Application Cycle One: 2005

• Undergraduate college: University of Alabama at Birmingham
• Undergraduate Area of study: Psychology/Social Sciences

• Institution: University of Alabama at Birmingham
• Area of Study: History/Humanities
• Degree Obtained: BA

• Total MCAT SCORE: 514
• MCAT Section Scores: B/B 129, C/P 128, CARS 129   Detailed Breakdown
• Overall GPA: 3.72
• Science GPA: 3.68

Summary of Application Experience

I applied to UASOM (Alabama-Birmingham) through EDP this year, and had a wonderful experience. In my case, my AMCAS was submitted in July, My secondary was sent to me almost immediately; after 4 weeks, I submitted my secondary. A few days later I had an interview for the end of September. They sent out acceptance emails the next day! The whole process was very fast, relatively smooth, and very surreal. It was great fun being the first applicants to interview for the year. All the faculty and students at the med school knew that our group were the EDP applicants, and everyone treated us really well, and most even offered us encouragement. The general attitude we got from the students at the school & hospital was, 'You're EDP? Congratulations. We'll see you next year.' (Apparently the EDP applicants are usually accepted. We kept hearing this from random teachers and med students at the school. They ended up being correct: I heard from my advisor that 100% of the 20 EDP interviewees were accepted.) EDP saved me time and money (I only applied to one school, since this is the only school I wanted to go to).
Interviews were much more pleasant than I expected them to be, yet I was more nervous and less articulate than I expected to be. The interviews are loosely tailored to each student (since I am interested in academic medicine, I had interviews with 2 people who are research & teaching faculty, and one of these interviewers was exclusively there to discuss research, research training, and my career interests). The other applicants were very nice, and I was surprised at how well I got along with everyone (I don't usually enjoy small talk with other students); I look forward to having these guys in my class next year.
One weird or surprising thing that I noticed: UASOM usually has a 40-60 to 50-50 M/F ratio, but of the 20 EDP applicants interviewed, 19 were male, 18 were white, and the other two, though non-white, were not minorities for the purposes of affirmative action in education. I was really expecting the applicant group to be more diverse, but I guess that the EDP pool is self-selecting, and there may be something in the candidates that gave rise to the disparity I witnessed.