Sorry, it's Friday and I'm overloaded with sugar at the moment, it took me a while to process this post.
No problem. But after reading some other comments today, I'm beginning to think that the major problem was the "kid in the candy store" offer orgy. But I still think that the OP's comments have factored into the current catastrophe. Here's my current understanding of them:
Student A's are superstars, applying in-state and OOS.
Student B's are solid applicants; the bread and butter for all Texas schools.
Student C are middle-of-the-road applicants.
Student D are wayward souls who needs to improve their apps.
The way the designers saw it, schools would only offer to all the Student A's (10-20% of their class). In reality, they offered to a lot more, dipping down heavily into Student B's.
Now the A's got their offer(s), and by and large, were willing to accept, say UTH and UTSW, while they're awaiting OOS offers. And if by chance an A only got an offer from A&M, which they really don't like and is an uber-safety for them, they're nevertheless holding it. According to OP, the designers expected that in such cases, A's would decline that offer (knowing that they'd cast away a sure thing), and hold out for a #1 or an OOS. Obviously very few did that. However, because of over-offers, these students didn't match to their #1's, so they're essentially clogging up part of the systemthey really don't want to go to A&M, but they're holding that offer until a fine OOS pulls through.
The B's got offers from schools. Looking at the pre-match numbers from TRA, however, only slightly more than half of all pre-matchers got multiple offers. So every B kept their offer (most of them only with single offers), even if it was a UTSA or UTMB (a #3 or #4 for a B, let's say), hoping that they'd get a UTSW or UTH (#1/#2). But again, because of over-offers, there was no movement. This is where I think there's a real log-jam in the system. These students want to be one rung higher on their rank ladders, and in previous years would have matched into them since more A's would have already committed to OOS.
C's are applicants who would normally match to their #3, #4, #5, or #6 choices in years past, but because of the blocks ahead of them by the A's and B's had no seats to take.
D's are just way out there; don't worry about them.
What I'm thinking/hoping for all those who had their hearts broken last night is that once the A's start becoming ex-pats, the B's will move up to their #1/#2's, and the C's will get offers from #3/#4/#5/'s from seats vacated by their OOS brethren.
So what you are saying is that the system designers THOUGHT that applicants would have to decline their one acceptance in order to rank others higher if they so wanted, when IN REALITY, applicants didn't have to decline the offer in order to rank others higher.
Yes. Although it wasn't a problem so much in the execution of their plans as their predictions on how applicants would act (specifically, how arrogantly they thought that the A's and B's might act).
(Who are the designers on this case?)
The collective adcoms? For this reason and to elucidate her original comments, I wish the OP would drop in again.
However, for those of us with pre-match acceptances, we couldn't hold on to our 2 or 3 or 4 or however many we had until the match, we had to decline all but one by January 15th. So technically, pre-match people could only hold 1 school in the match, but they didn't have to decline it in order to rank another school higher.
If they did rank another school higher and didn't match, their acceptance still stands. If they did match to the higher school, then their other acceptance would be withdrawn.
Everybody who matched or pre-matched ended up with only 1 school.
Understood. I think what the OP's was alluding to was that A's who got offers from a #3/#4 would decline it and plan on a match to #1/#2 or rely on OOS. They didn't, so this is holding B's from moving on up to their #1/#2's, which is, in turn, locking out C's. There's a log-jam that wasn't expected on match night, and it's holding up the flow.
The only problem I see here is that people were under the impression (with help from some schools) that there were plenty of seats left for the match, when they really weren't, giving them a false sense of hope.
I understand everybody's frustration on this account, but I really don't think schools were sure of the log-jam until late December. I mean, how many people made all their acceptances/made their rank list before January? Last year, I didn't submit my final match list until the day before the deadline. In this case, schools couldn't have been blatently lying to interviewees until January datesand even then, really only at ones pushing up to Jan. 15th.
Secondly, schools may have known that they were reaching capacity, but they don't know how the waitlist action is going to work this year. They still wanted to see all their invitees just in case. And at least y'all who may have been, in fact, just interviewing for waitlist seats still have a chance at getting in. (Hopefully a pretty good one, if my thoughts are on target.)
Lastly, I kinda can't blame any of the schools for not alerting everyone about the situation pre-match. Could you imagine the sustained deluge of of angry calls that each school and TMDSAS would have received had word been leaked? Remember, pre-meds and med students are beyond anal, so it would have been a mess. A nightmare, really. So it was better in many ways for them and you to let everybody find out at once.
But I still understand everyone's frustrations with hearing very little post-match on what happened.
Am I making sense and did I understand your post correctly?
I think we're on the same page now.
My big question is whether schools are bound to consider student rankings in the waitlist process. Is there anything about that on the TMDSAS website? Last year I was under the impression that you could climb your way up your rank ladder as acceptances came in, but that every school kinda did their own thing, meaning that where you ranked a school had no bearing on your chances of getting offered a seat that just opened up. Hence the reason I think it might be in the best interests of those who didn't match to send an LOI to a school. But this means those applicants now have to choose in which basket they want to put all their eggs.
🙁
