UC schools show no love...

[Scooby Doo]

Okay..so what's up with this?
I have gotten interview offers at places that are ranked higher than most of the UC's and still I am getting rejected left and right from all the UC's!!! What the hell?

I heard a while back that if you interview at a lot of out of state schools, which I have been doing, the UC's will be less likely to look at your application and consider you for an interview. Is there any truth to this? That would really make me mad because the UC's have been so late this year that I had to do other interviews first...

Any ideas?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[rajneel1]

and how would the UCs know that you have been to alot of out of state interviews? if they ask, don't tell them. and they should realize that your family is in cali...and they should realize that it is cheaper to go to a cali school if you are a cali resident than to be an out of stater at any other out of state school (except JHU). the UCs are just super late as usual. and i haven't heard from most of them either but have been getting interview offers from out of state. just hang in tight i guess?

 

[penelope]

Scooby,

Don't worry, the UCs 1) tend to interview and accept very late in the process and 2) sometimes have specific qualities in mind in order to put together diverse classes, so you might not get accepted to ones that you were fairly sure you were a good match for.

Last year I too was rejected by a couple without interview, while I was accepted at higher ranked schools. The UCs that did accept me didn't do so until June, but by that time I had decided to go to Duke...which actually came out to be comparable in terms of price.

It's a crapshoot with the UCs - actually, with the whole process. Good luck!

penelope

 

[lilycat]

I don't think any schools can know exactly where you have been interviewed, so I'm guessing you just heard a premed urban legend Scooby.

Sorry about the bad news. Who wants to stay in California anyways.

 

[Scooby Doo]

I don't really know exactly how they would know, I am just going off of a rumor that I have heard.
I have already been rejected by two, put on hold for an interview at one (which means basically rejection...I am not dumb!), and one other I don't really care about. Then the last one is one I would love to go to but I don't have a chance of getting into if I haven't even gotten interviews at the other ones!

 

[rajneel1]

i'm not dumb either. "hold for interview".....i wish UCSD had just rejected me with some honor and integrity.

 

[lilycat]

Originally posted by Scooby Doo:
• Then the last one is one I would love to go to but I don't have a chance of getting into if I haven't even gotten interviews at the other ones!•••

Not necessarily true -- I only know of one person last year who interviewed at ALL of the UC's -- I'm sure there were a few more, but the point is you can't really compare them that way. Each UC campus is looking for something slightly different. Send an interest/update letter to the one that you would love to go to -- try to get their attention.

 

[kutastha]

Scooby - sounds like you and I are in the same boat. I have never ever been able to figure out what UCs are looking for - I just have this weird feeling it's not me.

Andrew

 

[penelope]

A med student/adcom member I met on my interview circuit last year warned me that schools DO know where you're interviewing. He said (and I noticed) that interviewers often ask where else you've interviewed...to make sure you give an honest answer. Otherwise a few dirty pre-meds might say "Oh, Harvard, Hopkins, Penn..." just to make themselves look more marketable. I suspect this is true because when I was setting dates for my interviews on the east coast, one office lady hinted that I could choose a date closer to the date of one of my other east coast interviews, but I hadn't yet mentioned that I had any other interviews!!! Kind of creepy.

As to whether schools use this information against you, I seriously doubt it. People who apply to nothing but CA schools are taking a HUGE risk, so it's expected that you would interview out of state.

 

[Darwin]

You guys crack me up The only system in place is for schools to see whose been accepted, not interviewed

 

[The Falconer]

Hey Scooby I think many of us are in the same boat! UCD just trashed me via e-mail. My stats aren't stellar but they are okay so I think the earlier posts that speak of specificities that the UCs look for are true. We just didn't have what it took!

 

[figure five]

yeah, don't sweat it...i got the same rejection from UC Davis. I'm really sad that I'm going to miss 4 years of cow-tipping on friday nights

 

[WarmFuzzyKittens]

scoob,
sorry to break it to you, but you're WHITE! and frankly, you don't contribute to diversity! so suck it!

 

[BlackPuma]

I got rejected by UC Davis....not that I care, but it leaves a sense of emptiness inside

 

[TwoSteveSquared]

I'm a UCD reject too. I think that's funny, cause I didn't even want to go there. I almost felt like replying to their email..."Get over yourself." Seriously, UCI and UCD are so full of themselves cause they have Cali's population at their fingertips. It's kinda sad they don't inteview more people (each only interviews like 500 peeps). I think interviews tell you a lot more about a person than anything on paper.

 

[paisley1]

If you don't mind my asking, when did those of you who recently heard back from Davis submit your secondaries? I haven't heard anything from them yet but I think this may be because I turned in my application rather late (end of October).

 

[lilninja]

I sent the secondary in 10/2, got an email 10/9 saying it was complete. Got the rejection email 12/5.

 

[EpiII]

Originally posted by WarmFuzzyKittens:
•scoob,
sorry to break it to you, but you're WHITE! and frankly, you don't contribute to diversity! so suck it!•••

This is a common thought, but I believe it also is partly based on urban myth. White folks can contribute to diversity. 1. We each have our own culture and heritage. 2. Diversity is not just about race and skin color, it also is about experience and background.

A half to a third of the individuals (16 total, counting myself three times) that I have interviewed with at three UCs so far have been white males.

As far as skin color goes in predicting diversity of thought, background and experience, then maybe it is a predictor of what you would bring to the entering class, but it is not a 1:1 correlation.

I hope you do not get too discouraged by the whole process, it just takes one acceptance and there is a spot out there for everyone. This process selects for the persevering and this is certainly the time for that.

 

[The Falconer]

No offense epi, but if you think that being a URM doesn't help get a person into med school you need to wake up. It has been proven time and time again that URMs can get into med schools with lower stats than non-URMs. The diversity issue as far as ecs etc. is a little harder to account for because all people are different. Just don't fool yourself too much by thinking that there is a level playing ground. I don't want this to turn into the same old URM thread- I'm sure there are both deserving and non-deserving non-URMs and URMs.

 

[nochaser]

I agree with Epi. In a class of all white students, I doubt very seriously that they'd all

1)come from upper middle class families;
2)be the same gender;
3)all be A students with the same MCAT scores and EC experiences;
4)be about the same age;
4) all be single w/no dependents;
5) have same religious and ethnic background

so on and so forth. So yeah, whites do contribute to diversity, but there would not be much *racial* diversity. Please be clear on how you use this term "diversity".

 

[kutastha]

Originally posted by Epi:
•This is a common thought, but I believe it also is partly based on urban myth. White folks can contribute to diversity. 1. We each have our own culture and heritage. 2. Diversity is not just about race and skin color, it also is about experience and background.•••

As much as I wish this was true, here's an interesting link on the selection process by the UC medical schools:<a href="http://www.acusd.edu/~e_cook/index.html" target="_blank">University of California Admissions</a>

From their link on UC Davis 2000 admissions:

•Of the applicants, about 9% were black or mexican american. You would expect about 9% of the accepted students to be black or mexican american. UC Davis accepted 221 students, so you would expect 221 x 0.09 = 20 black or mexican american students to be accepted.

In reality, UC Davis discriminates on the basis of race. They admitted 41 black and mexican american applicants, about twice as many as they would have in a fair system.

We estimate 21 better qualified asian and white students were denied admission to UC Davis School of Medicine in 2000 because of their race. •

And they had my preliminary on August 20, they received the secondary around September 10. I was officially complete on October 10, rejected December 6.

Andrew

 

[bruinboy2000]

Originally posted by kutastha:
[QB]

As much as I wish this was true, here's an interesting link on the selection process by the UC medical schools:<a href="http://www.acusd.edu/~e_cook/index.html" target="_blank">University of California Admissions</a>


This website has been floating around here for years! The numbers that are represented here are do not tell the whole story about the applicants. Many UC med students did graduate or post-bacc work. and it certainly does not show trends. Anyway, whenever this website gets mentioned, people start getting really upset. My advice is to take it with a grain of salt, since statistics can be spun to show just about anything you want them to show.

 

[nochaser]

I wonder what they were using back in the days when NO non-white students could even attend US med schools (nor women, for that matter)! What was it? Wrong family name? Wrong pedigree? Wrong religion?

You just can't tell me that every well-qualified white male applicant was accepted back then. Sorry, but that "reverse discrimination" thing just does not work, either. People, this is the United States! Surely, it may not be your fault that things got so f*cked up with people of color not having the same opportunities as whites post- emancipation, and it may seem unfair that now, of all times, the US has decided to own up to the tortured past and make up for so many lost opportunites and equalize the field, and in order to do so, YOU may be the one to bite the bullet. Well, if you believe this, then buck up. And another thing--please consider the fact that there may be something about you that adcoms just don't like--your voice, your posture, some annoying fidget or nervous habit, your appearance--you may just give off a bad "vibe" that cannot be apparent on paper!!! Who the f@#k knows? Just don't automatically assume that just because you look good on paper and you are a white male and you are not getting into med school it's because they'd rather give your seat to a person of color.
What a weak-ass cop out.

 

[Triangulation]

I guess it's my turn to chime in here as an Asian-American and what is considered to be an 'over-represented minority' in professional schools. I recently heard a stat that Asians need to earn .1 to .2 higher grade point than the average applicant since we are competing against other Asians for available slots. In an effort to maintain ethnic diversity this makes sense. If the max percentage of students of any ethnic descent was 'capped' at 20% then people of that ethnicity must compete against each other for that 20%. Speaking from experience this is a daunting task, BUT THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE IF IT MAINTAINS DIVERSITY IN THE FIELD. The fact is we desperately need more MDs of Latin and African descent. Studies have shown time and again that patients of a certain group are more comfortable with doctors of their own ethnicity. This openness paves the way for better care. It has nothing to do with excluding people, and everything to do with promoting a better health care system.

 

[Scooby Doo]

Jeebuz...what happened to this thread! haha

Reminds me of Spin City a couple nights ago...when the group for handicapped people stages a protest and then the Gay and Lesbian league joins their protest. Then one of the guys starts asking, "Why does everyone have a group supporting them?!? What does the normal average white heterosexual male have to help him these days???"

The other guy responded, "Congress..."

haha

 

[mitgeek]

So, I just called UCDavis expecting to hear that my application is complete and i'd have to wait till june to hear from them. BUT, they told me i got an interview. they haven't contacted me yet by email because there aren't any spaces left for interviews. So there's still hope out there for UCs. oh yeah, i already got rejected by UCSF. but i guess all the UCs don't hate people with low GPAs.

 

[Triangulation]

Hey MITGEEK (I don't know if I like addressing you that way, but at any rate...) I'm curious did you get a 2dary at UCSF? Thanks.

 

[sjordan]

mitgeek,
when did you submit your secondary?
thanks

 

[EpiII]

Medical schools are not just looking to fill their classes with the highest performers, etc. They also know what the need of the state is currently. There are MANY underserved areas in our state. Many of these places have more African American and Latino residents living there. The most likely medical doctors to deliver care to these areas are students who come from there. Thus, anyone who comes from these areas and says that they want to return to those areas and deliver care is going to get an interview at least.

I never said that race is NOT an issue, it is not the dominating issue that us "White Males" like to take refuge in though. We do need to have more African American and Latino physicians. There are other barriers that many of these individuals overcome when they begin to 'compete' with the rest of us who have come from privelege.

For example, I just helped my Latino neighbor boy who is in 8th grade with some algebra homework because he has exceeded his parent's math ability. His parents are unable to help him with 8th grade math; the same would go for english and the other subjects. This definitely puts up a barrier for his success. If he gets even close to similar grades as a white person, that is impressive to me.

 

[rondo]

hey MITGEEK! (isnt' that redundant?)

i too am saddled with a low mit gpa. it's the greatest... also rejected from ucsf. maybe they don't like geeks.

so, did UCDavis say when they would get around to scheduling an interview with you?

 

[mitgeek]

hello...i finished my supplemental mid october for UCDavis, but i still dunno when my interview will be. I never got a supplemental from UCSF...their loss i still haven't even heard from UCLA or UCSD...i've almost given up on them.
yeaah...low mit gpa sucks. but i was course 6 (EECS) so hopefully the schools will take that into consideration.
anyways...g'luck with UCs...