times, but it was a hopeless scenario and after a period of time she gave up and just let me be. Niharika migrated to the States and left my life forever. Shonali got married. On her wedding day,seeing her as a beautiful bride , blushing prettily, I realized with a pang what I had missed- what I had let go in my obsession to achieve the impossible. All along I had Shonali and I had let her go just like that… My ego took a grand beating, my heart was all shaken up and my confidence level had gone down to a good 60 percent from a 100 percent. A loser again!
I married as per my parent’s choice. Saanchi – a good person, but belonging to the same school of thought as my family- of winning and achieving. But anyhow that bitter sweet chapter of my life was finally over… And it was time to move on to the next challenge of my life- to provide happiness of all forms to my family. I got a somewhat decent job in a set up which I liked just because I could meet new patients each day and who were satisfied as I had a good practical hand. But with no marketing skills and inability to mint money I could never have enough money to saddle a family. Earning a DDS was the only possible way to salvage some of the lost glory and I started working diligently on it. I was the hard working, but I knew for sure that the exam in US would not be rigged as it happens in India. Those, who have gone through the hard work only to realize that someone with money had bought the question papers a day before the exam, can actually feel what this assurance of a fair result means to them. My hard work was rewarded and I secured a 94 on Nbde part 1 on the first attempt and 84 on part 2. Three cheers to the fairness of the US system. Still, I had to prove to these idiots that I had it in me to become a good doctor, an achiever, in the process maybe becoming the biggest idiot myself. And then the last week, the coveted interview letters, for which I had been slogging for, since the last few years, went to someone else .It was a big blow to me. I was spared the humiliation of attending office by this God send Angina attack, but for how long? Soon I have to make a decision… on whether to fight back and attempt again or quit and reconcile with the situation, or quit and start some place different, where I can do better, but where? Yes, you are right in inferring that I had talent for this stuff, but I was so busy in pursuing with perseverance and hard work, that I never could discover where else my talent could be. Recognizing your talent is a tricky affair. It is preordained before birth what you might be good at, but only the lucky few realize it early. Why luck, you may say. Let me explain why.
Consider this scenario- a boy from Himalayas has little chance of realizing his talent, if he has a latent talent for scuba diving. Or how about a boy from Afghanistan who has a gift for western classical ballet- how much chances do you think are of discovering that talent? Less than the former. So you see, success ,talent, perseverance, opportunities, circumstances are all intertwined by fate or luck or chance and only a few lucky ones can be Sachin Tendulkar or Sharukh Khan with the perfect combination of everything. Comparatively a larger number of people have it good in their life with a better permutation and combination of this factors, while the rest have to just make do with whatever available abstract resources. And a few like me, in spite of all the perseverance and determination have to stay behind ,with a messed up combination and permutation which is aggravated by our own mulishness spurred on by the fear of losing which is again powered by societies cumulative disdain for losers. I don’t know where my life is leading to. I am not even sure about my next course of action. I think I will take a decision based on a little bit of instinct and a little bit inspired from a sense of duty. I am not even saying that it will be the right decision, but I am prepared for whatever it leads to-Success. Failure. Anything ! because it doesn’t matter anymore. I have no fear of my honesty and sincerity being compromised because that is ingrained in me, but i am no more afraid of facing failures either..I am not afraid of losing or being called an underachiever anymore…I am no more under the stress of ‘performing’. As far as ‘proving myself’ is concerned, I am done with it for ever.
Maybe winning is not about not quitting, rather knowing when to quit. Maybe only way of being above winning is by over coming the fear of losing. I am not saying that one shouldn’t try to win. My saying so won’t change a thing. Humans are programmed to go for a win, like it or not, as it are a sort of driving force. I guess a world without the drive to win will be like a world full of zombies, so there is no choice as such, there ,but one can always choose to like or dislike a loser. Oh no! I do not agree with you if you say- ‘we only hate those losers who do not give their best shot’ Let me again explain why! For one, your disproval will not change him one bit, rather it can make matters worse. You might be just hastening his departure from this world. Secondly best is a subjective term. His best may not be your idea of a best, and your idea of best may physically be not possible for him. The hope of winning with a Best can in fact boomerang and could only get a person caught in the vicious cycle of wrong decisions and more losing and more wrong decisions leading to failures -just like my life. Some wins, while some have to lose. We Can’t really do anything about it. A winner arises only when there are losers to win from. So there will be losers, like it or not. But a request- please, please! Spare a thought for us all, before you utter the L word with utter contempt. It hurts. It hurt me then. I did not mean this to be a moral science class nor a mass appeal, but there was a second part to my cousin’s statement which I had omitted back then but one which had overwhelmed me enough to pour out my feelings. In a very grown up manner he had added. – “So what if the world calls you a loser, It doesn’t change what you are-A good dentist
 
i didnt receive anything so far but im stil praying... hope amazing happens. good luck everyone!
 
i didnt receive anything so far but im stil praying... hope amazing happens. good luck everyone!
hey jc dragon i wish you all the best...you have been very helpful in this forum...im sure u wont be disappointed:xf:
 
Grief and Joy............you sure have a lovely talent.....Writing.And a ton of positivity.Heart Warming I must say.
 
Does anyone who has been called for IV at Upenn have any idea about what they ask for the personal interviews. I still havent recieved my package and am getting worried. Please comment and share!! Any of the seniors can please comment and help us..would really appreciate that!!
 
Hey grief n joy... Very well written

I am sure all of us can see our reflections in your story....

N yes nobody is a loser in this world, every person is born for a reason 🙂)

I wish u all the best 🙂
 
Thank u so much for searching so hard for the information🙂 I really appreciate it!!
 
Just received the interview invitation through regular mail.
 
Reapplicant and applied in the last week of august!!
 
did any one receive a rejection letter ????
 
they didn't even finish with interviews, why they are sending rejection letters????
 
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