Waitlist Frustration

[MrNovember]

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I have been accepted to 1 school this year, so I can say that I have an acceptance. My frustration is with the whole concept of the waitlist. Last year I applied to 25 schools, was rejected by 23 and waitlisted at 2. No calls from those 2 schools. This year I have applied to 13 schools, received 4 interviews... 3 of which have waitlisted me.

What are the reasons for placing applicants on the waitlist rather than outright accepting them? The waitlist to me is like saying "yes, you are qualified to be here but we want 8 months to sit and think about whether we want to accept you since well... someone better might come along". It costs hundreds of dollars PER interview... especially with some of us flying across the country to interview.

Is there a good way to get accepted off the waitlist or avoid the dreaded thing altogether? I've tried it all at this point, letters of interest, application updates, etc.

 

[DrWily]

What are the reasons for placing applicants on the waitlist rather than outright accepting them? The waitlist to me is like saying "yes, you are qualified to be here but we want 8 months to sit and think about whether we want to accept you since well... someone better might come along". It costs hundreds of dollars PER interview... especially with some of us flying across the country to interview.

It's all part of the game. Some (I want to say most) schools will just waitlist you instead of outright rejecting you. So in this case, its more like a "we don't like you at all, but out of courtesy we'll just say you're waitlisted." Then April rolls around and guess what "oh we filled up the class, thanks for trying." Schools get 1000's of applicants for a 100-200 class size. They interview perhaps 2-3x the class size because they know the most qualified applicants have many choices. Ultimately, they want to get a full class so they take on more interviews than seats, and thus the waitlist was born. If they just outright accepted everyone who was "qualified" they'd have too many people. Schools can afford to be choosy during the application cycle because of the sheer number of applicants. It's just the way the system works.

Is there a good way to get accepted off the waitlist or avoid the dreaded thing altogether? I've tried it all at this point, letters of interest, application updates, etc.

Nope, you've pretty much done everything. You *could* write a Letter of Intent which pretty much says you'll drop everything and go to their school immediately if they accept you. Only write this post-interview and I'd day say only write this letter to ONE school.


As far as the money goes, yes it is a lot of money, but still.. its all part of the process. If you cannot afford to spend a few grand trying to get into medical school, then how can you expect to take on $100,000+ in debt going through it?