How the freak is THIS supposed to work?

[juddson]

I have just read on a couple of med school websites that after an acceptance is extended, the applicant has two weeks to accept it or reject it. Can this be right?

Suppose you've applied to 10 schools and you get accepted to your 7th choice in late October. Obviously #7 is better than nothing at all (and truth be told, you'd be happy to go to any of the schools you have chosen), but are you supposed to make the seemingly impossible choice of taking it or cutting it loose before you know about 1 through 6? It could be three months before you hear from the next school. Does that mean you shoul PRAY that early acceptances come from your reach schools, not your backups?

What's the protocal here? Just curious. I know I am WAAAAAY ahead of myself.

judd

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[kidsmd]

you can hold multiple acceptances til may 15th.... then you have to decide which one you want to keep. After may 15th, you can be on as many waitlists as you want, but you can only hold ONE acceptance.

 

[Rapid Decomposition]

Yes, you don't have very much time to either accept or reject an acceptance offer, but you can hold multiple acceptances. So you would accept the offer at your seventh choice and hold on to the acceptance until you get accepted at a school that is higher on your list.

 

[SM-UCLA tech]

Originally posted by juddson
I have just read on a couple of med school websites that after an acceptance is extended, the applicant has two weeks to accept it or reject it. Can this be right?

Suppose you've applied to 10 schools and you get accepted to your 7th choice in late October. Obviously #7 is better than nothing at all (and truth be told, you'd be happy to go to any of the schools you have chosen), but are you supposed to make the seemingly impossible choice of taking it or cutting it loose before you know about 1 through 6? It could be three months before you hear from the next school. Does that mean you shoul PRAY that early acceptances come from your reach schools, not your backups?

What's the protocal here? Just curious. I know I am WAAAAAY ahead of myself.

judd

hopefully you will be holding multiple acceptances! If you are, don't worry about it, that's one of the positive stress factors you have to deal with this year and 1/4 or so. All you have to do is have enough money to cover your acceptances. Deposits range from about $100-$2000, depending on the school.

The etiquette is to drop a school ASAP when you know you will not be attending. That way someone else will get your seat outright or be taken off of a waitlist.

Good Luck!

 

[juddson]

I would not have thought that that is what "holding an acceptance" means. I was under the impression (and contract law would suggest) that once you have accepted an offer of admission, you are in and committed. I would have guessed that "holding an acceptance" meant that you may have more than one offer of admission outstanding at any given time.

I would think that if school #7 says "congradulations, please come" and you say "right on, I'll be there", you better be there, no?

If you could accept an offer of admission and withdraw when something better comes along, a school would have no idea how many spots are "in the bank" until May 15, so to speak.

I don't get it.

Judd

 

[Marina9]

At many schools, your deposit is refundable until a certain date, probably May 15th. You're free to hold a spot at multiple schools. I would guess that they can't know how many are "in the bank," but based on the figures from past years they make estimates. They expect people to back out- that's what waitlists are for.

 

[mikestuy]

juddson,

that's exactly how the med school admission process works. i think most, if not all schools, dont have a final class till the first day of class.

 

[Columbia22]

no no dude, you've got the whole thing wrong...you see, how it works is like this.Say you get 10 acceptances. What that means is that you will be attending 10 medical schools, on a rotational basis. Say there's 25 weeks in the academic year, divide that by 10, and that equals 2.5 weeks at each school...but some schools allow you to request what they call an "extended stay", but that only cuts back from your time at the other schools..

Oh and also, residency works this way too

 

[HamOnWholeWheat]

Originally posted by juddson

If you could accept an offer of admission and withdraw when something better comes along, a school would have no idea how many spots are "in the bank" until May 15, so to speak.

That's exactly how it works. Its just assumed that a percentage will back down, and schools offer more acepptances than they have positions accordingly. This varies from school to school though. For example, if Yale has 100 spots, its probably only offers 100 acceptances initially. But if a less competitive school had 100 slots, its not uncommon for them to offer positions to 150 or even 200 applicants initially, assuming that 50-100 students will eventually withdraw, favoring another school.

Does this policy ever backfire for the schools? You bet it does. Last year, quite a few law schools had to expand their class sizes beyond desired capacity to honor the high # of acceptances they sent out with virtually no attrition to other schools (the bad economy produced a ridiculously high # of applicants last year, so fewer people held multiple acceptances, thus virtually nobody withdrew an acceptance).

So to answer your question, its possible for a Medical School to have a "full class" on May 14th, and then be only 20% full on May 15th.

HamOn

 

[Woots32]

Most med schools refer to it as "holding a spot" or "reserving a space" in the incoming class. So there is no contractual obligation, even after May 15th.

Say you're in at your #2 choice, and sometime in June you get off the waitlist at the #1. You can still go to your first choice, but you'll probably lose the deposit at your second choice.

The good part of this system is that (with luck) it gives you possibly several months to figure out where you want to go. The downside is that many people hold multiple acceptances, thus generating long waitlists, which sort themselves out after May 15th. Thus, if you are in the fortunate position of holding multiple acceptances, make sure to withdraw from those schools you know you won't be attending.

Good luck.

 

[ice_23]

Do other medical schools, when deciding to give someone an offer of admissions, have access to how many schools you have already said "yes" to and put down deposits for? I don't know if this is just a myth, but a friend of mine said that he put down a deposit for one school after getting in, and then he was rejected by another school almost immediately after doing that, despite the fact that the interviewer from that school said he would get in...

Take that story with a grain of salt if you will, but I still am wondering if it is possible?

Thanks,

-Ice