New post to UofT's admissions blog

[drtrumpet]

http://utmedadmissions.wordpress.com/

 

Starting today, Leslie Taylor, Admissions Officer, will be sending out invitations for interviews on March 1, 2, and 3. She will continue to send out invitations over the next week. Please check your email and add ld.taylor@utoronto.ca to your address book. If we don’t hear from you after we’ve sent you an invitation, we’ll find another way to get in touch.

 

I’ve been getting a few calls and emails regarding interviews. So here are the answers to those frequently asked interview questions:

 

- If you’ve received an invitation and can’t make your scheduled date, we will make every effort to reschedule you for another date.

 

- If you’re–for example–coming from overseas and haven’t yet been refused, you can let us know ahead of time when you’ll be in town by emailing Leslie at ld.taylor@utoronto.ca

 

- Just because you haven’t received an invitation for interview yet, not all hope is lost. We’ve got interviews to schedule through April 7.

 

As usual, thanks for being patient with the phone calls and emails. I’m doing my best to answer all of your questions, but it might take longer than usual. If you’re an applicant and have a general query, please spend lots of time looking over our website and this blog. Chances are the answer you’re seeking is already out there. If you can’t find an answer to your question, I’ll get back to you…eventually.

 

- Justine

[slumdogMD]

all this waiting is bs. id rather get rejected quick. i prefer a shot in the head than slow long torture which then leads to death.

[bearpuppy]

In the comments section, related to grad applicants:

 

"Grad applicants selected for interview will be invited at a later date. We’ll keep you posted."

[Dasypus]

In the comments section, related to grad applicants:

 

"Grad applicants selected for interview will be invited at a later date. We’ll keep you posted."

 

Argh! Not more waiting! :(

[silvantes]

Thank You drtrumpet !!

[shady]

Actually, I beg to differ. Not being invited does mean that one is less likely to be invited, and this is because they are sending invites at a faster "rate" than rejections.

 

Say they will invite 500 people. If they sent out 200 invites and 200 rejections so far (I'm making up these numbers) and if they had a total of 3.5k applicants, then 300/500 = 60% of interviews are unfilled while 3300/3500 = 94% of rejections are "unfilled". Applicants now are more likely to be rejected than 3 weeks ago when no invites/rejections were sent (i.e. 100% unfilled interviews and 100% unfilled rejections).

 

Hope that makes sense

[Leon]

^ But that doesn't really help an individual applicant in any way since each application is assessed independently of any other. If they've filled up, say, 90% of their projected interview slots, it doesn't mean that the remaining files to be reviewed are at any kind of disadvantage.

 

So while what you say makes statistical sense, it's logical not very useful to applicants and will just drive us insane. It drove me insane last year when I tried to micro analyze what they were doing, lol.

[souljaboy]

UoT should really try to send the rejections when they review a file, instead of stacking them all for March and only sending invitations. It's really doesn't take any more than a generic "regrets" letter and saves a lot of people from being waiting anxiously.

[shady]

^ But that doesn't really help an individual applicant in any way since each application is assessed independently of any other. If they've filled up, say, 90% of their projected interview slots, it doesn't mean that the remaining files to be reviewed are at any kind of disadvantage.

 

So while what you say makes statistical sense, it's logical not very useful to applicants and will just drive us insane. It drove me insane last year when I tried to micro analyze what they were doing, lol.

 

That is true in theory, but the selection method is so subjective (besides the wGPA) that it's hard to know your position amongst the applicants. For example, the essays play a big role and as an applicant I can't really gouge how good mine are compared to the competition.

 

Since to me its all hazy I go by the stats. The probability that I would get an invite is lower today than it was 3 weeks ago.

[premedzc]

Actually, I beg to differ. Not being invited does mean that one is less likely to be invited, and this is because they are sending invites at a faster "rate" than rejections.

 

Say they will invite 500 people. If they sent out 200 invites and 200 rejections so far (I'm making up these numbers) and if they had a total of 3.5k applicants, then 300/500 = 60% of interviews are unfilled while 3300/3500 = 94% of rejections are "unfilled". Applicants now are more likely to be rejected than 3 weeks ago when no invites/rejections were sent (i.e. 100% unfilled interviews and 100% unfilled rejections).

 

Hope that makes sense

 

Actually, I'm not so sure if this is true. It sounds like one of those paradox puzzles that you spend hours on when you're 5. This is what I have in mind:

 

(disclaimer: it was taken from wikipedia "three prisoners problem")

 

Three prisoners, A, B and C, are in separate cells and sentenced to death. The governor has selected one of them at random to be pardoned. The warden knows which one is pardoned, but is not allowed to tell. Prisoner A begs the warden to let him know the identity of one of the others who is going to be executed. "If B is to be pardoned, give me C's name. If C is to be pardoned, give me B's name. And if I'm to be pardoned, flip a coin to decide whether to name B or C."

 

The warden tells A that B is to be executed. Prisoner A is pleased because he believes that his probability of surviving has gone up from 1/3 to 1/2, as it is now between him and C. Prisoner A secretly tells C the news, who is also pleased, because he reasons that A still has a chance of 1/3 to be the pardoned one, but his chance has gone up to 2/3. What is the correct answer?

 

 

 

In short, the answer is that prisoner A didn't gain information about his own fate.

 

I will leave the explanation to Wikipedia. Obviously since we don't know how UofT sends invitations, it's hard to tell how applicable this is. But in any case, you shouldn't lose hope yet. I imagine less than half of the invites are out. And since sending out rejections is also work, they may have secretly rejected more people, and haven't bothered to tell people about it.

[rmorelan]

Actually, I beg to differ. Not being invited does mean that one is less likely to be invited, and this is because they are sending invites at a faster "rate" than rejections.

 

Say they will invite 500 people. If they sent out 200 invites and 200 rejections so far (I'm making up these numbers) and if they had a total of 3.5k applicants, then 300/500 = 60% of interviews are unfilled while 3300/3500 = 94% of rejections are "unfilled". Applicants now are more likely to be rejected than 3 weeks ago when no invites/rejections were sent (i.e. 100% unfilled interviews and 100% unfilled rejections).

 

Hope that makes sense

 

Toronto doesn't have an interview quota - they interview anyone they are interested in. You cannot fill up the spots. Thus there is no disadvantage to having your file reviewed early or later in terms of getting an interview.

 

edit - all that game theory stuff everyone is throwing around as a results while it makes sense from an economics point of view it just doesn't apply. Economics is the study of scarcity and optimal allocation of resources within it. There is no scarcity here

[shady]

Toronto doesn't have an interview quota - they interview anyone they are interested in. You cannot fill up the spots. Thus there is no disadvantage to having your file reviewed early or later in terms of getting an interview.

 

edit - all that game theory stuff everyone is throwing around as a results while it makes sense from an economics point of view it just doesn't apply. Economics is the study of scarcity and optimal allocation of resources within it. There is no scarcity here

 

I'm pretty sure there is a limit on how many people they will interview - i.e. scarcity in interview resources. Even if they say otherwise, past trends show that number is around 530 except for last year when it was 576. So I wouldn't expect them to interview more than 600 at best ...

[shady]

Actually, I'm not so sure if this is true. It sounds like one of those paradox puzzles that you spend hours on when you're 5. This is what I have in mind:

 

(disclaimer: it was taken from wikipedia "three prisoners problem")

 

Three prisoners, A, B and C, are in separate cells and sentenced to death. The governor has selected one of them at random to be pardoned. The warden knows which one is pardoned, but is not allowed to tell. Prisoner A begs the warden to let him know the identity of one of the others who is going to be executed. "If B is to be pardoned, give me C's name. If C is to be pardoned, give me B's name. And if I'm to be pardoned, flip a coin to decide whether to name B or C."

 

The warden tells A that B is to be executed. Prisoner A is pleased because he believes that his probability of surviving has gone up from 1/3 to 1/2, as it is now between him and C. Prisoner A secretly tells C the news, who is also pleased, because he reasons that A still has a chance of 1/3 to be the pardoned one, but his chance has gone up to 2/3. What is the correct answer?

 

 

 

In short, the answer is that prisoner A didn't gain information about his own fate.

 

I will leave the explanation to Wikipedia. Obviously since we don't know how UofT sends invitations, it's hard to tell how applicable this is. But in any case, you shouldn't lose hope yet. I imagine less than half of the invites are out. And since sending out rejections is also work, they may have secretly rejected more people, and haven't bothered to tell people about it.

 

Hmm this is not what I said. My explanation would be similar to the following

 

Assume two of A,B,C,D,E survive and three are executed. I'm choosing 5 instead of 3 to make it easier to compare to UofT.

 

Prisoner A begs the warden to tell him the outcome of any prisoner (CHOSEN AT RANDOM). If the warden chooses A, problem solved. If the warden chooses B, C, D or E and says "executed", A becomes better off with survival rate = 2/4 instead of 2/5. If the warden chooses B, C, D or E and says "survive", A becomes worse off with a chance of survival = 1/4 instead of 2/5. The latter case is precisely what UofT is doing to us.

 

To make sense to a non-mathy person, what I'm saying is if they sent a lot of invites, those who don't hear anything are more likely to be rejected. If they sent a lot of rejections then those who don't hear anything are more likely to be invited. It's common sense, whether you think about it this way or the numbers way

 

PS. I love this game theory stuff. I used to be a math major

 

EDIT: a little more to add

Technically, UofT isn't choosing what to reveal at random. They are actively sending invites and suppressing regrets. In this case the more you wait without being invited the less likely you are to be invited. Like I said earlier, if you are unable to tell how competitive you are, then you can guess that you are more likely to be invited when 500 invites are pending than when only 50 invites remain to be sent. Again, I hope this makes sense. See my earlier argument on the first page of this thread.

[rmorelan]

I'm pretty sure there is a limit on how many people they will interview - i.e. scarcity in interview resources. Even if they say otherwise, past trends show that number is around 530 except for last year when it was 576. So I wouldn't expect them to interview more than 600 at best ...

 

I probably should have explained that more - I mean of course they cannot interview a huge number - it is just that they don't have a running down total of the number of invites they are working with (the scarce resource).

 

What they do have a standard they are looking for in their holistic review. They having done this for long enough are pretty good at knowing that with that standard and X applicants they will have to interview around Y people and have a plan to interview about that number plus a safety factor but it is not exact I believe. The fact someone else got an interview has no effect on whether later on you would get one because that standard doesn't change. They even mentioned in the past that they will create if required more interview spots in the chance they are required - say there is a really good group etc (resource of "spots" is not locked and finite) . It is just that considering the sample size and the historical data they use the odds of that are quite small. They don't just stop reviewing applications when they get a specific number of people they decided to interview.

 

That is why they can run the system they have and feel it is fair while not evaluating everyone prior to sending out the first invite.

[rmorelan]

Ha I love it as well - one of my degrees is economics and this sort of analysis is exactly what we would do for our senior classes.

 

Still in this case it doesn't apply - it is better to think of it as a statistical model rather than a finite resource model. The selection of a interviewee is an independent event from the selection of another.

 

although I should add what I am saying is the long view - since invites and rejections for a cohort are sent out a slightly different times there are micro moments when your odds might change that always reset to baseline when cohort data is released. Still those are relatively short term fluxes

 

Hmm this is not what I said. My explanation would be similar to the following

 

Assume two of A,B,C,D,E survive and three are executed. I'm choosing 5 instead of 3 to make it easier to compare to UofT.

 

Prisoner A begs the warden to tell him the outcome of any prisoner (CHOSEN AT RANDOM). If the warden chooses A, problem solved. If the warden chooses B, C, D or E and says "executed", A becomes better off with survival rate = 2/4 instead of 2/5. If the warden chooses B, C, D or E and says "survive", A becomes worse off with a chance of survival = 1/4 instead of 2/5. The latter case is precisely what UofT is doing to us.

 

To make sense to a non-mathy person, what I'm saying is if they sent a lot of invites, those who don't hear anything are more likely to be rejected. If they sent a lot of rejections then those who don't hear anything are more likely to be invited. It's common sense, whether you think about it this way or the numbers way

 

PS. I love this game theory stuff. I used to be a math major

 

EDIT: a little more to add

Technically, UofT isn't choosing what to reveal at random. They are actively sending invites and suppressing regrets. In this case the more you wait without being invited the less likely you are to be invited. Like I said earlier, if you are unable to tell how competitive you are, then you can guess that you are more likely to be invited when 500 invites are pending than when only 50 invites remain to be sent. Again, I hope this makes sense. See my earlier argument on the first page of this thread.

[shady]

I probably should have explained that more - I mean of course they cannot interview a huge number - it is just that they don't have a running down total of the number of invites they are working with (the scarce resource).

 

What they do have a standard they are looking for in their holistic review. They having done this for long enough are pretty good at knowing that with that standard and X applicants they will have to interview around Y people and have a plan to interview about that number plus a safety factor but it is not exact I believe. The fact someone else got an interview has no effect on whether later on you would get one because that standard doesn't change. They even mentioned in the past that they will create if required more interview spots in the chance they are required - say there is a really good group etc (resource of "spots" is not locked and finite) . It is just that considering the sample size and the historical data they use the odds of that are quite small. They don't just stop reviewing applications when they get a specific number of people they decided to interview.

 

That is why they can run the system they have and feel it is fair while not evaluating everyone prior to sending out the first invite.

 

Hmm that's interesting. As a premed, I like it.

 

On the chances argument though, if I don't know how well my application stacks compared to their standard, then this doesn't change the statistical argument at all. It only makes the statistics moot if I can judge exactly whether my application will hold up to their standard or not.

[shady]

Ha I love it as well - one of my degrees is economics and this sort of analysis is exactly what we would do for our senior classes.

 

Still in this case it doesn't apply - it is better to think of it as a statistical model rather than a finite resource model. The selection of a interviewee is an independent event from the selection of another.

 

although I should add what I am saying is the long view - since invites and rejections for a cohort are sent out a slightly different times there are micro moments when your odds might change that always reset to baseline when cohort data is released. Still those are relatively short term fluxes

 

Aha. Here is where we differ. Let's think of it another way. The applicants come from a random pool that I will assume will exhibit a normal distribution around some average. I think most of us will agree that we can assume the requirement for interview will be higher than the "average" of the applicant pool.

 

Then if you pluck people from the upper range, you necessarily lower the "average" from what it used to be. Now, if you don't know how your application stacks up against the standard, you will rationally guess that you are more likely to be below the standard than before the release of invites. Because in a normal distribution you are more likely to be closer to the average than to the extremes.

 

Hence the events are not independent.

 

EDIT: wait don't get me wrong. Yes they are independent from the point of view of the adcom. But if you don't know the standard or your application score, you can't use that information in any meaningful way.

[rmorelan]

Hmm that's interesting. As a premed, I like it.

 

On the chances argument though, if I don't know how well my application stacks compared to their standard, then this doesn't change the statistical argument at all. It only makes the statistics moot if I can judge exactly whether my application will hold up to their standard or not.

 

While that is assuming that the odds of your application being accepted are random - which it isn't. With a fixed standard the odds of you in particularly getting an invite relative to the standard and your particularly qualifications never change at all. At all points you either met the standard or you don't.

 

But you are completely right the odds of a random person selected from the remaining in the pool though change based on the day to day fluctuations in the relative number of invites vs rejections released. My point is those fluctuations are very short lived, relatively minor and usually you don't even know the amounts being released.

 

Calculating odds is a well honoured premed tradition. It is a great distraction Still I don't want anyone to think that their is some meaningful disadvantage to at this point overall to not having your file reviewed.

[premedzc]

Then if you pluck people from the upper range, you necessarily lower the "average" from what it used to be. Now, if you don't know how your application stacks up against the standard, you will rationally guess that you are more likely to be below the standard than before the release of invites. Because in a normal distribution you are more likely to be closer to the average than to the extremes.

 

LOL. I guess what I really wanted to say got lost in the amusing puzzle (which I love as well!). My point was that

1. the setup of this dilemma is similar to that of Toronto's invite system;

2. the conclusion, namely that you don't gain any information from what is going on to the other applicants, is the same.

 

If you're awesome, you'll get an invite sooner or later. It doesn't matter if other people have received invitations or not. So, I agree with rmorelan.

 

As for your statistical analysis that I've quoted above, I admit that the entire thread was tl;dr so I kind of skipped some posts. But you're missing something. Not only do they have data for this year, they in fact have data for MANY YEARS. So a couple of hundred people removed from the pool doesn't really change the average, because of the sheer number of applicant data that they have.

 

Anyway, my point is that you have nothing to worry about. There are still several interview dates left, and statistics is only statistics. Even if something was supposed to happen 100%, that doesn't mean it'll happen FOR SURE <--- as a math major, can you appreciate the subtle difference?

 

EDIT: Oh yeah, I meant to say this but I forgot so now I'm editing. There's some psychological phenomenon, I forget what it's called, that if you show people a string of "stuff", then they often remember the first few, and the last few. So if you haven't gotten the Feb interview, then maybe stringing it out until April could be a blessing in disguise

[rmorelan]

 

EDIT: Oh yeah, I meant to say this but I forgot so now I'm editing. There's some psychological phenomenon, I forget what it's called, that if you show people a string of "stuff", then they often remember the first few, and the last few. So if you haven't gotten the Feb interview, then maybe stringing it out until April could be a blessing in disguise

 

Primacy effect and recency effect memory biases

[Stars125]

Does anyone have an idea of approximately how many invites UT has sent out? Have majority of the applicants received invites already? I feel as though the chance of receiving an interview decreases as time progresses (although rmorelan's argument is quite compelling!)

 

Are there any undergraduate students who received their invitation late in the cycle last year?????

[trojjanhorse]

Does anyone have an idea of approximately how many invites UT has sent out? Have majority of the applicants received invites already? I feel as though the chance of receiving an interview decreases as time progresses (although rmorelan's argument is quite compelling!)

 

Are there any undergraduate students who received their invitation late in the cycle last year?????

 

not many has been sent out.. maybe 1/4th to 1/3rd total.

 

the following is from utmed blog

 

UndergradApplicant

Does this mean that undergraduate applicants who don’t hear until a later date have a low chance of getting invited?

 

 

on February 6, 2013 at 4:01 pm | Reply utmedadmissions

No, it doesn’t. Not at all! We have both types of file review and interview scheduling still going strong.

[tb123]

The sent out around 577 last year, have generally sent out between 500- 550. Only one interview weekend of invitations have been sent out of three possible, and it may not even have been filled as I was easily able to reschedule mine. As rmorelan said, you are assessed independently and they interview however many meet an certain level of performance. Last year they added more spots late in the process for this reason.

[souljaboy]

It's probably between 1/4 to 1/3 since the first weekend isn't filled yet though. I don't agree with it being the same chances if you haven't heard anything. I think that the longer you don't hear anything, the less chance you have of getting an interview because it is more likely that they've review your file already, but hasn't sent the rejection email out since apparently they're saving them all for later.

[drtrumpet]

We've heard nothing since Friday...I wonder what's going on...