Why they rejected me

[Jackson-Ave-Dental]

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yup this info is on bing12's AADSAS survey link. Once you are granted the interview, it matters more than your sGPA. I agree that the interview should weight more than your grades at that point. Everyone is ranked differently before the interview (based on stats) but then at the interview, the people that shine should be granted admission.

I think it would be more accurate this way.

1) Pre-interview: People are ranked based upon their stats
2) Post-interview: People are moved up or down from their original rank based upon their interview performance.

My reasoning:
i) People have bombed interviews but still gained admissions based upon stats alone.
ii) People with average stats or those part of the sub 3.0 club have managed to gain an acceptance.

Thus the only possibility of scenario i&ii happening is if the above was true.

 

[wired202808]

I think it would be more accurate this way.

1) Pre-interview: People are ranked based upon their stats
2) Post-interview: People are moved up or down from their original rank based upon their interview performance.

My reasoning:
i) People have bombed interviews but still gained admissions based upon stats alone.
ii) People with average stats or those part of the sub 3.0 club have managed to gain an acceptance.

Thus the only possibility of scenario i&ii happening is if the above was true.

While that might be the fair way to do it, its not realistic. Think about a job interview, you are invited to an interview only if you have the proper stats (i.e. college degree and X amount of years worth of experience.) but once you are at the interview the only thing that matters is your personality and whether or not you'll click with your future boss. Just because your a smart guy doesnt mean you should get the job.

Similarly in d-school or dentistry itself you need to be quick on your feet, work under pressure and have a winning personality. Your patients wont ask how you did in your o-chem class and if you come off as a rude and condescending it wont even matter that you went to Columbia.

I'm not totally discounting your point, but I talked about this with a friend that's pursing PT and he says in foreign countries admission is all about the grades. So you wind up with doctors that are super smart, but are really difficult to work with and often lack the basic knowledge on patient communication.

In my opinion, grades are simply the barrier entry to the interview. But yes it does vary by schools. I'm sure I was waitlisted at NYU because of my grades, meanwhile I know i was accepted at 2 other schools simply because of my personality (which i'm fine with because I understand what it takes to work with people and that grades are not accurate gauges of that.)

 

[Dentdoctor]

This definitely makes sense; however, it is unfortunately NOT the case for many schools. One example is Case Western: they send out their interviews very quickly after receiving the application- it seems like they just throw out interviews based on stats, rather than what they should be doing and actually looking at the whole application to determine whether the applicant has a chance of getting in after the interview. Others schools are also very unorganized in how they send out interviews- so there is no way there's a ranking for a school like NYU or BU which send out post december interview invites to some people with high stats.

I think it would be more accurate this way.

1) Pre-interview: People are ranked based upon their stats
2) Post-interview: People are moved up or down from their original rank based upon their interview performance.

My reasoning:
i) People have bombed interviews but still gained admissions based upon stats alone.
ii) People with average stats or those part of the sub 3.0 club have managed to gain an acceptance.

Thus the only possibility of scenario i&ii happening is if the above was true.

 

[UltimateHombre]

Wow. I was not expecting to have such mixed opinions about this thread! 🙁 Chill out people, life is far too short to get all riled up 👍

Once again, the whole point of this thread is to give those who are applying in the future some info on why someone can get rejected. I'm trying to help out lol

Please note: I am not complaining about being rejected! This is not intended to be a pity party for me. A lot of people who are even more qualified have also been rejected. I feel honored to have simply gotten an interview. 🙂 Furthermore, I have an acceptance of which I am beyond grateful for. I have been blessed with the opportunity to attend a dental school! I am not treating this as a great mystery, but rather answering many other people's questions about it. In hindsight, the title of the thread is probably a little unfortunate. Anyone know how to edit it?

If anyone else on the forum has any info on why they were rejected, please post here! It could really help out future applicants 👍

Bereno, thanks for this thread man. It has been super helpful. This is a classic example of schools looking for certain "x factors" in there applicants. You were a strong applicant all around, especially academically, however maybe you just didn't have that particular "je ne sais quoi" that UW was looking for. Where as you did for UConn!! 👍

All of us future applicants should learn from this... we need to try to develop ourselves as an overall applicant and not just as a student academically. I know that ever since i have been volunteer assisting, it has added loads of experiences and knowledge that i could not have obtained otherwise.

Anyway, thanks again for being so open about your acceptances and rejections and congrats on UConn... they are awesome!! PS - i still like playing around with your financial calculator spreadsheet you made!

 

[iralex801]

While that might be the fair way to do it, its not realistic. Think about a job interview, you are invited to an interview only if you have the proper stats (i.e. college degree and X amount of years worth of experience.) but once you are at the interview the only thing that matters is your personality and whether or not you'll click with your future boss. Just because your a smart guy doesnt mean you should get the job.

Similarly in d-school or dentistry itself you need to be quick on your feet, work under pressure and have a winning personality. Your patients wont ask how you did in your o-chem class and if you come off as a rude and condescending it wont even matter that you went to Columbia.

I'm not totally discounting your point, but I talked about this with a friend that's pursing PT and he says in foreign countries admission is all about the grades. So you wind up with doctors that are super smart, but are really difficult to work with and often lack the basic knowledge on patient communication.

In my opinion, grades are simply the barrier entry to the interview. But yes it does vary by schools. I'm sure I was waitlisted at NYU because of my grades, meanwhile I know i was accepted at 2 other schools simply because of my personality (which i'm fine with because I understand what it takes to work with people and that grades are not accurate gauges of that.)

Hmm. I don't believe they throw out your grades after you've been granted the interview. This is because I believe there should be a balance between grades and your interview/people skills. You can be the most caring, wonderful person in the world who loves dentistry, but you can't do dentistry if your not intelligent enough to learn how to do dentistry correctly. Grades/DAT are the best indicators of your capability to perform dentistry at a high level. I like to bring up the house analogy. Would you rather Dr. House be your doctor or some inadequate one who cares so much about people.

 

[Jackson-Ave-Dental]

This definitely makes sense; however, it is unfortunately NOT the case for many schools. One example is Case Western: they send out their interviews very quickly after receiving the application- it seems like they just throw out interviews based on stats, rather than what they should be doing and actually looking at the whole application to determine whether the applicant has a chance of getting in after the interview. Others schools are also very unorganized in how they send out interviews- so there is no way there's a ranking for a school like NYU or BU which send out post december interview invites to some people with high stats.

That's because these ultra high tuition schools KNOW that very qualified applicants probably have a good chance at getting accepted to a cheaper school dec 1st and would choose to go there over them so theres probably no point in wasting an interview on them.

They probably send them out post-dec... similar to throwing in fishing bait one last time just to catch any straggling fishes that might've gotten left behind for whatever reason? Bombed all of their interviews and got into no where... or whatever?

 

[wired202808]

Hmm. I don't believe they throw out your grades after you've been granted the interview. This is because I believe there should be a balance between grades and your interview/people skills. You can be the most caring, wonderful person in the world who loves dentistry, but you can't do dentistry if your not intelligent enough to learn how to do dentistry correctly. Grades/DAT are the best indicators of your capability to perform dentistry at a high level. I like to bring up the house analogy. Would you rather Dr. House be your doctor or some inadequate one who cares so much about people.

I can say from person experience that there are 2 types of schools:

A. Balance or grade caring schools + personality
B. Personality based interviews only

Your grades are already there and have established you as a worthy candidate, meanwhile a personality cannot be judged numerically. i.e. if I make better jokes than you and you're lame, yes maybe you can give me a 10 for personality, but if we are mutually funny then what?

Therefore the type B schools will just say ok he's got the grades lets see what else he can offer and if he can impress us at the interview he's in. Thats fine enough in my opinion because schools still screen you based on your grades, you cant get in the door with bad grades. But once you are at the interview everyone should be on the same level because if you cant communicate properly, why should you be a dentist? Is that super geeky anti-social kid with a 3.9GPA going to be a better dentist than me? Maybe or maybe not, but I'll tell you this much he'll definitely have a lower patient base and return rate than my winning (to quote Charlie Sheen) personality 🙂

The reason i'm emphasizing personality is because I plan to rock out the clinic portion and be clinically strong. I also assume that clinic is something that cannot be gauged by grades alone because it requires hand eye coordination and technique (and most of all tons and tons of practice.) So I feel that post year 2, me and the 3.9 kid will probably be on the same level but the clinch on the patients will be my personality and how I treat them. I know they will want to go to me beacuse I will take care of them on a personal level. Remember patients dont know if you did a good job or not, all they remember are 2 things: no pain and "what a nice doctor he is."

 

[wired202808]

This definitely makes sense; however, it is unfortunately NOT the case for many schools. One example is Case Western: they send out their interviews very quickly after receiving the application- it seems like they just throw out interviews based on stats, rather than what they should be doing and actually looking at the whole application to determine whether the applicant has a chance of getting in after the interview. Others schools are also very unorganized in how they send out interviews- so there is no way there's a ranking for a school like NYU or BU which send out post december interview invites to some people with high stats.

I think your statement is based on feelings rather than facts. If you review the ADEA 2011 handbook, you will notice that Case Western only interviews 10% of its applicants. Meanwhile, most schools usually interview 15 to 20% of their applicants. So clearly case is not just throwing interviews around. 90% of their applicants were rejected pre interview for the 2011 class. SDN might not paint this picture because we have top applicants on here, but thats not the "case" overall. 🙂

 

[Bereno]

Bereno, thanks for this thread man. It has been super helpful. This is a classic example of schools looking for certain "x factors" in there applicants. You were a strong applicant all around, especially academically, however maybe you just didn't have that particular "je ne sais quoi" that UW was looking for. Where as you did for UConn!! 👍

All of us future applicants should learn from this... we need to try to develop ourselves as an overall applicant and not just as a student academically. I know that ever since i have been volunteer assisting, it has added loads of experiences and knowledge that i could not have obtained otherwise.

Anyway, thanks again for being so open about your acceptances and rejections and congrats on UConn... they are awesome!! PS - i still like playing around with your financial calculator spreadsheet you made!

I'm glad its useful. 👍


come on people! please post if you know why you were rejected! lol, so far only one other person has posted! lol 😀

 

[Kahr]

Well, since I was also rejected by UW, I decided to write them and see if they'd give me any kind of feed back. I received a reply from an Associate Dean today, one which I'll summarize briefly.

"You were a very competitive applicant, having been one of only 160 interviewed. Your interviewers had many positive things to say about you, and I don't see any "fatal flaws" in your application. This year however we had a large number of extremely competitive applicants, and had to turn about half of them away."

I'm happy I received a reply, I think that's probably a difficult thing for a dental school to do for an individual. But I'm also very sad because I wasn't really given any input or advice, anything that I could possibly do to be a better applicant...to me it sounded like I should have been accepted. So I still feel at a loss as to why I wasn't one of the "chosen".

 

[devz4lf]

The whole "nervous" thing is a bunch of bs, everyone is nervous, how can you not be?! Its an interview for your profession which you will do for the rest of your life until you retire. I was nervous for my interview too but than 5 min into it I relaxed and saw that it wasn't really an interview but more of a conversation.

 

[dentaluofm]

The whole "nervous" thing is a bunch of bs, everyone is nervous, how can you not be?! Its an interview for your profession which you will do for the rest of your life until you retire. I was nervous for my interview too but than 5 min into it I relaxed and saw that it wasn't really an interview but more of a conversation.

sooooooo.....

 

[Kentuckylover]

I think whoever wrote you a reply didn't really write you a genunie reply, but some random BS. I am pretty sure your interviewers had something against you. Being nervous is all BS. They all know it's an interview and people of course will be somewhat nervous.

What matter is that you have an acceptance! UConn will be much better choice for you Bereono. It sucks you can't get the instate tuition, but you look like a person who will be successful at any dental school. Good luck

 

[devz4lf]

I'm still waiting for an acceptance lol ...

 

[Bereno]

Lol, this thread caused such a stirr a while ago, I think its funny that it resurfaced!

Kahr: Thanks for the info! Check your PMs; I sent you a reply.

devz4lf: As I said earlier in the thread: I did not feel nervous at all... But that does not matter. I might have come across as nervous that that does matter lol. I hope you get that acceptance!! 👍

Kentuckylover: I am not worried about not getting into the UW lol. Sure I was bummed at the time, but I am super excited about UConn! Also, this thread was aimed at providing some information for those who will be interviewing in subsequent years. If they can look back on any sort of information on what a school wants to see, that might be helpful. Apparently, nobody else wanted or had information on why they did not get in. That, and I got a lot of PM's asking about it. Also, thanks for the kind words! 🙂

 

[JonLee]

Lol, this thread caused such a stirr a while ago, I think its funny that it resurfaced!

Kahr: Thanks for the info! Check your PMs; I sent you a reply.

devz4lf: As I said earlier in the thread: I did not feel nervous at all... But that does not matter. I might have come across as nervous that that does matter lol. I hope you get that acceptance!! 👍

Kentuckylover: I am not worried about not getting into the UW lol. Sure I was bummed at the time, but I am super excited about UConn! Also, this thread was aimed at providing some information for those who will be interviewing in subsequent years. If they can look back on any sort of information on what a school wants to see, that might be helpful. Apparently, nobody else wanted or had information on why they did not get in. That, and I got a lot of PM's asking about it. Also, thanks for the kind words! 🙂

Yeah... that response by your state school seems kind of crap with the whole nervous thing, but hey, like you said, you're going to UConn so it's all good!

Can't wait to be in your shoes this time next year 😀

 

[Msmouth]

Thanks for sharing! Hey, now they got a bunch of stuffy, overly confident, dental know-it-alls for students.