What is the biggest flaw in med admissions process, and how would you change it?

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fw5tape6kq

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Clearly, the system in place to select doctors is not perfect. Some people are accepted who shouldn't be, while others are unnecessarily excluded. If you had your way, what would you change about the medical school admissions process?
 
More seats, in Canada especially admission averages over there are like 3.8 sGPA
 
Ismet said:
Another one of these "med school admissions is unfair" threads? :meh:




No. Not unless the number of residency spots also increases (idk about Canada. I'm talking about US)
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Nice point
 
fw5tape6kq said:
Clearly, the system in place to select doctors is not perfect. Some people are accepted who shouldn't be, while others are unnecessarily excluded. If you had your way, what would you change about the medical school admissions process?
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The option to pass on financial aid talks at interview days. Listening to the same talk more than twice is killer.
 
chillaxbro said:
I think the "culture of lies" thread had many good points. I would bet my life savings that 75% of pre-meds would not do any community service if it weren't essentially a requirement
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While I actually I agree with you, I'm not so sure it's necessarily a negative thing. For example, I probably wouldn't have done most of the things in undergrad that I did if I didn't feel like it would be a good experience to list on my app. I was that guy. The thing is, though, that once I got started with those experiences, I really did grow to love them. They were very formative and insightful, and I'm extremely grateful to have had them. I'm just not the kind of person that goes for joining random groups and doing things. It's just not how I would naturally spend my time - and in medical school that has borne out, as I'm one of the guys that's halfway involved with one organization vs. the same pool of people that are seemingly on every "important" group or committee. But I don't think that reality makes my experience any less genuine.

But perhaps I'm off base.
 
Medical schools really need to try to match you with an interviewer who actually has interest in the same things you do. I hate talking with someone who clearly has no idea what my research was about and cannot provide useful information about the school for me. For example:

Interviewer: Have you worked with the medically underserved? Done outreach in urban communities?
Me: No, most of my clinical exposure were in in-patient settings.
Interviewer: Hm. Any questions for me?
Me: I am interested in cancer research, can you tell me more about XYZ summer fellowship? Or perhaps any other clinical or translational research opportunities here?
Interviewer: I don't know, I am a psychiatrist. I know we have a cancer center.
Me: Great, thanks.
 
fw5tape6kq said:
Clearly, the system in place to select doctors is not perfect. Some people are accepted who shouldn't be, while others are unnecessarily excluded. If you had your way, what would you change about the medical school admissions process?
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More research about the value of the extracurricular requirements. Does research show that medical students who shadowed during undergrad are better informed about the career, less likely to burn out, or more decisive about specialty choice? Does research show that students who did certain types of activities during college fare better as medical students or physicians? etc.

Limit the amount of schools that a student can apply to, thereby eliminating the current game that encourages wasteful, fear-driven spending and a shotgun approach. Decrease secondary fees. Require schools to waive secondary fees for FAP applicants.

Expand the FAP to include reasonable travel costs.
 
I think every school could have increased our unstructured time with current students. I got the best sense of schools from those experiences. And the interviewees could've tried harder to keep it unstructured... Harvard threw a pizza party the night before interviews. I brought a six pack. My host split it with me, but the other interviewees looked at me like I was crazy. Oh well, I got accepted!
 
NickNaylor said:
While I actually I agree with you, I'm not so sure it's necessarily a negative thing. For example, I probably wouldn't have done most of the things in undergrad that I did if I didn't feel like it would be a good experience to list on my app. I was that guy. The thing is, though, that once I got started with those experiences, I really did grow to love them. They were very formative and insightful, and I'm extremely grateful to have had them. I'm just not the kind of person that goes for joining random groups and doing things. It's just not how I would naturally spend my time - and in medical school that has borne out, as I'm one of the guys that's halfway involved with one organization vs. the same pool of people that are seemingly on every "important" group or committee. But I don't think that reality makes my experience any less genuine.

But perhaps I'm off base.
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I agree with you, and to echo what you're saying I also found to love many of the things I became involved as an undergrad in that were "cookie cutter" type of things.

In addition, even if some people do things just to fill in an application, I would hope that the different experiences would make them a more well-rounded person and in that sense positively contribute.
 
Having to pay for interview travel costs. I know there are far more medical school interviewees compared to graduate school interviewees and it's not exactly feasible for schools to pay for them, but man, those costs can rack up. I squeaked by with my savings and credit cards, but I can see them becoming a serious handicap for borderline or high-aiming applicants who aren't financially able to convert all their invitations into interviews. Prohibitive interviewing costs probably limits the effectiveness of FAP to a certain extent.
 
I always thought it was insulting that schools expect you to pay hundreds of dollars to visit/interview, and then some of them have post-interview acceptance rates of like 20%. If you're paying to visit then IMO they owe you the courtesy of screening a little more thoroughly ahead of time. :shrug:
 
They could cut down on the:

1- "We are so collaborative. We share everything. There is too much help." student panel time. I don't think most people buy it
2- "Our school is above avg on everything"

Improve upon:
3- Better tours (I'm looking at you vanderbilt!!)
4- No food coma interviews
 
(1) My favorite interview tour was Pitt. That's because they let me intubate one of the dummies! Half the schools would not even show us their dummies; the other half only let is look at them---"NO TOUCHING!"
images


(2) I never get tired of seeing the anatomy labs. Huge disappointment when the school forbids us to see it on the tour.

(3) Protein for the breakfast on interview day. Peanut butter, eggs, sausage would be AWESOME.

(4) MMI everywhere
 
mcloaf said:
I always thought it was insulting that schools expect you to pay hundreds of dollars to visit/interview, and then some of them have post-interview acceptance rates of like 20%. If you're paying to visit then IMO they owe you the courtesy of screening a little more thoroughly ahead of time. :shrug:
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Haha, I agree with the sentiment, but looking at it on the flip side of things I think it makes sense from the administrative perspective. Plenty of people who look great on paper wind up being duds in interviews :\
 
No more silent rejections.

Admissions committees have a public schedule on when they meet, and if your application is reviewed you are given a status update with a relative rating on your standing if not accepted or rejected. It doesn't have to be a perfect ranking, but just a general category like " Deferred-High tier" or "Deferred-low tier/likely waitlist." Just something to provide a little bit of info on where you stand at the school instead of just complete silence most of the time.
 
Closed file interviews.
I spent alot of time working on those essays, and I find it a little insulting that come interview day the best my interviewer can do is come up with superficial "Why our school" or "Why medicine" (which were already discussed at length in the essays), as opposed to "So BaconShrimps, I noticed that you mentioned your interest in our Diabetes Outreach program. Can you tell me a little more about your connection or interest in diabetes?"
 
pyrrion89 said:
(1) My favorite interview tour was Pitt. That's because they let me intubate one of the dummies! Half the schools would not even show us their dummies; the other half only let is look at them---"NO TOUCHING!"
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Seriously, wtf is with that? Do all the schools think that we idiotic premeds will somehow break their nifty contraptions?

And not even allowing you to WALK THROUGH the anatomy labs? Oh, sorry. I forgot we might break the sterile field. 🙄
 
Spinach Dip said:
Seriously, wtf is with that? Do all the schools think that we idiotic premeds will somehow break their nifty contraptions?
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Probably because they are expensive and you do need to be trained on it. I don't think it's unreasonable to not be allowed to touch the Harveys, for example.
 
But really, the one thing I'd change is some of the absurd requirements which have been added on in recent years.

"Okay, Mr Jones, I see you have a 38/3.6, an MS in Biology, speak three languages, and have worked in a research lab for the past two years. Unfortunately, your extra curriculars lack a display of appropriate humanism and altruism. We had to reject you because we can't have mindless robots performing medicine, can we? That would be just plain inhumane!"
 
Spinach Dip said:
And not even allowing you to WALK THROUGH the anatomy labs? Oh, sorry. I forgot we might break the sterile field. 🙄
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There was one school where we purposely not shown the anatomy lab. The way one student guide explained the decision (unsure if it was the school's decision or hers) was that it would be considered disrespectful to the cadavers. She said that the cadavers were donated for the medical students' education, not to be used as a selling point of the school to applicants. If dissections are going on during the time of the tour, I can understand and respect this logic.
 
snowflakes said:
There was one school where we purposely not shown the anatomy lab. The way one student guide explained the decision (unsure if it was the school's decision or hers) was that it would be considered disrespectful to the cadavers. She said that the cadavers were donated for the medical students' education, not to be used as a selling point of the school to applicants. If dissections are going on during the time of the tour, I can understand and respect this logic.
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I don't think there is any medical school that exposes cadavers. You just enter the area.
 
AlbinoHawk DO said:
I don't think there is any medical school that exposes cadavers. You just enter the area.
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For most schools I interviewed at, we walked through the anatomy lab during the tour regardless of what was going on there at the time. I saw exposed cadavers being dissected during multiple tours.
 
baconshrimps said:
Closed file interviews.
I spent alot of time working on those essays, and I find it a little insulting that come interview day the best my interviewer can do is come up with superficial "Why our school" or "Why medicine" (which were already discussed at length in the essays), as opposed to "So BaconShrimps, I noticed that you mentioned your interest in our Diabetes Outreach program. Can you tell me a little more about your connection or interest in diabetes?"
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To expand on this, I had a couple interviews were it was basically a closed file interview because the interviewers hadn't bothered to read my application.

Instead, they read it in front of me at the interview, asking questions like: "so what's this activity about" or "what's this class about" instead of asking questions about my interests that you could discern from reading my application. When you're asking me to expand on that one Mythology class I took 4 years ago instead of the plethora of electives I took related to health policy/public health, I can't exactly give the most thoughtful answer can I...
 
I second more 1) unstructured time with students and 2) more interesting tours.

1) So many people comment on the fit of a school, and while curriculum, grading, etc can be indicators, a lot of it is just feel from the students. I know I based decisions off of essentially an hour with students, so I can only imagine that a better "fit" picture could be painted with more time than that.

2) For example, I know some of you seemed to like looking at the anatomy labs at every school, but I thought they generally were all the same. Many claim to have "awesome" ventilation, be conducive to collaborating, etc, but they're really quite similar (in my experience). Unless you're at a place like Sinai where the lab gives a nice view or the Cleveland Clinic where "fresh" cadavers are used so there actually is something unique about it all, I honestly don't care what one room looks like.

A bonus point: I also agree those financial aid talks were the worst. It's as if every school has a script to go off and you sit through the same thing at every interview. Even if that's because the financial aid process is the financial aid process, I still had trouble sitting still after multiple listens. Schools need to add their own flare to it, maybe some improv, for the future 🙂
 
NewYorker9 said:
I would've liked it if I had gotten more food on interview days. I'm not trying to troll, I just really like food.
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Oh my god. I was actually curious who would first say better/more food in this thread. (At one school, I drove 8 hours just to get to that school and I was given a sandwich that literally just has some tuna and a huge lettuce. Sigh...)


If you are a guy, we would have been great friends. If you are a girl, we still would have been great friends.


Chir0nex said:
No more silent rejections.

Admissions committees have a public schedule on when they meet, and if your application is reviewed you are given a status update with a relative rating on your standing if not accepted or rejected. It doesn't have to be a perfect ranking, but just a general category like " Deferred-High tier" or "Deferred-low tier/likely waitlist." Just something to provide a little bit of info on where you stand at the school instead of just complete silence most of the time.
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If all schools were like Mayo, I am okay with that. I appreciated their quick and cut-to-the-chase decisions and notifications.




Underu said:
Medical schools really need to try to match you with an interviewer who actually has interest in the same things you do. I hate talking with someone who clearly has no idea what my research was about and cannot provide useful information about the school for me. For example:

Interviewer: Have you worked with the medically underserved? Done outreach in urban communities?
Me: No, most of my clinical exposure were in in-patient settings.
Interviewer: Hm. Any questions for me?
Me: I am interested in cancer research, can you tell me more about XYZ summer fellowship? Or perhaps any other clinical or translational research opportunities here?
Interviewer: I don't know, I am a psychiatrist. I know we have a cancer center.
Me: Great, thanks.
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My best interviews were not necessarily when I had great interview skills, but when I talked to interviewers who actually were interested in my wide range of ECs and appreciated my decisions based on experiences.

For example, one of reasons why I replied to "why your major?" as "I chose my major because my high school teacher told me to" is very clear and understandable as a whole in my application, and I was probably more honest than I should have been. But these interviewers actually understood my background and that they did not judge me. Also, my addiction to computer games was a huge part of my life, but only one interviewer cared to ask, "So what kind of games did you play? What does that show about you?"


My worst interviews, on the other hand, were when interviewers looked at me like just another applicant and did not give any feedback on anything. It's hard to establish that warm, fuzzy chemistry sometimes.
 
1. Cost: As some already mentioned, applying is very expensive and even with FAP you sometimes have to fly across the country to just be rejected in the end.

2: Transparency: I think AdComs could be much more transparent about their process and where you stand during admission season. One school I applied to did a very good job at that and some others not so much

3: Space: Honestly, it wouldn't hurt some of these schools to admit 20 more people or so, I don't think that would detract too much from the intimacy that you gain from a small class. Residency spaces are a different story, but yes, obviously more of those too
 
I would vote that the length of the personal statement should be a "recommended length" rather than a "required" length. That being said, the questions of, "Was this topic and scope a good choice for a personal statement?," and "Was the length appropriate for the content?" are fair reasons IMO to add/subtract points.
 
Newguy92 said:
1. Cost: As some already mentioned, applying is very expensive and even with FAP you sometimes have to fly across the country to just be rejected in the end.

2: Transparency: I think AdComs could be much more transparent about their process and where you stand during admission season. One school I applied to did a very good job at that and some others not so much

3: Space: Honestly, it wouldn't hurt some of these schools to admit 20 more people or so, I don't think that would detract too much from the intimacy that you gain from a small class. Residency spaces are a different story, but yes, obviously more of those too
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Yeah, cost absolutely excludes and delays people from going to medical school. Sadly, I think that it (the cost) eliminates most of a class of people who have first-hand knowledge of problems impacting the health of many kinds of poor people. The result is that there are classes of people who's doctors don't really "get" them and don't have the background necessary to appreciate their full set of circumstances. I have the homeless in mind primarily, but not exclusively.

It's great that their are programs in place to help with this. - I don't think any go far enough to SOLVE the problem.
 
Last edited:
Seriously. You work hard on your ECs/applications- the least they could do was read 'em.

It's fine not to remember every detail (who would?), but at least have a superficial understanding of an applicants story.

I don't have thin-skin or anything, but once an interviewer asked me if I had any experience in research. I was like, yeah, 10 of my ECs were all research... I'm a non-trad postdoc. It's all I've done for the past decade.

baconshrimps said:
Closed file interviews.
I spent alot of time working on those essays, and I find it a little insulting that come interview day the best my interviewer can do is come up with superficial "Why our school" or "Why medicine" (which were already discussed at length in the essays), as opposed to "So BaconShrimps, I noticed that you mentioned your interest in our Diabetes Outreach program. Can you tell me a little more about your connection or interest in diabetes?"
Click to expand...
 
Sweet troll bro


masaraksh said:
Browsed through this thread to see how many posts before URM designation was brought up as the 'big flaw in med admissions' (lol). My line was <10 posts. But still not brought up....

What happened??? I thought this was SDN!?
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1) paying for interviews is a B. Going to an interview and the being rejected for your MCAT score is criminal. If you are only going to accept 20% of your interviewees at least do Skype interviews or something.

2) MOAR FOOD

3) either do MMI or open file. None of this closed filed nonsense. I worked my butt off on those applications, you could at least read them.

4) time to meet with students before your interview. I think this would actually help you get a feel of the school.
 
the URM stuff is complete BS, or the benefits they get when applying to medical schools should also be given to students of other ethnic group who grew up within a low income family
 
Typical call to admissions office, any time between September-February:

Me: Hi, I know I've been rejected, but I'm wondering if it is at all possible to ask what can be improved upon, if I were to reapply? Can I schedule an appointment to receive some guidance, since you guys knew what I might have been missing?
1. Them: Sorry, we do not do this. Seek help elsewhere. Goodbye.
2. Them: Sorry, we do not do this until the end of our season, in May or June. Call back then. Goodbye.
Me (in response to 2.): Umm, but if we talk in May/June, I won't really have time to fix my application at all before next cycle?
 
fw5tape6kq said:
Clearly, the system in place to select doctors is not perfect. Some people are accepted who shouldn't be, while others are unnecessarily excluded. If you had your way, what would you change about the medical school admissions process?
Click to expand...

Schools would take into account the rigor of the courses taken, the student's major(s), and the student's institution a lot more. It makes no sense that honors courses and more rigorous courses aren't weighed accordingly. In many instances, a B+ in an honors class might easily translated into an A in non-honors classes, but medical schools don't recognize this.
 
touchpause13 said:
1) paying for interviews is a B. Going to an interview and the being rejected for your MCAT score is criminal. If you are only going to accept 20% of your interviewees at least do Skype interviews or something.

2) MOAR FOOD

3) either do MMI or open file. None of this closed filed nonsense. I worked my butt off on those applications, you could at least read them.

4) time to meet with students before your interview. I think this would actually help you get a feel of the school.
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I like #1 and #3. I don't think #4 would necessarily be helpful as the students want to leave a good impression, so I don't think you ever get a true feel for the school when you come during the preordained interview/visitation times. Medical schools should allow you to visit sporadically through the year. Go around exam time and see how the campus atmosphere is.
 
That's a good point as well.
 
AlbinoHawk DO said:
I don't think there is any medical school that exposes cadavers. You just enter the area.
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I held a heart, and the left lung. Tried not to get any cadaver juice on my new suit.
 
Spinach Dip said:
Seriously, wtf is with that? Do all the schools think that we idiotic premeds will somehow break their nifty contraptions?

And not even allowing you to WALK THROUGH the anatomy labs? Oh, sorry. I forgot we might break the sterile field. 🙄
Click to expand...

It's technically against HIPAA for non-students to be in there. But tours are allowed to go through ours except on days where they're doing the more...gruesome...procedures.

And honestly, the anatomy lab isn't a big deal. When I was interviewing, I thought the same thing, that I was disappointed in schools that didn't show the anatomy lab. But we spent 7 weeks in the lab at the beginning of 1st year and never set foot in it again, so it's not really a priority in choosing a school.
 
Ismet said:
It's technically against HIPAA for non-students to be in there. But tours are allowed to go through ours except on days where they're doing the more...gruesome...procedures.

And honestly, the anatomy lab isn't a big deal. When I was interviewing, I thought the same thing, that I was disappointed in schools that didn't show the anatomy lab. But we spent 7 weeks in the lab at the beginning of 1st year and never set foot in it again, so it's not really a priority in choosing a school.
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I was under the impression that the poster you quoted was referring to cadavers and one specifically designated for use in an academic environment. If so, why would HIPAA apply? Even if HIPAA did apply, wouldn't there be waiver issues that would preclude litigation against the school?
 
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