Withdrawal email response

[premed770]

Thankfully I'm in the position where I've received a bunch of acceptances and wanted to withdraw from the schools I'm not considering anymore to open up spots for others. When I've emailed my withdrawal notice to some schools, they've responded and asked me to share more about why I'm withdrawing and I'm not sure how to respond. Do I say it's because I got into a T10 school? Just unsure how to approach this....

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[Goro]

Just tell them the truth. They can't seek revenge on you

 

[cj_cregg]

So first of all, I think you'd be well within your rights not to respond at all if you're so inclined, second of all, I think it would also be fine to say "Due to a variety of personal and financial factors, I have decided to attend XSOM instead."

 

[bob12364747474]

Lol that’s weird. I’d hit them with the same lingo schools use when rejecting applicants. “After a holistic review of your medical program, it is with regret that I inform you I am unable to matriculate at your school. This is not an indication of your capacity to train medical professionals, but due to the high level of competition between yourself and other schools. I wish your school well in its future endeavors.”

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Be gracious if you decide to respond.

Most won't reply with an email. What's the consequence? We may send you a survey anyway.

Just like any applicant seeking information, we want to know if there was something that happened that immediately turned you away. Did you not like our interview day, financial aid, communication with you, second look programs, recruitment conversations, etc.? Was it something we could change or control? THEN, we want to know if it was something the other school did that attracted you to them and sealed the deal.

This helps us with our admissions operations and future adjustments if we feel we could make.

 

[LizzyM]

Schools would like to know to whom they are loosing admitted applicants. This information helps them in admissions and recruiting and even in fund raising.

 

[BeLycurcus]

I am in a similar situation. I certainly don't want to be dismissive because I might need to match at these schools in 4 years....so, I will send a positive withdrawal e-mail to every school.

 

[LizzyM]

Lol that’s weird. I’d hit them with the same lingo schools use when rejecting applicants. “After a holistic review of your medical program, it is with regret that I inform you I am unable to matriculate at your school. This is not an indication of your capacity to train medical professionals, but due to the high level of competition between yourself and other schools. I wish your school well in its future endeavors.”

This is brilliant.

 

[doctadank]

This is brilliant.

It's definitely funny but do you think it could be taken as impolite as well? Also do schools even remember when it comes time for residency?

 

[AstroSidekick]

It's definitely funny but do you think it could be taken as impolite as well? Also do schools even remember when it comes time for residency?

Personally, I think it's nearly impossible for burning bridges with a med school adcom team to affect residency applications. To even have an effect, here are what the med school adcoms would need to do:

1. Create and maintain a long-standing and exhaustive list of all the med school applicants that burned the bridge or said no to them or whatever. This list will likely have dozens of people within a few years and they would need to keep track of those names for at least four years!
2. Share that long-standing and exhaustive list with all of their residency program directors. At most academic centers, there are dozens of residency programs and physicians are often only PDs for a few years. Getting this list to everyone would take a lot of coordinating effort.
3. The PDs then compare the list from the med school adcoms against the hundreds (if not thousands) of residency applicants they received. To find the same names would be a huge waste of time, even if they found a website or excel sheet to do it for them. I bet that only 25% of PDs would even care to check if they had the opportunity to.

To maintain, coordinate, and verify those same people are not applying to the school's residency programs to the 15+ residency programs four years later would take an incredible amount of organizational skills. No offense, but I have gotten the impression most schools are extremely disorganized through the fact they are most often understaffed, can rarely stick to decision deadlines, or respond to our emails in a timely manner. It is just not realistic that anything we say to an adcom will affect us come residency applications.

 

[amateurpupil]

Tell them that although you are not able to provide specific advice to programs you have decided not to attend, you will be holding a virtual group information session to share information about possible issues with programs looking to improve their recruiting methods and matriculation rate for next cycle.

 

[BeLycurcus]

This is brilliant.

Ok. I will ask 3 Program Directors this fall when I start M1 regarding withdrawal letters. My strong inclination is to believe that most physicians read patient's H and P and Progress Notes via EMR and that this practice becomes habituated in other endeavors. PD's not withstanding. I will follow up this post when I find out. I don't see anything brilliant about writing a loaded response to any Medical School that is offering me a seat in a US MD program.

 

[chssoccer7]

Ok. I will ask 3 Program Directors this fall when I start M1 regarding withdrawal letters. My strong inclination is to believe that most physicians read patient's H and P and Progress Notes via EMR and that this practice becomes habituated in other endeavors. PD's not withstanding. I will follow up this post when I find out. I don't see anything brilliant about writing a loaded response to any Medical School that is offering me a seat in a US MD program.

I think you're missing the point that that's the exact email many denials receive. For adcoms to be offended by that, they'd be admitting that they themselves are offensive to thousands of applicants each year. I don't think anyone cares enough when there are hundreds of other things to worry about than an applicant withdrawing in a humorous manner. While I highly doubt many people are pressing send on that email, i'm willing to bet the adcom member that receives it hits "delete" and moves on to the other million things they have to do.

 

[LizzyM]

I think you're missing the point that that's the exact email many denials receive. For adcoms to be offended by that, they'd be admitting that they themselves are offensive to thousands of applicants each year. I don't think anyone cares enough when there are hundreds of other things to worry about than an applicant withdrawing in a humorous manner. While I highly doubt many people are pressing send on that email, i'm willing to bet the adcom member that receives it hits "delete" and moves on to the other million things they have to do.

Correct. I also think that it might bring a smile to a person who has few things to smile about as they slog through the admission cycle. If I were to get such a letter, I'd say "touche" .

I'm somewhat ignorant of the process for declining an offer at a specific school. I would have thought it was just going into a web portal and clicking a box.