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How many low and mid tier schools did you apply to in total? Do you have any red flags (academic dishonesty, alcohol violations, criminal record, anything) that might have come up? How early was "early"? Did you ever fail, withdraw from, or get a D in any science courses over the years? Did you have a downward trend?
Reading through long-ass PDFs on a smartphone is terrible though lol.Have you contacted any of the schools asking for information on the rejections? If at least a few respond to you that could be helpful. You could just be a diamond that slipped through the cracks. What have you been doing during the application season? Perhaps try adding even more of the new and "low-tier" medical schools. Will you be reapplying this year?
Reading the application he posted would be helpful.
Yes, but only at 4 schools. If you subtract those, that still leaves 7 or 8..Well for one, you're a reapplicant. That hurts you. What state are you from? I'm running all of your school choices through the 'ol LizzyM spreadsheet to see how things look.
It could be your father, brother, or sister in medical school- you're expected to perform well regardless. And it is only illegal if you can prove the discrimination occurs (which is basically impossible), and only in states where such discrimination is illegal to begin with, as it isn't a federal law. I'm not saying your Chron's doesn't deserve accommodation or that discrimination is right, but at a glance, they see your score and that you had a non-standard administration and a couple withdrawals.Trust me the withdrawals were warranted, it wasn't a grandmother or a sisters uncles brothers cousins. That's all I'll share there.
I have crohns disease. It's not like I got extra time, just a few more bathroom breaks. Plus isn't it illegal to discriminate based on accommodations.
You can probably get in if you give it another cycle. Just make sure you apply to more lower tier schools, see if you can get an adcom to look over your explanation for your withdrawals to make sure it makes you come across as resilient rather than weak. Put positive spin on it- "Despite the emotional toll the loss of my loved one took on me, I was able to succeed in all of my courses save for two... From these tragic experiences and my battle with Chron's Disease, I have learned to be resilient, even in the most dire of circumstances." or something along those lines- don't portray these experiences as excuses for withdrawals or accommodation, show that what hasn't killed you has made you stronger. Use the LizzyM tool to apply broadly to lower schools- you tried 15 reach schools last cycle, and none of them bit. As a re-applicant with no significant changes in your app, you'll just be pissing away money. Use that cash to instead apply to another 10-15 lower tier schools. If you want to be a physician, don't want to do a fourth cycle, and definitely want to get into medical school this year, you might even want to throw in a couple of the higher "tier" DO schools (PCOM, MSUCOM, NYCOM, RowanSOM, CCOM).Thanks for the help. What a terrible experience this has been.
This is the most ridiculous **** I have ever heard. If your parent or sibling die, only a sociopath would be able to sail smoothly. Honestly, I don't believe there could ever be a school that vindictive and inhumane.It could be your father, brother, or sister in medical school- you're expected to perform well regardless. And it is only illegal if you can prove the discrimination occurs (which is basically impossible), and only in states where such discrimination is illegal to begin with, as it isn't a federal law. I'm not saying your Chron's doesn't deserve accommodation or that discrimination is right, but at a glance, they see your score and that you had a non-standard administration and a couple withdrawals.
I'm just throwing my ideas out there, there's no way to know exactly why you didn't get in. But these are the things that stand out about your app, so they're what I'm focusing on.
You should have gotten plenty interviews. Nature journal publication? Most students barely have any publication if at all. I am very confused. Maybe they see you as more fit for grad school perhaps?
I'm a bit confused how people say something like "you should have gotten at least one interview." If Mad Jack's analysis is right and there are 9 schools the OP has a reasonable shot at an interview, then even if there was a 20% chance she'd get interviewed at each school (which seems kind of high so correct me if I'm wrong) then she still would just get unlucky and go without an interview (0.8)^9 = 13.4% of the time.
That seems kind of nuts that there's just a 13.4% chance OP gets unlucky and gets no interviews and now has to apply as a re-applicant to all those schools (given the above assumptions, of course real numbers are different and no one knows them). I definitely don't want to make excuses for myself or anyone else who didn't get as many II as they'd have hoped, but I feel like people may underestimate how important luck is. Either that or I still just don't fully understand this process.
Hi all... I had been posting in the Panic thread and people told me to post here. Here's the summary:
No idea what to do at this point.
34 MCAT (so no point taking it again)
3.5 GPA/3.6 Science GPA (nothing I can do about that)
Tons of research, clinical, non-clinical volunteer etc.
Very good essays and overall application (according to my adviser's at BU and Harvard etc.)
Dr. Ann McKee at BU told me my application was excellent and I should have no problem getting many interviews and several acceptances.
I've been published in Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, and had interviews in NY Times.
Applied to a very broad range of schools. (Not top heavy at all)
Northstate did not open.I think Mad Jack has given you good advice. Tufts may be worth applying to though. Consider adding the newly established medical schools such as Hofstra, Quinnipiac, Oakland Beaumont, Western Michigan, Sacramento Northstate. There are other low mid tier schools you could add like Albany, Rochester, Tulane, Creighton. Of course apply to all your state schools. There is no reason not to apply to several DO schools.
Alas, I don't. I think Einstein doesn't give out this helpful info.
Any idea which schools are receptive to giving feedback? You think I could send those emails now?
It's not a random process, so you can't use odds as if you're calculating the lottery....even though the process seems that way at times.
Everything has a component of randomness to it. I could apply to the same school 10,000 times and probably get accepted 9000 times and denied 1000 times if I was an ideal applicant there. We can use a Bernoulli trial where the probability of success is modified depending on your stats/fit etc. The resulting binomial distribution where the variable is number of schools accepted to will likely cluster around a mean given enough measurements, which is why you apply to a lot of schools. But there is always a nonzero P(0). And if 500 people measuring a persons height results in a gaussian distribution and not a single consistent value, then I doubt that 500 different interviewers would all come to the same conclusion about an applicant with no variability. So there is a component of randomness.
Holy ****.... just got an interview in New York.
I was wondering when the math major would chime in with an irrelevant comment.
I hope you have since sent updates to all the schools that had not already rejected you. Your research is very impressive.All my publications have come in the last few months so they weren't on my primary.
I was wondering when the math major would chime in with an irrelevant comment.
Face the truth: there are lots of average and below avg pre-meds vying for too few seats. Therefore, they need to be above avg, or they need to stop trying to get into Harvard or JHU when their stats are perfectly fine for Penn State or Drexel.
These are all schools you didn’t have much of a chance of being interviewed at to begin with- we'll forget you even bothered applying to them:
Sinai-Long Shot
Hopkins-Long Shot
Emory-Long Shot
Columbia-Long Shot
Yale-Long Shot
University of Michigan-Long Shot
University of Pittsburgh-Long Shot
Brown-Long Shot
Washington University-Long Shot
Cornell-Long Shot
Harvard-Long Shot
Tufts-Long Shot
University of Chicago-Long Shot
NYU-Long Shot
Northwestern-Long Shot
Perelman-Long Shot
Stanford-Long Shot
Which leaves these 15 that you actually had a shot of interviewing at, with three of them being a low shot:
Boston University-Hopeful
Albert Einstein-Hopeful, Low cGPA
Case Western-Hopeful
Of the remaining schools, there are 9 where you stood an average to high chance to getting in:
Rosalind Franklin-Go For It
St Louis U-Go for It, Low cGPA
Temple-Go for It
University of Maryland-Go For It, Low GPA, only 27% OOS accepted
Georgetown-Go For It
Jefferson-Go For It
Loyola-Go For It
Rush-High Chance, but only 28% OOS accepted
NYMC-High Chance
Drexel-High Chance
GWU-High Chance
University of Illinois-High Chance, but only 30% OOS accepted
Your only real red flags are those two withdrawals. Perhaps your explanation of them is your problem. You should have gotten at least one interview out of the schools you actually had a shot at. If your explanation made it sound like if someone were to die while you were in medical school, you might have problems, it could very well have made adcoms leery. Bad things will happen during med school and residency- your loved ones could die, you could become ill, unforeseen troubles could arise, etc. If adcoms walk away with the impression that you cannot handle such events, you will not be interviewed, so I would analyze your explanation for your withdrawals. Also, accommodations are never looked favorably upon- they may view your MCAT as inflated due to seeing that accommodations were required. I am chalking up your lack of interview invites to a fairly top-heavy app and possible questions as to your withdrawals and need for accommodations coupled with a dash of bad luck.
Also keep in mind I'm using an old LizzyM table, and that admissions have gotten more competitive in the last three years, so you are actually less competitive than you appear to be in the above analysis.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...k5u32lrmNrpTZ2ywg&sig2=1-mL6-ZQrG0oBPvWpWWOXA
What school?Holy ****.... just got an interview in New York.