Why don't people apply Early Decision?

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DMBFan

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I was just wondering, since the whole process is just so time-consuming, why don't people apply ED to med school? Does it mess up cycles for other apps if you don't get in? Also, I know some undergrad institutions (unlike mine) have special programs where you can get into medical school after your freshman year if you have good enough grades. How come people don't take these non-trad. routes?

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If you apply ED, you won't be able to send in your AMCAS to other schools until October if you don't get in. That's put you at a disadvantage at other schools.
 
That and if you apply early enough, you can sometimes find out you got in about the same time you'd find out for a EDP school.
 
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I have often thought that the AAMC rules for early decision need major revision. As it is implimented now, the incentives are perverse. For instance, as already has been stated, a decision to apply to any medical school early decision means that your primary application will not be submitted to any other scholl before October. That pushes your secondary back to at least November, and interviews would not be offered or scheduled until some time after that. This is a substantial disadvantage because I think most schools have filled a substantial percentage of their classes by late November. This puts the late applicant at a disadvantage - certainly as large a disadvantage as taking the August MCAT, which almost NOBODY suggests is a good idea.

For the overwhelming majority of applicants, it is more important to attend some medical school rather than a particular medical school. No doubt one would not get far in an interview if she said "If i can't go here, I don't want to go anywhere". But the compounding of disadvantage is most acute here because it is precisely that early applicantion student who was not competive enough to get into his ED school who can least afford to delay his application to any school.

The anticipated response to this is that only "exceedingly qualified" students should apply ED. And in fact most programs that have ED admissions say something to this effect. But this ignores fundamental reality of medical schools admissions, which is that with respect to a PARTICULAR school, one cannot meaningfully predict that she will gain admission with any sort of reliability. This is not to say that admissions in general are not reliable (despite what you read about it being a craps shoot, it is not - people with 3.5 and 30 MCATs WILL by and large get in somewhere) but that one cannot make reliable predictions for a particular school. Hence, no matter how qualified you are, an ED applicant has precious little reason to presume that he will get in. This is a tremendous disincentive to apply ED even for the most able applicants.

The ED application system should be reformed to permit the ED applicant to apply to ALL her schools according to the regular application calander, but require her to withdraw her applications from those schools if she is admitted to her ED school. That the AAMC has not reformed the system in this way, I cannot imagine.

Judd
 
Judd, I think everything you said was dead on. I think EDP is kind of like getting a decent loan. Only those the EDP only works for applicants that don't need it much the way decent loans are only given to those who don't need them. Our world is full of catch-22's.
 
DMBFan said:
Also, I know some undergrad institutions (unlike mine) have special programs where you can get into medical school after your freshman year if you have good enough grades.

Our school has an early acceptance program to Tufts med school after sophmore year. The problem with programs like that is that if you get accepted you have the choice come senior year. Either accept the offer and go to Tufts, or try to apply to other schools and give up your spot at Tufts. Most people obviously choose Tufts, but some of my friends that are doing it are sort of upset because Tufts is so expensive and they didn't have the chance to apply elsewhere.

One of my friends was accepted and then started considering an MD/PhD program. Since he had Tufts as a backup he didn't really study for the MCAT that much and didn't get a score competitive enough for MSTP programs. He ended up turning down Tufts and taking a year of, take the MCAT again and apply to MSTP programs. If he had to do it over again, he wouldn't have applied to Tufts early.

The moral of the story is that though these early assurance programs are nice, in the end you shouldn't do it unless you know you really want to go to the school and after sophmore year, many things can change. I didn't apply because I didn't think I would get in but then I found out who got in, I felt I would have gotten in had I applied and I was kicking myself about it initially. In the end, though the application process was stressful, I'm glad I didn't apply early because I got into a better school and I've gained a lot of life experience simply from interviewing.
 
Judd, you're basically suggesting the College Early Decision format. I totally agree with you on this.

The only reason I can see for these AAMC rules is that it really really makes sure that the people applying EDP are confident and positive that the school they are applying to is the perfect school fot them. But even then, I dont see why there is the wait until October 15th.

As some other poster pointed out, people that apply and interview early find out about the same time anyway since most schools start accepting Oct 15th, and some earlier (Tulane comes to mind).
 
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