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UCSF Application 2009-2010
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Someone already mentioned it previously and Joel also talked about it during the interview visit... everyone is their own worst critic. It's not really productive to over-analyze anything at this point. Best we can do right now is be patient and finish up our pre-reqs.
I didn't get a business card or anything of that sort either. I would have really wanted one too.
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No, I don't think so. They know that most people have applied to multiple schools, they probably just wanted to find out who their competition was 🙂
Try not to over-analyze -- it'll only stress you out more. Just trust that you did your best and that the admissions committee will recognize all the strengths of your application. Good luck! 😀
There is no competition with UCSF because it is top-ranked but your reason sounds probable. Why do most people apply to multiple schools? It's because of their determination to get into pharmacy school and because they lack confidence in their own GPA, ECs, and experiences. At least in my opinion, even if they are more than qualified, some people do not want to take risks of not being accepted.
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i wonder how the interview is being graded. i mispronounced several words due to my nervousness. Whenever I get nervous, somehow my accent becomes thicker and thicker. I noticed at the interview that none of the UCSF students has an accent. Would the committee think that my communication is bad because I can't speak English clearly?
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I know, I kind of stumbled on some words while I was talking. I was born here, but I just had trouble saying "improvisation" because I was a little nervous. I tried it a second time, and failed, so I just said "improv", haha.
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They asked me this too and somehow it also made me feel the same way. I thought maybe they figure "Oh at least she's going to go somewhere so we can reject her." But we don't really know, so I guess we'll see. It is true though what Joel said, we are the worse critic of ourselves. We just need to think positive now! Nothing we can do or say can change what happened in that interview.
I stumbled on some words too. I think my accent got stronger during the interview too, but my interviewers were very understanding. They showed their support by smiling and giving me a lot of eye contact. But I didnt ask for their contact information. Is it necessary to send them a thank you card though?
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Oh, common, don't be so hard on yourself. If you were in the later group yesterday, then I think we met during the chat room and I had/have an accent. 😉
Accent isn't something you can control and as long as you speak in a clear coherent manner you should be fine. 🙂
Russian accents are awesome 👍
Oh, I thought you were only doing the tour @6. I should have stopped by the chat room before I left to say bye. Thanks for all your help this year!
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I was in the afternoon group on Friday too. It was great meeting all the applicants! There were just 7 of us. But I had a chance to chat a little bit with some people in the morning group. The day went by so fast. Even though we spent 5 hours there, it seemed like there wasn't much time for us to talk to each other.
Cheburashka, you are awesome!!! Thanks for all your help. And thanks to other current pharmacy students in the chat room. We all received great advice and a lot of information about the school. And we had an amazing tour afterwards.
Cheburashka, you are awesome!!! Thanks for all your help. And thanks to other current pharmacy students in the chat room. We all received great advice and a lot of information about the school. And we had an amazing tour afterwards.
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thank u so much..u guys make me feel better..🙂 the chatroom was great, the students there were super nice. i came in a little late but i was all right. i really hope that the school can give me an opportunity to be there for the next 4 yrs..please let my dream comes true
I couldn't say "pleasure and privilege" cause I was so nervous initially. I did fine after that. LOL. 😀
did you get a thank you letter from uscf for coming to the interview ?
I got one just few minutes ago. I thought it was a rejection letter since I know acceptance would come in a big yellow envelope
I believe, from other people's past experiences, the thank you letter, acceptance, and denial all come in normal envelopes.
No need to panic ... yet 😛
here is the story.................
I got an regular size envelope from ucsf just now. My heart starts shrinking because it was not a large yellow envelope. I ask myself if I should open it and I wait and wait and wait because I anticipate the bad news.
I opened it and it was short - I did not want to read it and took a long deep breath and getting myself ready to cry. I asked myself what has gone wrong ? and I started reading the letter. It is a thank you letter for coming to the interview and it says we will tell me by April 1st, 2010. What a huge relief !!!
I thought of big yellow envelope because others have told me about it. I guess it is not always true then. 😳
🙂
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I thought of big yellow envelope because others have told me about it. I guess it is not always true then. 😳
For the actual acceptance letter, it's definitely just a regular envenlope. After you accept the admissions offer, you won't get your acceptance package untill much later and even then it won't be a big yellow envelope, it'll be a big white envelope with green UCSF logo. 🙂
I'm looking at my taxes now and I have a 1099 form (first time ever) 😕
Did you have any investments? I did some work for the school and they siphoned a bit of my paycheck into a retirement account, which closed when I graduated. Maybe you have a similar situation.
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kmoogs, hmmm I don't think that's my case. I do have 1098 from school. and I also have w2 cuz I work at walgreens. hmm i did call college board and they said not to worry about it. they ask for 1099 from everyone, it's a generic thing. they told me if i don't have a 1099, then I don't need to send it, even though it says required online.
let me know if they ask you for a 1099
let me know if they ask you for a 1099
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also, kmoogs, i noticed u were on the usc thread. did u get an interview at usc?
Not yet. My PharmCAS was turned in near the end of the application cycle...
Glad to hear the 1099 thing worked out for you.
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me too, i turned in my applications oct 29th (both pharmcas and supplemental). So I don't know if I will get interview there. Is it too late? I don't know if they have invited people to the last interview yet.
here is the story.................
I got an regular size envelope from ucsf just now. My heart starts shrinking because it was not a large yellow envelope. I ask myself if I should open it and I wait and wait and wait because I anticipate the bad news.
I opened it and it was short - I did not want to read it and took a long deep breath and getting myself ready to cry. I asked myself what has gone wrong ? and I started reading the letter. It is a thank you letter for coming to the interview and it says we will tell me by April 1st, 2010. What a huge relief !!!
I thought of big yellow envelope because others have told me about it. I guess it is not always true then. 😳
Did you meant usc? I didn't know ucsf sends out a thank you letter.
That was a scary story. I do not want to experience that.here is the story.................
I got an regular size envelope from ucsf just now. My heart starts shrinking because it was not a large yellow envelope. I ask myself if I should open it and I wait and wait and wait because I anticipate the bad news.
I opened it and it was short - I did not want to read it and took a long deep breath and getting myself ready to cry. I asked myself what has gone wrong ? and I started reading the letter. It is a thank you letter for coming to the interview and it says we will tell me by April 1st, 2010. What a huge relief !!!
I thought of big yellow envelope because others have told me about it. I guess it is not always true then. 😳
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did you get a thank you letter from uscf for coming to the interview ?
I got one just few minutes ago. I thought it was a rejection letter since I know acceptance would come in a big yellow envelope
When was your interview? I wonder if they have time to send it out to everyone...
it was UCSF - not USC. the interview was on Jan 30, 2010 and it is a Thank You letter in deed thanking me for coming to interview with the school. Very nice, very respectable school. I have to say this is a GOOD school, it shows how much it cares for its students.
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hey so i read from last year's forum, they start sending out letters 3/5!! and end with 4/1... that's coming up pretty soon.
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Not necessarily. They may have been trying to find out what types of schools you were considering (and giving you an opportunity to answer "why UCSF" w/o asking you a very obvious question).
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Speaking English "clearly" b/c of an accent isn't a big deal. Heck, it may be an asset in pharmacy practice b/c you can understand patients with accents 😉 But not being able to communicate an idea is different. Hopefully you communicated an idea clearly with a not so clear accent 😉 Then you did just fine. But seriously, don't stress about your interview at this point. What's done is done and I am sure you did a lot better than you think you did.
Agreed that at UCSF, we never got the impression that an accent would be a problem. My wife is still nervous about the interview, though... it definitely didn't feel like a conversation, because the interviewers were terse and professional, most definitely not chatty. It was all business, and she said they asked her what sounded the like same self-critical question in like 5 different ways (essentially "tell me how you've screwed up and then how did you deal with it?" All the while they were scribbling, scribbling, scribbling notes furiously.... very little eye contact overall. That made her feel more nervous than she already was!!
By contrast, interviews she had at other schools really were much more like conversations, and the faculty members really helped to put her at ease. It's really hard to know how she did at UCSF because she didn't get any feedback from the interviewer at all (non-verbal or otherwise), and the parting words from the faculty member were basically "Good luck with your professional life", which sounded like the kiss of death!
When you go in expecting a "getting-to-know-you conversation" and you get this, you come out with your head spinning around asking yourself "what the heck just happened??"
But I am very glad to hear that so many other people had similar experiences... it makes us feel like maybe she didn't do as badly as she thought! 🙂
By contrast, interviews she had at other schools really were much more like conversations, and the faculty members really helped to put her at ease. It's really hard to know how she did at UCSF because she didn't get any feedback from the interviewer at all (non-verbal or otherwise), and the parting words from the faculty member were basically "Good luck with your professional life", which sounded like the kiss of death!
When you go in expecting a "getting-to-know-you conversation" and you get this, you come out with your head spinning around asking yourself "what the heck just happened??"
But I am very glad to hear that so many other people had similar experiences... it makes us feel like maybe she didn't do as badly as she thought! 🙂
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My interviewers asked self-critical questions too! but they barely took notes. and they talked a lot at the end of the interview answering my questions. But I definitely stumbled on some self-critical questions. I was surprised they didn't ask me "why pharmacy".. Most were just situational questions... i don't know, I guess I'll find out how I did in a few weeks.
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did you get a thank you letter from uscf for coming to the interview ?
I got one just few minutes ago. I thought it was a rejection letter since I know acceptance would come in a big yellow envelope
That's funny and scary all at once. I didn't get a thank you letter. Prob depends who the interviewers were.
My interviewers had very little eye contact and were busy scribbling.
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Mine was question after question interrogation style. Not to mention I NEVER saw either of my interviews write ANYTHING down.
Do you remember your interviewers' names?
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After that interview/interrogation, i barely remembered anything. I forgot half the questions they asked me.
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My interviewers didn't even write anything down. I don't know if that's good or bad. They didn't have anything in front of them, they just started asking me questions.
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my interviewers had a list of questions to ask, but I don't think they took notes at the interview. Well, if we have similar experience, maybe it wasn't bad?
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And I don't remember the names of my interviewers but I was totally grilled. One of the questions they asked was: why ucsf. And I started out by saying that it's bc it's the first ranked pharmacy school. I had other things to say too. But my interviewer interrupted me and said: I don't want to hear that. I know we are the best. I did give a good answer after that. I had prepared with more concrete answers. I guess I usually start with the easy facts first. Lol. So in that sense, I think I did bad. But I think I made it up with the questions I had for them at the end. Anyways, all I can do is hope now.
I received a similar response from the faculty after the I sent him a thank you note. It seems to be more of a neutral yet cordial gesture of good faith. They can't really comment on your standing in the admissions process either way so they give a general "good luck in _____ life/school/professional etc" for whatever situations/choices you may encounter. I can see how people may perceive it as a negative response, but you have to realize that their hands are sort of tied in the kind of response they can give. 1. They would probably rather not give a response that results in false hopes before the files have even been reviewed, 2. it's common courtesy to wish others well, and 3. a general "good luck in BLAH" is a non targeted slightly positive response. Even though the interview was "open file" per se, I don't know if they had access to ALL aspects of our files. My interviewers mentioned certain things they were unaware of because of what was/wasn't provided to them for the interview (which would make it difficult/impossible for the interviewers to gauge one's chances of acceptance).
Although maybe their statement about the file was not true and they were just trying to see how I explained my background/who I am
... which would have been a very clever way to address that issue without straight up asking me the question "Tell me about yourself" 😛... (conspiracy theories haha) Ultimately, I feel I performed poorly during my interview. My mind blanked at stupid spots in the interview... I remember the names of the interviewers, what they look like, what they do at UCSF, the questions, the answers I gave, and the answers I wanted to give. It's not that the answers were different from what I gave ... but I just feel I could have given a more coherent response. I would think about the question, formulate my answer, then BLANK ... and try to blindly phrase what I wanted to say moments ago 🙁. On the tip of my tongue ... then poof, it's vanished. Syntax and organization of ideas got all messed up from stumbling around the question 👎.
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I don't think my interview experience was that bad at UCSF. My interviewers had list of questions they wanted to ask me and my essays right in front of them. The student asked rather reasonable questions (and very few). The faculty dominated the interview. I just remember he asked me a lot of different kind of questions. There was the standard, why pharmacy and why ucsf questions. Then there's a lot of stuff from my essays (my research experience, pharmacy experience and leadership experience). He also asked me what I think of the health care reform. I think I did ok, but a few questions I could have answered better.
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It's hard to draw conclusions from a small sample size but it seems like many people didn't have good experiences at UCSF. I want to provide another perspective. I think my interviewers were very supportive throughout the entire process. It was pretty much 100% eye contact from beginning to end and the interview was nearly 50 mins. They even told me what kind of questions will be asked so that I can get a feel on what's in store for me. Overall, it was the best interview experience I've had so far. I was nervous, it was inevitable, but their positive attitudes really calmed my nerves. 👍
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Oh, that's really good! It sounds like it must have been a great conversation especially since it lasted for 50 minutes. 👍
I should note that this was the second UCSF interview my wife attended (she was turned down last year). She told me that her first interview was a little friendlier, more eye contact and hardly any scribbling of notes. But still, it was most definitely not a "conversation".
I think I'm more nervous than my wife is... she keeps her grace under pressure while I blergh out on the sdn boards 🙂 (I don't think I have the temperament to be a pharmacist...!)
I think I'm more nervous than my wife is... she keeps her grace under pressure while I blergh out on the sdn boards 🙂 (I don't think I have the temperament to be a pharmacist...!)
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