Why are med school rejections not more transparent

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el799

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Why don’t Rejection’s come with your files notes attached to them? I feel like this would
1. Get rid of any shady behind the scene things that may be going on (prob very rare but they have to happen?)
2. Help failed applicants know what they have to do if they wish to re-apply in the future.


Thoughts?
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Schools get at least 5k applicants. It would be too time consuming to give feedback to each one of them.


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el799 said:
Why don’t Rejection’s come with your files notes attached to them? I feel like this would
1. Get rid of any shady behind the scene things that may be going on (prob very rare but they have to happen?)
2. Help failed applicants know what they have to do if they wish to re-apply in the future.


Thoughts?
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My school matriculates approximately 1.5% of our applicants each year. There's no way we could send the other 9,850 people individualized feedback.
 
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There is just too much risk and no benefit for the schools to share notes with applicants. If the note says, "minimal patient exposure" (volunteered 2 hours wk for 30 wks) then the applicant may believe that getting another 60 hours of experience will do the trick if reapplying. However, along with the minimal patient exposure, which was enough to tip the applicant into the "no interview" pile, there may have been four other things that the reviewer just didn't bother to write down that would sink the application. Besides, by the time the applicant reapplies, the stakes may have been raised and 120 hours may be considered too little.
 
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el799 said:
Why don’t Rejection’s come with your files notes attached to them? I feel like this would
1. Get rid of any shady behind the scene things that may be going on (prob very rare but they have to happen?)
2. Help failed applicants know what they have to do if they wish to re-apply in the future.


Thoughts?
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It's not the med school's responsibility to provide feedback. It's incumbent upon the applicants to apply with the best possible app.

Kinda hard to do when you have people with 1000s of research hours, yet they can't lift a finger to view the Admissions webpages to see what the schools actually want.

We also can't tell people "You were scary" or "Your interview skills sucked".
 
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el799 said:
Why don’t Rejection’s come with your files notes attached to them? I feel like this would
1. Get rid of any shady behind the scene things that may be going on (prob very rare but they have to happen?)
2. Help failed applicants know what they have to do if they wish to re-apply in the future.


Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Because it's incredibly inefficient to provide personalized feedback to thousands of applicants who got rejected. And it also puts the school and adcoms in grave danger from vengeful and malicious applicants and their families/lawyers who could easily file lawsuits against the school for not interviewing or accepting them.
 
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Goro said:
It's not the med school's responsibility to provide feedback. It's incumbent upon the applicants to apply with the best possible app.

Kinda hard to do when you have people with 1000s of research hours, yet they can't lift a finger to view the Admissions webpages to see what the schools actually want.

We also can't tell people "You were scary" or "Your interview skills sucked".
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“You were scary”


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Happened upon this from the vet forums... do med schools not do file reviews when requested? I know that vet schools are pretty open and most (if not all?) offer file reviews for rejected applicants where someone from the admissions office will tell the applicant where their application was lacking and will also sometimes mention things about their app that don’t need to change when reapplying... like “your essays and LORs were solid, but your GPA held you back too much”
Didn’t realize this wasn’t something that allo schools do. It’s really nice and a LOT of vet applicants really rely on these to strengthen their reapplications.
 
grebes4lyfe said:
Happened upon this from the vet forums... do med schools not do file reviews when requested? I know that vet schools are pretty open and most (if not all?) offer file reviews for rejected applicants where someone from the admissions office will tell the applicant where their application was lacking and will also sometimes mention things about their app that don’t need to change when reapplying... like “your essays and LORs were solid, but your GPA held you back too much”
Didn’t realize this wasn’t something that allo schools do. It’s really nice and a LOT of vet applicants really rely on these to strengthen their reapplications.
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Some do, most don't.
 
I think "You were scary" or "Your interview skills sucked" is really good feedback.
 
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Goro said:
"You were scary"
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Please do this and report back. For science. I will also need a pic of the applicants face immediately after being told. Also for science.
 
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"A dead fish shook my hand and it made me cringe"
 
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"He was a complete sociopath and I felt that my life was in danger."
 
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I know a program that didn’t rank someone who was so off putting that female residents said they would not feel comfortable working overnights alone with them....not the kind of thing you write down in a status email
 
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sb247 said:
I know a program that didn’t rank someone who was so off putting that female residents said they would not feel comfortable working overnights alone with them....not the kind of thing you write down in a status email
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Damn now I’m curious what was so off putting about him.
 
You would think there aren’t many creepy people out there… Or at least they would hide it enough during the first impression… But no.
I am always reminded of this one date I had. I had never met the guy before. Not only was he late, which to me is a huge turn off, but by the end of the date he was telling me about his love for horror movies. This is how it went:
Me: “oh so you like horror movies? that’s cool. my best friend likes them too.”
Guy: “well not exactly. Horror movies these days could be better. like, why is it that the protagonist always survives? they should be also just as likely to die as the other characters. Also, there is never enough blood and gore. It’s too sanitized. We should see more organs and torture.”

(Fyi, he was a lawyer.)

Cue my exit, stage right.




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Personally I think if they offered you an interview and then rejected you they should provide at least a brief explanation, but you gotta ask.
 
latinclubimperatus said:
Personally I think if they offered you an interview and then rejected you they should provide at least a brief explanation, but you gotta ask.
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Personally I think if they offered an interview to you and then rejected you, it is reasonable come to one conclusion.
 
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OrthoTraumaMD said:
You would think there aren’t many creepy people out there… Or at least they would hide it enough during the first impression… But no.
I am always reminded of this one date I had. I had never met the guy before. Not only was he late, which to me is a huge turn off, but by the end of the date he was telling me about his love for horror movies. This is how it went:
Me: “oh so you like horror movies? that’s cool. my best friend likes them too.”
Guy: “well not exactly. Horror movies these days could be better. like, why is it that the protagonist always survives? they should be also just as likely to die as the other characters. Also, there is never enough blood and gore. It’s too sanitized. We should see more organs and torture.”

(Fyi, he was a lawyer.)

Cue my exit, stage right.




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As kind of a film buff, I agree with him on having the protagonist not always survive or at least be super ****ed up by the experience. Not enough films show that. The rest is super weird and even the part I agree with requires some explanation lol.
 
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Lawper said:
Because it's incredibly inefficient to provide personalized feedback to thousands of applicants who got rejected. And it also puts the school and adcoms in grave danger from vengeful and malicious applicants and their families/lawyers who could easily file lawsuits against the school for not interviewing or accepting them.
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What about times where lawsuits are probably needed (probably extremely rare but I’m looking @Illegal behind the scenes discrimination like UG Harvard admissions towards Asian Americans)
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
As kind of a film buff, I agree with him on having the protagonist not always survive or at least be super ****ed up by the experience. Not enough films show that. The rest is super weird and even the part I agree with requires some explanation lol.
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Hmmm...maybe you and @OrthoTraumaMD had a blind date and don't even know it. ;)
 
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OrthoTraumaMD said:
PLOT TWIST


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iu
 
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libertyyne said:
Personally I think if they offered an interview to you and then rejected you, it is reasonable come to one conclusion.
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And what is this reasonable conclusion, Oracle?
 
latinclubimperatus said:
And what is this reasonable conclusion, Oracle?
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Interview spots are limited, schools spend time and resources interviewing candidates. They dont do that to reject everyone, they would rather have a list full of people they can admit if someone who has been accepted doesnt matriculate. So what conclusion would you come to that a school that was interested enough to interview someone doesnt even place them on the waitlist?
 
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libertyyne said:
Interview spots are limited, schools spend time and resources interviewing candidates. They dont do that to reject everyone, they would rather have a list full of people they can admit if someone who has been accepted doesnt matriculate. So what conclusion would you come to that a school that was interested enough to interview someone doesnt even place them on the waitlist?
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Clearly the process is random and has nothing to do with the interviewing skills of the applicant.
 
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libertyyne said:
Interview spots are limited, schools spend time and resources interviewing candidates. They dont do that to reject everyone, they would rather have a list full of people they can admit if someone who has been accepted doesnt matriculate. So what conclusion would you come to that a school that was interested enough to interview someone doesnt even place them on the waitlist?
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Some schools with low post-II acceptance rates will outright reject many applicants though
 
altblue said:
Some schools with low post-II acceptance rates will outright reject many applicants though
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more often than not they will WL. There is no logical reason to put someone who almost meets your criteria in the reject pile since there tends to be movement off the accepted list. Low post II acceptance =/= low post II WL.
The only reason a hard R is handed out is because even if you were the last person on the WL they would not want you at the school.
 
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Goro said:
For lawyers it is.
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I doubt telling an applicant their interview skills sucked would hold any kind of weight in court. It's not discriminatory in any way and specifics need not be given. I've given applicants/classmates (while practicing for PE) that feedback before and they were happy they got it.

sb247 said:
I know a program that didn’t rank someone who was so off putting that female residents said they would not feel comfortable working overnights alone with them....not the kind of thing you write down in a status email
Click to expand...

Not specifically, but you can easily say that "our residents felt like there were applicants who were a better fit for our program" or even straight up saying their personality wasn't a good fit. I mean, that's the entire point of the interview.
 
libertyyne said:
Interview spots are limited, schools spend time and resources interviewing candidates. They dont do that to reject everyone, they would rather have a list full of people they can admit if someone who has been accepted doesnt matriculate. So what conclusion would you come to that a school that was interested enough to interview someone doesnt even place them on the waitlist?
Click to expand...
I don't know, and despite how smug you are neither do you. That's why I asked the schools for feedback.
 
latinclubimperatus said:
I don't know, and despite how smug you are neither do you. That's why I asked the schools for feedback.
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Yes, it is my smugness that contributed to the post interview rejection. I would suggest adding additional programs come ERAS time just in case my smugness is well founded.
 
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libertyyne said:
Yes, it is my smugness that contributed to the post interview rejection. I would suggest adding additional programs come ERAS time just in case my smugness is well founded.
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I think I'll use the post-interview feedback I got from schools to better my application.
 
Stagg737 said:
I doubt telling an applicant their interview skills sucked would hold any kind of weight in court. It's not discriminatory in any way and specifics need not be given.
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It's not that it has weight in court. It is because it becomes the basis for an expensive lawsuit (proving that the applicant was worse that others is quite painful).
 
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What incentive does a school have to inform a rejected applicant with undesirable personality traits that he has undesirable personality traits? And considering personality traits are largely immutable, why would it be in the rejected applicant's interest to know that he has undesirable personality traits?

Let's say that @Goro reaches out to me and tells me I came off as a creep and a sociopath during my interview at his school. What are the most likely outcomes of this interaction?

(1) I give up on my med school dream because of my personality problems, and I feel absolutely terrible about myself and become self-conscious and withdrawn.
(2) I re-apply but pretend to have a different personality at my interviews; the interviewers see through my acting, and I get rejected for the same reasons as before.
(3) I re-apply but pretend to have a different personality at my interviews; I manage to get accepted, and now a medical school has a creepy, sociopathic freak in its entering class.

All of these potential outcomes suck. It's probably better to just leave rejected applicants blissfully ignorant.
 
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Osminog said:
What incentive does a school have to inform a rejected applicant with undesirable personality traits that he has undesirable personality traits? And considering personality traits are largely immutable, why would it be in the rejected applicant's interest to know that he has undesirable personality traits?

Let's say that @Goro reaches out to me and tells me I came off as a creep and a sociopath during my interview at his school. What are the most likely outcomes of this interaction?

(1) I give up on my med school dream because of my personality problems, and I feel absolutely terrible about myself and become self-conscious and withdrawn.
(2) I re-apply but pretend to have a different personality at my interviews; the interviewers see through my acting, and I get rejected for the same reasons as before.
(3) I re-apply but pretend to have a different personality at my interviews; I manage to get accepted, and now a medical school has a creepy, sociopathic freak in its entering class.

All of these potential outcomes suck. It's probably better to just leave rejected applicants blissfully ignorant.
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social skills and appropriateness can be developed, or cultivated. It just takes a long time and a lot of coaching and a willingness to change. Its just the unwillingness to look inward is what holds people back or a lack of desire.
 
Osminog said:
What incentive does a school have to inform a rejected applicant with undesirable personality traits that he has undesirable personality traits? And considering personality traits are largely immutable, why would it be in the rejected applicant's interest to know that he has undesirable personality traits?

Let's say that @Goro reaches out to me and tells me I came off as a creep and a sociopath during my interview at his school. What are the most likely outcomes of this interaction?

(1) I give up on my med school dream because of my personality problems, and I feel absolutely terrible about myself and become self-conscious and withdrawn.
(2) I re-apply but pretend to have a different personality at my interviews; the interviewers see through my acting, and I get rejected for the same reasons as before.
(3) I re-apply but pretend to have a different personality at my interviews; I manage to get accepted, and now a medical school has a creepy, sociopathic freak in its entering class.

All of these potential outcomes suck. It's probably better to just leave rejected applicants blissfully ignorant.
Click to expand...
4) You get a lawyer and sue the school for whatever
5) You get a weapon and start stalking me or my colleagues.
 
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