Why don't school's just include their essay questions on the primary and do away with secondaries?

[deleted480308]

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Are you dense? Who cares what the ROI is when you can't afford to apply and fly to the interview. Thats the point here.

100% access to the cost of entry isn't the seller's problem. As long as they still have acceptable candidates lined up out the door, the price has not reached it's economically viable peak

 

[hurtem&healem]

I fell into the "disadvantaged" category and didn't pay a dime for applications. Thank you FAP.

I haven't relied on my parents for financial support for 17 years. Yet I paid thousands in application fees. F*ck you, FAP

 

[ciestar]

I haven't relied on my parents for financial support for 17 years. Yet I paid thousands in application fees. F*ck you, FAP

Sorry.

 

[ciestar]

100% access to the cost of entry isn't the seller's problem. As long as they still have acceptable candidates lined up out the door, the price has not reached it's economically viable peak

Basically what it comes down to, they want "diversity", but at the end of the day, there are thousands others to take the spot of someone who applied to a school they can't even afford to interview at.

I've been poor my entire life and I won't pretend that I haven't felt stiffed many times growing up, but I am also not naive enough to believe that I was owed a damn thing by med schools because of finances. There are just as many qualified applicants that can afford it..

 

[PiggyPug6]

I get how a lot of people are feeling. As someone who has grown up well below the poverty line and is working at a low paying job, I almost cried when I realized how much it would cost to apply to medical school. Hell, I took off an extra year just to save the money to apply (amongst other things). I won't lie, I did receive the FAP, but I'm still glad that I set aside that couple thousand to pay for things like travel, applying to extra schools, and hotels. Do I sometimes feel angry/jealous about situations, where others may receive help from their family or never have to worry about paying for tuition or interest? Yes. However, it's all about perspective. It may suck that those of lower socioeconomic status may have to take more time off to save up, but damn does it taste that much sweeter when you get there because of your own hard work and ability to save.

 

[Med Ed]

One of the schools I applied to (LMU-DCOM) included all of their secondary questions on their primary application. At the end of the app was a link to pay the $50 processing fee. Essentially, my primary had all the required info (grades, LORs EC's) and the school asked their specific questions at the end (why I wanted to go to LMU-DCOM) and they even got to add the extra secondary fee at the end. Why don't most schools do this? They still get paid, they get to ask all the questions they want and it cuts down on the admissions process. Is there any advantage to having two applications per school instead of just one?

Every few years AMCAS tries to upgrade their system and it never seems to go well. Some years back they unrolled a new version and the whole thing melted down. Schools had to resort to paper applications in real time. That was fun!

Things have evolved so that schools generally buy their own admissions management systems to deliver secondaries, collect fees, schedule interviews, collect feedback, etc. AMP is a common one. These in turn have to connect to whatever underlying system(s) exist in the school (i.e. Banner, PeopleSoft, etc.). A portion of your secondary fees actually get skimmed by whatever software the school uses for this purpose.* AMCAS has been working on its own "secondary" admissions system for awhile, one which will presumably merge seamlessly with the main program, but it has yet to roll out.

So yeah, it would be great if AMCAS could do everything we want (well) and talk to every other system out there, but unfortunately it's not the world we live in right now.


*Ain't nothing in this world for free.

 

[lpp06]

Every few years AMCAS tries to upgrade their system and it never seems to go well. Some years back they unrolled a new version and the whole thing melted down. Schools had to resort to paper applications in real time. That was fun!

Things have evolved so that schools generally buy their own admissions management systems to deliver secondaries, collect fees, schedule interviews, collect feedback, etc. AMP is a common one. These in turn have to connect to whatever underlying system(s) exist in the school (i.e. Banner, PeopleSoft, etc.). A portion of your secondary fees actually get skimmed by whatever software the school uses for this purpose.* AMCAS has been working on its own "secondary" admissions system for awhile, one which will presumably merge seamlessly with the main program, but it has yet to roll out.

So yeah, it would be great if AMCAS could do everything we want (well) and talk to every other system out there, but unfortunately it's not the world we live in right now.


*Ain't nothing in this world for free.

I know somebody who works as a consultant for educational IT systems and admissions platforms - it was quite interesting to hear about how complex everything is and how easy they are to mess up - hence the need for consultant services.

 

[CyrilFiggis]

My delivery will probably be perceived as crass, but this is the elephant in the room. There will always be haves and have nots. The roll of AAMC as a governing body is to try and lessen that gap as much as possible, but when you incentivise one group, you take away from another. That's just life. FAP may not be perfect, but it does help to address the market forces that create barriers for low income applicants. You can yell at individual institutions, but they have the right to fix costs and fees however they see fit, esp the private universities.

The same thing happens once you get in and apply for financial aid. I'm in my 30's and have a family, but at my school, since I'm not 39 years old, in order to apply for institutional aid, I need to provide my parents' income. It's no different than your FAP argument, except instead of a few hundred dollars difference, it's tens of thousands. But I accept it because I understand that things don't need to be fair to everyone as long as they are trying to be fair to the vast majority.

 

[Coltuna]

Every few years AMCAS tries to upgrade their system and it never seems to go well. Some years back they unrolled a new version and the whole thing melted down. Schools had to resort to paper applications in real time. That was fun!

Things have evolved so that schools generally buy their own admissions management systems to deliver secondaries, collect fees, schedule interviews, collect feedback, etc. AMP is a common one. These in turn have to connect to whatever underlying system(s) exist in the school (i.e. Banner, PeopleSoft, etc.). A portion of your secondary fees actually get skimmed by whatever software the school uses for this purpose.* AMCAS has been working on its own "secondary" admissions system for awhile, one which will presumably merge seamlessly with the main program, but it has yet to roll out.

So yeah, it would be great if AMCAS could do everything we want (well) and talk to every other system out there, but unfortunately it's not the world we live in right now.


*Ain't nothing in this world for free.

This was the first comment I read that actually addressed the original question concisely. Thank you.