What should I do at this point? Should I start withdrawing?

[nolee]

---

Members don't see this ad.

Hi all! I somehow managed to squeeze into one of my top choices (*passes out*) and am currently also holding acceptances at a couple of other schools. Should I start withdrawing at this point? The reason why I'm asking is because I would really like for as many of my fellow applicants as possible to get into med school this cycle, and maybe one of these places is their dream school! However, I'm not sure it would make a difference at this point, since it's pretty close to the end of interviews for most schools. Would my withdrawal open up another interview acceptance spot? Or should I wait until April to start withdrawing (after First Look)?

 

[Remy LeBeau]

Would you attend any of those other schools over your top choice if the price was right? If so, wait until financial aid packages are released to start withdrawing. If you would attend your top choice no matter what the financial incentives at other schools might be, then go ahead and begin withdrawing.

 

[Goro]

Yes.


Would my withdrawal open up another interview acceptance spot?

 

[nolee]

Thank you so much to both of you -- that really helps me out. Will definitely run through my options tonight and try to cut out a few of them. Thank you again!!

 

[edgerock24]

I love these pseudo-modest posts, secretly bragging about getting into med school. Everybody knows you just made this thread simply to state to everybody that you not only got into your top choice, but to several other schools. Congrats. Not fooling anybody tho.

 

[Espadaleader]

You should wait until after second look. Especially if most of your schools are viable.

 

[LizzyM]

Many schools make offers to more than twice as many applicants as they can accommodate. You and 100+ others may have to withdraw before someone on the waitlist gets the nod. Still, if you've made up your mind, it is thoughtful of you to withdraw. Yet, how can you make up your mind without a clear idea of the financial aid packages that will come your way. And note, you may get more generous offers if a school sees that you currently hold several offers.

 

[IlDestriero]

It is silly to give up acceptances until you get the financial aid packages unless you would not attend them even if they gave you a full scholarship. I wasn't the best candidate at my school, but they gave me scholarship money anyway. You never know what they have to offer.

 

[Pacna]

Be careful not to withdraw from the school you got accepted to!

 

[Amygdarya]

Many schools make offers to more than twice as many applicants as they can accommodate. You and 100+ others may have to withdraw before someone on the waitlist gets the nod.

This is so so so so sad...

 

[LizzyM]

This is so so so so sad...

What is sad about it? Should we put dozenss more on the waitlist and only make as many offers as we have seats? Would you rather be on the waitlist and eventually get an offer or would you rather get an offer straight away?

 

[jeghaber]

What is sad about it? Should we put dozenss more on the waitlist and only make as many offers as we have seats? Would you rather be on the waitlist and eventually get an offer or would you rather get an offer straight away?

I know the answer to the last question, but only if I take it out of context 😛

 

[LizzyM]

I know the answer to the last question, but only if I take it out of context 😛

Since we're going in that direction... out of context:

He made her an offer, she honored his offer and all night long he was on her and off her. 😉

 

[Amygdarya]

What is sad about it? Should we put dozenss more on the waitlist and only make as many offers as we have seats? Would you rather be on the waitlist and eventually get an offer or would you rather get an offer straight away?

Well, I'm certainly not in a position to say what adcoms should do, it was just my (as I now understand, mistaken) understanding that schools offered acceptances up to the number of seats in the class. It's sad for me, as someone who is wait listed at her top choice, to find out that it'll take 100+ and not, say, 10+ acceptees to withdraw before I am even considered again. But I understand that it doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things, because, whether a school accepts 100+ or 200+ people first, I'll still be more than 200+ people "deep"... and this is sad by itself 😀
I think fellow wait listers may share this sentiment.

 

[Goro]

It can't be first come, first serve because multiple people are applying to multiple schools.... like, well, you have done.

Well, I'm certainly not in a position to say what adcoms should do, it was just my (as I now understand, mistaken) understanding that schools offered acceptances up to the number of seats in the class. It's sad for me, as someone who is wait listed at her top choice, to find out that it'll take 100+ and not, say, 10+ acceptees to withdraw before I am even considered again. But I understand that it doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things, because, whether a school accepts 100+ or 200+ people first, I'll still be more than 200+ people "deep"... and this is sad by itself 😀
I think fellow wait listers may share this sentiment.

 

[Amygdarya]

It can't be first come, first serve because multiple people are applying to multiple schools.... like, well, you have done.

This is kind of a chicken and an egg situation: people wouldn't apply to as many schools as they do now if they were more confident about their chances (I most certainly wouldn't apply to the 20 schools I did - who wants to spend all the money?), but, of course, part of the reason it's so hard to get into any individual school is because so many people apply to each school.

I realize that getting into any medical school is a privilege nobody is entitled to. Still, there is something deeply dissatisfying about the process where some people can sit for months on 10+ acceptances while others hang in the wait list limbo in hopes of a single acceptance. One can argue that some applicants are just better than others, which is, of course, true. But, barring a few all-around stars and a few painfully socially inept people, it seems to me that applicants invited to interviews are similarly strong for each individual school. So, while preinterview selection kind of makes sense to me (objective/"objective" factors like stats, specific ECs, demographics, geography, personal story etc. can be used to evaluate an applicant for each school), the quality of interviewed applicants is almost uniformly strong (with the exceptions mentioned earlier), so that it's a (mighty frustrating) mystery how postinterview decisions are made. It seems to me that adcoms might as well throw darts at a board with interviewee names, it wouldn't make a difference: schools would still get strong classes because they already selected strong applicants to interview, and to applicants admissions decisions would seem just as random as they do now. In a way, I sympathize with adcoms: how do you really choose among so many strong applicants? - but I sympathize even more with my own strong application, decent interviews and lackluster postinterview results. Considering how many strong applicants there are to each school, at this point I realize that whichever medical school(s) will ultimately accept me will have more to do with luck than with my personal achievements.

 

[ChemEngMD]

This is kind of a chicken and an egg situation: people wouldn't apply to as many schools as they do now if they were more confident about their chances (I most certainly wouldn't apply to the 20 schools I did - who wants to spend all the money?), but, of course, part of the reason it's so hard to get into any individual school is because so many people apply to each school.

I realize that getting into any medical school is a privilege nobody is entitled to. Still, there is something deeply dissatisfying about the process where some people can sit for months on 10+ acceptances while others hang in the wait list limbo in hopes of a single acceptance. One can argue that some applicants are just better than others, which is, of course, true. But, barring a few all-around stars and a few painfully socially inept people, it seems to me that applicants invited to interviews are similarly strong for each individual school. So, while preinterview selection kind of makes sense to me (objective/"objective" factors like stats, specific ECs, demographics, geography, personal story etc. can be used to evaluate an applicant for each school), the quality of interviewed applicants is almost uniformly strong (with the exceptions mentioned earlier), so that it's a (mighty frustrating) mystery how postinterview decisions are made. It seems to me that adcoms might as well throw darts at a board with interviewee names, it wouldn't make a difference: schools would still get strong classes because they already selected strong applicants to interview, and to applicants admissions decisions would seem just as random as they do now. In a way, I sympathize with adcoms: how do you really choose among so many strong applicants? - but I sympathize even more with my own strong application, decent interviews and lackluster postinterview results. Considering how many strong applicants there are to each school, at this point I realize that whichever medical school(s) will ultimately accept me will have more to do with luck than with my personal achievements.

I think schools want a well-rounded class. Yes, all of the candidates interviewed are "strong", but likely everyone is strong in their own way.

You wouldn't want to fill your class with research strong applicants and you wouldn't want to fill it with humanitarian/service strong applicants, at the same time you wouldn't want to fill it with only academic all-stars or people with an extensive leadership background.

I think that what it comes down to at a lot of schools is that they are expecting certain personality and background types to fill a niche in the class. If they want 10% of their class to have an extensive research background, then applicants with that background will be fighting one another for those spots.

I think that it is a much more careful process in order to find the right balance of people in a class. Nobody wants to be in a class with all 22 year old traditional, academic/traditional undergrad EC classmates...and nobody wants the inverse of that either.

Know what I mean?

 

[histidine]

Well, I'm certainly not in a position to say what adcoms should do, it was just my (as I now understand, mistaken) understanding that schools offered acceptances up to the number of seats in the class. It's sad for me, as someone who is wait listed at her top choice, to find out that it'll take 100+ and not, say, 10+ acceptees to withdraw before I am even considered again. But I understand that it doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things, because, whether a school accepts 100+ or 200+ people first, I'll still be more than 200+ people "deep"... and this is sad by itself 😀
I think fellow wait listers may share this sentiment.

I actually think it's better the opposite way, like what U Michigan does. They look at their historical matriculation/acceptance rates and over-accept by the perfect amount so that, on average, they hit their class size goal. Everyone who is accepted gets a decision within a month of interviewing. They haven't gone to their waitlist in 4 years, so you know with certainty that there is very, very little hope if waitlisted. Other schools, like SUNY Buffalo, only accept to their class size. This means that the waitlist movement is huge (they've accepted over half their waitlist in the past), but most people won't find out until after May 15th.

 

[Goro]

It's not luck that's driving the process, it's YOU. When you get accepted or waitlisted, it's because there's something about you in your packet or your interview that drove the Adcom's decision. The same thing applies for the II decision process.




Considering how many strong applicants there are to each school, at this point I realize that whichever medical school(s) will ultimately accept me will have more to do with luck than with my personal achievements.[/quote]

 

[Amygdarya]

I think schools want a well-rounded class. Yes, all of the candidates interviewed are "strong", but likely everyone is strong in their own way.

You wouldn't want to fill your class with research strong applicants and you wouldn't want to fill it with humanitarian/service strong applicants, at the same time you wouldn't want to fill it with only academic all-stars or people with an extensive leadership background.

I think that what it comes down to at a lot of schools is that they are expecting certain personality and background types to fill a niche in the class. If they want 10% of their class to have an extensive research background, then applicants with that background will be fighting one another for those spots.

I think that it is a much more careful process in order to find the right balance of people in a class. Nobody wants to be in a class with all 22 year old traditional, academic/traditional undergrad EC classmates...and nobody wants the inverse of that either.

Know what I mean?

What you're saying makes sense and, in fact, does not contradict to what I was saying because selecting a "well-rounded"/"diverse" etc. class is precisely one of the sources of randomness and subjectivity in the medical school admissions process. If a school wants to admit someone who plays a string instrument and has two applicants similar in academics/ECs etc., one of whom plays banjo and another classical guitar, which one does it accept? Of course, no two applicants are identical except for one selection factor, but my point is, even selecting a "well-rounded" class from, say, 800 qualified applicants, who were interviewed and did not turn out to be sociopaths, will likely result in wait listing/rejecting applicants who are just as "diverse" and "well-rounded" as those accepted except for some intangible - i.e. subjective and random - factors. There are just too many strong - and this includes diverse and well-rounded - applicants, so choosing between them is like splitting hair (with exceptions for obvious stars and failures); I was not kidding when I said I sympathize with adcoms who have to make these decisions 🙂

I actually think it's better the opposite way, like what U Michigan does. They look at their historical matriculation/acceptance rates and over-accept by the perfect amount so that, on average, they hit their class size goal. Everyone who is accepted gets a decision within a month of interviewing. They haven't gone to their waitlist in 4 years, so you know with certainty that there is very, very little hope if waitlisted. Other schools, like SUNY Buffalo, only accept to their class size. This means that the waitlist movement is huge (they've accepted over half their waitlist in the past), but most people won't find out until after May 15th.

Oh, if only all adcoms were as transparent and efficient as U Michigan!
But you bring up another important point: schools differ in the number of initial acceptances they extend and in their wait list movements.

It's not luck that's driving the process, it's YOU. When you get accepted or waitlisted, it's because there's something about you in your packet or your interview that drove the Adcom's decision. The same thing applies for the II decision process.

I knew it would come to this 😀 I'm doing fine, thank you; there are no gaping deficiencies or red flags in my application or interviews, which is evidenced by multiple interview invitations to truly great schools and one acceptance (so far). So I'm not simply whining here because I didn't get accepted where I wanted, but I'm also acknowledging that my acceptance was a matter of luck, too - because I'm sure there are applicants who are just as qualified (or more!) as I am to attend that school but who didn't get accepted.
Of course, as an adcom, you will defend the process as perfectly rational, but there is a great deal of randomness and subjectivity in it nonetheless, at least part of which is described in ChemEngMD's message above that you approved 🙂

 

[ChemEngMD]

What you're saying makes sense and, in fact, does not contradict to what I was saying because selecting a "well-rounded"/"diverse" etc. class is precisely one of the sources of randomness and subjectivity in the medical school admissions process. If a school wants to admit someone who plays a string instrument and has two applicants similar in academics/ECs etc., one of whom plays banjo and another classical guitar, which one does it accept? Of course, no two applicants are identical except for one selection factor, but my point is, even selecting a "well-rounded" class from, say, 800 qualified applicants, who were interviewed and did not turn out to be sociopaths, will likely result in wait listing/rejecting applicants who are just as "diverse" and "well-rounded" as those accepted except for some intangible - i.e. subjective and random - factors. There are just too many strong - and this includes diverse and well-rounded - applicants, so choosing between them is like splitting hair (with exceptions for obvious stars and failures); I was not kidding when I said I sympathize with adcoms who have to make these decisions 🙂

I am not trying to pick a fight with you or anything haha, I just believe it isn't that random.

If they are categorizing people into different categories like: Research strong, Clinical strong, Non-traditional job experience strong, Humanitarian/Service strong, Community leadership strong, Academic All-Star (4.0/40 types), etc. Then this narrows down the people into smaller pools.

If your goal is to pick 20 people from each of those categories then you simply start looking at who is the most well-rounded, fits the school's mission, and aced their interviews. I feel that by narrowing people into these categories it'd be easier to stratify them out from one another than you may think.

 

[Amygdarya]

I am not trying to pick a fight with you or anything

I never thought that 🙂 And I'm not trying to pick a fight with you either, but I do believe that there is an excess of qualified applicants even if you divide them into these categories.
I know examples of people having very similar applications in terms of stats, background, demographics, "strength category" and "diversity factors", one of which got accepted to some schools and not others, and vice versa. Of course, one could say that the schools that accepted one applicant and not the other just saw something in him/her that they wanted specifically, but it's near impossible to figure out what exactly that was because, as I was saying, the applications were *very* similar overall. The adcoms had to split hair here, and hair split they did.

 

[Solaire]

Congratulations on your acceptances OP! It's super cool that you care about your fellow applicants to consider withdrawing your acceptances and seek advice here! 🙂

In my humble opinion, if money isn't a factor, just commit to your dream school. Personally, I feel like (unless you're a superstar or looking for a research scholarship), you won't be getting any special financial package anyways.