Hello everyone. I recently received a PM from an SDNer in response to my post who was, I guess you can say, encouraged by the fact that I had such low stats and received a secondary. I thought I would copy and paste my reply to him/her.
"Hey...No offense taken whatsoever. I was really shocked at receiving a secondary too. I really thought I'd be in their reject pile. Being a Cali resident with a low MCAT and a 3.7ish GPA from a state school, I applied to about 27 schools I think and received secondaries from ALL of them except UCSD and UCI who are waiting on my August scores. I applied to all of the schools in California. No rejection letters...yet...
I even received an interview for next month to VCU about 2 weeks ago which was a shock because MCAT scores weren't released yet.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask."
So there's always hope if someone who you wouldn't expect to make the cutoffs can get this far (i.e. me...). I recently went to the premed conference in Sacramento and heard the Dean of Admissions speak from UCSF, Stanford, Touro (Osteopath), and UC Davis. The Director (Mr. Degang) and the Dean (Dr. Bera) of Admissions from UC Davis both spoke about how they pick applicants. Here is what I can remember from their awesome speeches...
Every single application gets looked at thoroughly, both pre and post secondary. Those with low numbers, like myself, get thrown in a reject pile and Mr. Degang said it's his job to go through those applications with a fine-tooth comb and according to him, he will occasionally find some "gems" in there and pull them out of the reject pile. As for the other applications that do make the number cut-offs, I'm not sure who decides whether or not they get a secondary.
Both Mr. Degang and Dr. Bera said that they try to look at the applicant as a whole so I'm assuming a lot of weight is put into your personal statement. They try to imagine the type of person you are and could care less about your volunteer work in the ER (verbatim from Mr. Degang).
I also had the chance to spend part of lunch with a 3rd year med student from UC Davis and he was on the admissions committee last year and he was kind enough to offer me some insight. He said once you get a secondary, you are past the numbers game and you have to let your personality shine through in your writing. In short, don't fluff and bluff anything. After hearing all this, I rewrote my entire secondary and after looking at it, it turned out A LOT better. Also, he said that when he was interviewing, what he was looking for and thinking was, "Am I going to want this person as my peer? Is this going to be a student I am going to want to work with?"
Um...that's all I can remember right now. If I figure anything else out about UC Davis, I promise I will share. But right now, my physiology book is calling my name...
Good luck everyone!
