Brief Profile:
- 400+ hours clinical volunteering (emergency department and urology) - assorted community volunteering - full time employment - part time post-bac student (4.0 GPA in pre-reqs)
// Applications //
Application Cycle One: 06/02/2011
Undergraduate college: Yale University
Total MCAT SCORE: 519
MCAT Section Scores:
B/B 127,
C/P 129,
CARS 132
Overall GPA: 3.68
Science GPA: 3.96
Summary of Application Experience
Second (and, I hope final) try. I don\'t have as many family based restrictions this year, so I\'ll be applying to a more reasonable (read more than 3, and more than 1 outside of the top 10) number of schools this cycle.
6/3/11: AMCAS submitted 6/8/11: AMCAS processed 6/30/11: Mayo LOR request 7/7/11: UW auto-reject 7/29/11: Mayo interview invite 8/18/11: Case Western interview invite 8/24/11: OHSU secondary receieved 8/24/11: OHSU secondary submitted (Last secondary of the season!) 9/8/11: Iowa interview invite 9/12/11: Mayo interview attended 9/16/11: University of Wisconsin rejection 9/29/11: UCSF pre-secondary, post-appeal rejection 10/03/11: Case Western interview attended 10/17/11: OHSU interview invite! 10/17/11: Mayo hold notice 10/19/11: Case Western hold notice 10/21/11: Iowa interview attended 10/26/11: OHSU interview attended 12/07/11: Temple interview invite 12/13/11: OHSU hold status 12/15/11: MCW interview invite 1/5/12: Dartmouth interview invite 1/17/12: Vermont interview invite 1/19/12: Temple interview attended 1/20/12: MCW interview attended 1/24/12: Iowa (first!) acceptance 1/25/12: Penn rejection 1/26/12: Mayo rejection 1/27/12: MCW acceptance 2/2/12: Stanford rejection 2/6/12: Temple waitlist 2/28/12: Dartmouth interview attended 3/1/12: Vermont interview attended 3/9/12: Vermont waitlist status 3/13/12: Yale rejection 3/26/12: Dartmouth waitlist status 4/13/12: Jefferson rejection (obvious after nine months at \"decision pending\" but glad to get an email) 4/16/12: Case waitlist 4/??/12: Drexel rejection 5/10/12: OHSU Waitlist 5/11/12: Case acceptance 5/16/12: OHSU acceptance! 5/17/12: Withdrew from waitlists, remaining acceptances. It\'s over! Hurray! (Now for the hard part.)
Summary of Experience:
LORs requested 6/30, interview invite 7/29, interview attended 9/12.
The school itself is pretty much everything you could ask for--resources to burn, a ridiculous faculty:student ratio, incredibly friendly and seemingly extremely well run. Rochester is... well, Rochester is pretty much Mayo. A better question would probably be \"what is SE Minnesota like?\" but a whirlwind flight-interview-flight tour wasn\'t enough to tell me much in that regard.
The interview day was well run, with time to tour and explore, and two fairly strictly scheduled half-hour interviews. Not too much advice to give, just wear comfortable shoes if you can, and try to be yourself.
Update: no \"alternate status\" for me. Rejected 1/26. It stings the ego a bit, but after my Iowa acceptance I can\'t say I mind too much. The tuition is amazing and obviously the school is great, but I\'d feel more than a little guilty about dragging my wife out to Rochester for four years. A different story for single (or at least childless) folks, obviously.
Summary of Experience:
Burlington was awesome, even in winter. Fletcher Allen is pretty darn snazzy--looks a little like a mini-Mayo. The 30 minute sales pitch on the VIC completely sold me. Basically, I loved everything about UVM.
5/17: withdrew from waitlist after OHSU acceptance.
Summary of Experience:
Beautiful campus, gorgeous scenery, small town, etc. etc. The curriculum isn\'t particularly cutting edge, but I the true P/F system sounds great, I like the small class size, and all the faculty and staff I encountered on my interview day were enthusiastic and impressive. Dartmouth Hitchcock wasn\'t nearly the schlep I expected, either. All in all a unique and very attractive program.
Summary of Experience:
North Philly is basically just as I remembered it, but the new Medical Education and Research building at Temple is pretty awesome. (Although the glass art in the atrium... well, the best I can say is that it\'s not another crazily overpriced Chihuly piece.) The classrooms look great, the sim center actually isn\'t depressing, and the student tour guides were maybe the best I\'ve had. Temple totally sold me on the whole \"we train great clinicians\" pitch, and I feel like I\'d fit in well. If I get in, it\'ll really be a question of cost and travel time. (I love the idea of being able to walk to school, and while you could probably *buy* a rowhouse within walking distance of Temple with your yearly housing allowance, that\'s not quite what I mean...)
Summary of Experience:
Seems like an amazing school. The pre-clinical facilities are nothing special (in fact it kind of looks like where I went to high school) but the curriculum seems just about ideal, the students are mostly happy and excited, and the clerkship opportunities look great. Cleveland could be a plus or a minus, depending on one\'s tastes.
Summary of Experience:
Interview day was unseasonably cold for October (~20 F) but that\'s probably a good taste of midwestern winter. I don\'t think I was 100% on my game, especially with my interview at hometown favorite OHSU a few days in the future, and my interview was probably the least fluid I\'ve had (as of February 1st, anyway.) All the same, the people were friendly, the pre-clinical facilities (we didn\'t get to tour the hospital) were amazing, and Iowa City is a gorgeous town. Not crazy about the non-block curriculum, but I definitely got a good vibe here.
5/18: Withdrew after OHSU acceptance. Bittersweet moment--second look really sold me on Iowa and I highly recommend it to any coastal folks dubious about the midwest.
Summary of Experience:
Very professionally run interview day. They do batches of 50-60 every couple weeks (instead of 8-15 two or three days a week) and the whole thing went off seemingly without a hitch. The medical center where the school is located is *huge*. I had reserved a room at a hotel that looked to be \"next door,\" but Google Maps actually put it at 1.5 miles. It was snowing the whole day of the interview so I didn\'t get to see much past the windowframes, but the facilities looked quite nice. Not snazzy new glass boxes, like Iowa or Temple, but a perfectly pleasant place to spend a couple years. I was a little zonked from three flights the previous two days and didn\'t get to talk to as many students as I would have liked, but it seemed like a solid school. Wauwatosa is still a bit of a mystery to me, but Milwaukee proper is actually kind of great. It has the big old rust-belt charm without the horrible \"Escape from New York\" feel of Detroit/Utica/Camden. And the frozen custard rocks.
