What if you applied to every US allopathic school?

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Puggy
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Just purely a "what if" question hahah. Would adcoms view it as a bad thing? And also I know that something like 40,000 pre meds apply for 17,000 spots (I might be wrong, heard in lecture) so wouldn't this boost your odds to apply to all of them? Thank you!!
 
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I think the incredibly long list from your primary (all the schools you apply to appear on your AMCAS primary) would make a lot of schools question you.

EDIT: Turns out this is not true.
 
No, why would that be considered negative??

But its a bit impractical if you ask me - you will not only be spending a great deal of time completing secondaries but also money is a huge factor for many applicants. I personally am not wealthy enough to afford application to every US med school and incur interview expenses on top of that. Therefore, I will only be applying to select schools based on my GPA, MCAT, etc.
 
RedPhys said:
I think the incredibly long list from your primary (all the schools you apply to appear on your AMCAS primary) would make a lot of schools question you.
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Nope. The schools do not see this.
 
Also the state schools with non-overlapping residency requirements make it impossible but yeah applying everywhere improves the odds overall.
 
Sure, your odds improve, just like if you bought 50 lottery tickets.

I remember when I was just testing the waters and adding schools to my app list, and I was up over $1500 before I knew it. I should also note that this was as an international applicant and only looking into schools that accepted non-US.
 
If you can't get in by applying to 30 properly selected schools why would applying to 100 help? Your odds only increase up to a point.
 
It's not as difficult as people think.

Most of the secondary essays have similar prompts. It's a matter of tweaking, cut, and pasting.
 
I applied to 20 and somewhat regret adding "safety" schools. If I could do it over I'd pre-write secondaries like crazy and apply to 40 schools (more high ranked schools). Also, if you have high stats don't bother with the lower end schools (essentially the USNews unranked), unless you have strong ties. I didn't hear back from one of them.

We're gonna spend hundreds of thousands on med school anyway, might as well suck up the app fees. And the big expense is interviews which you can cancel later.
 
You wouldn't qualify for some schools based on residency requirements.
 
Holmwood said:
It's not as difficult as people think.

Most of the secondary essays have similar prompts. It's a matter of tweaking, cut, and pasting.
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I remember back when I applied I occasionally straight up copied and pasted secondary essays (successfully I might add) for similar schools.
 
MinnesotaDental said:
Just purely a "what if" question hahah. Would adcoms view it as a bad thing? And also I know that something like 40,000 pre mess apply for 17,000 spots (I might be wrong, heard in lecture) so wouldn this boost your odds to apply to all of them? Thank you!!
Click to expand...

I'm convinced that a former classmate did apply to literally every school. She actually mocked me for only applying to 15. She's currently in a SMP.
 
That sounds awful.

I became tired of it after 15 secondaries.
 
Not just costs, but imagine the time invested in filling out all the secondaries!

LChristmas said:
Sure, your odds improve, just like if you bought 50 lottery tickets.

I remember when I was just testing the waters and adding schools to my app list, and I was up over $1500 before I knew it. I should also note that this was as an international applicant and only looking into schools that accepted non-US.
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DoctorLacrosse said:
lol honestly I wrote like 40+ secondaries in a few weeks, and it didn't really feel that awful :O
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"Hi i'm DoctorLacrosses and I like your school because I liked your website layout, pls accept me"

Was it something similiar to that? :laugh: because I can't imagin you writing something unique about +40 schools in few weeks.
 
Bottle said:
"Hi i'm DoctorLacrosses and I like your school because I liked your website layout, pls accept me"

Was it something similiar to that? :laugh: because I can't imagin you writing something unique about +40 schools in few weeks.
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Did you read his comeback story? The man doesn't sleep; he is a machine. :borg:
 
doing that won't necessarily up your chances. none of it is up to chance... including the very expensive fees incurred throughout the process by each individual school. <3
 
Not impressed.

I would be impressed if you applied to every allopathic and osteopathic med school.
 
It would up your chances if the process was actually random but it isn't random. You are competing against a pool. The probability of acceptance is probably unrelated to the number of schools applied unless you are a marginal coin-flip applicant. If you are the probability increases logarithmically. If you have a 50% chance of getting in based off of your stats then rolling more dice (applying to more schools) will get you closer to that 50% accepted/50% rejected ratio but at some point the true probability is reached and nothing changes. You dont "create" winning opportunities because every event is independent. If this was the lottery (or a completely random process) then yes applying to a ton of schools would increase your chances.

This is a bunch of empirical statements I just made but I do not remember Probability so well lol. Im sure someone can remember the appropriate equation.
 
MinnesotaDental said:
Just purely a "what if" question hahah. Would adcoms view it as a bad thing? And also I know that something like 40,000 pre mess apply for 17,000 spots (I might be wrong, heard in lecture) so wouldn this boost your odds to apply to all of them? Thank you!!
Click to expand...

You would be a fool who wasted a lot of money and disregarded opportunity cost.

You also improve your chances of getting married by proposing marriage to every eligible bachelor/ette you meet. Eventually, someone is likely to say yes. That doesn't mean that they are a decent fit for you, or you for them.

You would better spend your time by looking for the schools that do actually have some reason to accept you, and that you would have some reasons to want to attend, beyond just that they are means to an end. And if you have the money and time to apply to every school, you could use that money and time to do things that might actually make you a better applicant that could get admitted at a better school than you could have hoped for with your shotgun approach.
 
Bottle said:
"Hi i'm DoctorLacrosses and I like your school because I liked your website layout, pls accept me"

Was it something similiar to that? :laugh: because I can't imagin you writing something unique about +40 schools in few weeks.
Click to expand...

hahaha I actually made sure that I was able to answer every essay prompt accurately, and always tailored my responses to each individual school in order to avoid sounding copy/paste-ish. I knew I had to pour my soul into each secondary to have a legitimate chance, so I did just that. I've received interviews at around a third of the schools I've applied to, so I think it worked out okay.
 
I did a little over 30 secondaries total in about a 3-4 week span. I was pretty worn out after the 24th one or so. If I could do it over again I'd honestly apply to the same amount of schools, I'd probably switch 5-7 of the schools though. I have two friends who applied to 50 schools which is on the bad side of the crazy scale. I do think that after 30-35 well-selected schools you're not helping yourself that much.
 
miamiheatfan said:
I did a little over 30 secondaries total in about a 3-4 week span. I was pretty worn out after the 24th one or so. If I could do it over again I'd honestly apply to the same amount of schools, I'd probably switch 5-7 of the schools though. I have two friends who applied to 50 schools which is on the bad side of the crazy scale. I do think that after 30-35 well-selected schools you're not helping yourself that much.
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I definitely agree with this. I realized I could have cut out 6-8 unrealistic schools, chosen many I would have been a better fit at, etc. If done correctly, 30-35 is more than enough for any applicant.
 
DoctorLacrosse said:
I definitely agree with this. I realized I could have cut out 6-8 unrealistic schools, chosen many I would have been a better fit at, etc. If done correctly, 30-35 is more than enough for any applicant.
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Very true! When I was selecting schools, I used the MSAR and spent hours and days looking at every single school by state. People thought that I was making myself neurotic and wasting time by looking at schools so much. But doing my homework prevented me from blindly applying to schools like Mississippi and New Mexico that don't take OOS people or some public school that takes OOS people on the basis that their LizzyM is above 75 or something crazy.
 
Shams al Deen said:
I applied to 20 and somewhat regret adding "safety" schools. If I could do it over I'd pre-write secondaries like crazy and apply to 40 schools (more high ranked schools). Also, if you have high stats don't bother with the lower end schools (essentially the USNews unranked), unless you have strong ties. I didn't hear back from one of them.

We're gonna spend hundreds of thousands on med school anyway, might as well suck up the app fees. And the big expense is interviews which you can cancel later.
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What do you mean by high stats? I don't think a school would refuse to interview you because of high stats. You probably applied to a school where you didn't fit its mission.
 
Bottle said:
"Hi i'm DoctorLacrosses and I like your school because I liked your website layout, pls accept me"

Was it something similiar to that? :laugh: because I can't imagin you writing something unique about +40 schools in few weeks.
Click to expand...
That picture, in your signature..... makes me cringe.
 
I applied to 45 and completed 42 secondaries. It required about 2 weeks of time total to do all of that. I pre-wrote all over the place and took a week off from work to concentrate on getting them in and threw in a little vacation at the end of it to keep myself sane. I work full time (50-60+ hrs a week) and it took me a long time to dig myself out of the burnout hole I created.

I don't regret it, but the essays were definitely not my best work. They were mostly okay though and got my point across. When you reach about 5-10 schools, you can start finding ways to reuse ideas and essay and re-edit things to fit.
 
LuluLovesMe said:
What do you mean by high stats? I don't think a school would refuse to interview you because of high stats. You probably applied to a school where you didn't fit its mission.
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I mean you can believe that, I don't. Not fitting the mission sounds like BS to me. Not fitting the overall profile for their previous classes is more reasonable.
 
Schools have historical data looking at their yield for students with X gpa and YZ MCAT. They're not going to go out of their way to court someone that is low yield especially if the missions don't seem to line up. If you can convince a school that you fit in there, they're more likely to be interested in you obviously this is given that your stats are in line and possibly even more important if you're on the higher end of things.
 
Something along the lines of this (for most of us):

A-broken-piggy-bank-001.jpg
broke-monopoly-july-27.jpg
 
30 secondaries was rough for me. The quality started to suffer after about 15 of them.
 
Then you would have spent your life savings
 
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