What's *your* %OOS accept cutoff?

[CSnowFoxD]

When you decided on which schools to apply to, what % acceptances, interviews, whatever did you consider good enough that you thought you had a chance? I know this is pretty arbitrarily and it's going to be different for everyone based on their circumstances, but I just wanted to see what you guys consider "no way in hell" i.e. 1% OOS interviews or "I'm going to apply there" and what other factors made that 1% worth applying to or that [insert large number here] not worth applying to.
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Thanks a million!

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[Isoprop]

this will depend on your stats. a 3.95/42T who saved babies and published 10 peer reviewed journals will have a decent chance at being the 1% OOS.

the quick and dirty way: if your GPA and MCAT is higher than the OOS school's averages, then you probably have a good chance at an interview/acceptance if at least 1/4 of their class is OOS. (just my personal take on it YMMV, other opinions are welcome).

 

[flip26]

Quick and dirty: if OOS acceptances are less than 10 percent of the class, I figure it is a waste of time and money.

It is pretty easy to cut down the 125 or so allo schools to a potential list of around 50 or so schools. Then it gets a little tougher, but I have a working list of around 30 schools I am interested in, some clearly more than others.

I would love to apply to only 10 to 15 schools, but 20 may end up being the number.

 

[supertrooper66]

keep in mind the difference between private and public OOS. the private schools that you are OOS for usually do not screw you for being OOS. for example, tulane is a private school in lousiana. i'm OOS but they do not give preference to lousiana residents. so in these cases, don't worry about being OOS. Rush, for example, tho, is in illionois, is private, but only interview 2.5% of their OOS applicants. i stayed away from Rush.

i'm applying this year, too, so obviously i can't prove this strategy is valid yet. that's what i'm going by as of now, tho. any other suggestions?

 

[Raryn]

I cut off all of the schools who had less than 50% of their class OOS. Then I got rid of all of the ones that were in places I would really rather not live, and I got rid of the best of the best top tier schools that are damn near impossible to get in to. Finally, I relatively arbitrarily got rid of a few schools based on personal preference/what I've heard of them. Got my list of MD schools down from 126 to 31 that way, and I still might get rid of one or two.

 

[Martin Prince]

I applied to 16 schools this year and my ONLY acceptance came from an OOS school. At the time I thought I was throwing money away and now I'm so thankful because that $100 kept me from having to apply again. If you can get an interview spot, you'll have a shot just about anywhere. I clicked really well with my interviewers and had an acceptance within a week.

If you are going to apply OOS, make sure they will consider OOS applicants. Then make sure you pick a program where you can make a compelling case that you are the ideal fit with their specific mission statement. I really pushed the drama in my secondary applications with this school.

That being said, the 3 other OOS schools never even gave me a secondary.

 

[Non-TradTulsa]

You might want to look at how the out-of-state admission process actually works at a particular school. At my state allopathic school, legally they can take up to 10% OOS (or maybe it's even 20% - I forget).

That's the law. In actual practice, however, if you don't have ties to the state (spent part of your growing-up years here and then moved away... still have family living here... something like that), your chances of getting in are just about nil - regardless of MCAT score or GPA. Oklahoma has spent horrendous amounts of money building two decent medical schools because we grow the vast majority of our own doctors. If you have no ties to the state whatsoever, they know that the chances you'll stay are about nil (whereas, in-staters stay at about a 50% rate).

My class of 162 has no more than 5 or 6 out-of-staters, and every one of those has considerable ties to the state - like graduating from high school in Oklahoma before moving away - things like that.

 

[NeuroChaos]

Sorry to sound like an idiot. What in the world is OOS? I am not applying this cycle so I donot know.

 

[Dendrite]

Sorry to sound like an idiot. What in the world is OOS? I am not applying this cycle so I donot know.

OOS = Out Of State

And FYI, OOP = Out of Province for Canadian schools

 

[flip26]

You might want to look at how the out-of-state admission process actually works at a particular school. At my state allopathic school, legally they can take up to 10% OOS (or maybe it's even 20% - I forget).

That's the law. In actual practice, however, if you don't have ties to the state (spent part of your growing-up years here and then moved away... still have family living here... something like that), your chances of getting in are just about nil - regardless of MCAT score or GPA. Oklahoma has spent horrendous amounts of money building two decent medical schools because we grow the vast majority of our own doctors. If you have no ties to the state whatsoever, they know that the chances you'll stay are about nil (whereas, in-staters stay at about a 50% rate).

My class of 162 has no more than 5 or 6 out-of-staters, and every one of those has considerable ties to the state - like graduating from high school in Oklahoma before moving away - things like that.

Good point, and some states have special arrangements with neighboring states to accept a certain number of applicants, so their OOS admit numbers may not be relevant to your situation.

While most private schools do not seem to have any explicit instate preferential treatment, some of them do seem to favor applicants from their region / neighboring states...somebody who knows more about it than I do can explain it, but Chicago area schools like Rush and RFU seem to operate this way...and some (many?) private med schools get some state funding and they are required to favor instate applicants to some extent - Miami Miller comes to mind in this regard.

Most applicants who are looking at applying broadly are looking at the exact same set of around 40 or so schools - mostly privates, with a healthy number of state schools known for taking OOS applicants in decent numbers.

 

[CSnowFoxD]

Thanks guys! Time to mull over some more school stats, woohoo...