Getting feedback from Admissions

[Guest Spritzer5]

I have now received rejections from all five Ontario Med-Schools-no interviews:( . Both McMaster and U of T said in their letters that due to the large number of applications they received this year, individual feedback would not be available. As a graduate student (MSc, Ph.D. candidate) still wanting to study medicine I would appreciate advice on how to get some feedback from these schools on the weakness and strengths of my applications.

[Guest aneliz]

Hey Spritzer,

 

Well, having been rejected from all five, I think that there are a few things about your application that you can conclude right now without the schools' input....

 

1. If you were rejected by UWO, it means that your GPA and/or MCAT scores are lower then the UWO cut-off....while the UWO cuts are by no means 'easily attainable' they aren't outrageously high either. Maybe you should look into rewriting the MCAT and/or boosting your undergrad GPA??? (Scary as that sounds after all that grad work!) I imagine that it is your GPA and/or MCAT that sunk your app at Queen's too....and if you aren't from Ottawa, it may have been a GPA problem that killed your app at UofO....and possibly at UofT and Mac as well although the correlation isn't quite as direct there....while your stats don't need to be sky high to be competitive, they are what ultimately gets your foot through the interview room door at most schools....

 

2. Another potential problem in applying as a grad student is research productivity - I guess you need to ask yourself if your research productivity is good....this could be another problem, especially at UofT and UofO (although not at UWO)

 

3. The only other potential problem area would be your written submissions. This is a factor at UofO, UofT and Mac. It is difficult for schools to give feedback on the written submissions of those that they reject. It is incredibly time consuming to re-read them all and give constructive feedback that will be useful to the applicants. That said, I know that people have had success in getting feedback from Mac in the past...although this may have changed in the past year due to the large number of applications this year....UofT is another story...I have never heard of them bending and being accomodating...but you can always try. I have no experience with UofO.

 

My advice to you would be to approach the subject calmly and politely with them and not to expect immediate action. All of the admissions offices are incredibly busy right now scheduling and confirming interviews, interviewing, and calculating the final results for the applicants that are still in the running. Obviously, their priorities right now are not with those that they have already rejected. If you give them a few months, and then try looking for feedback, you might be more successful....but at the same time you should be prepared to accept a 'no'. If dealing with the schools themselves doesn't work out, see if you can find a trusted prof or friend or a med student that would be willing to read over your written submissions and offer you their reaction to it. You may be surprised at what they see in it that maybe you haven't thought of before.

 

Good luck!

[Guest UOMeds05]

I think that Aneliz has given some great advice. You can appreciate that with close to or over 4000 applicants this year, it would be physically impossible to provide feedback to every student. However, if you were to luck out, as Aneliz suggested, I would imagine that it would be in a few months time and not at the present moment. I can only comment on UofO, and even at that not difinitively, that they do not provide any feedback. This has been a policy for quite some time now, and I believe is also stated in the letter.

 

I agree that your best bet would be to have your app peer reviewed after you yourself have dissected it.

 

Best of luck.

[Guest Spritzer5]

Thanks Aneliz and UOMeds05,

 

I really appreciate your guidance. As my Bio Ph.D. should be defended in the next three months I guess I have to decide what to do in the fall.

 

Take more undergrad courses to boost my low UGPA (currently 3.15:| ), or do a post-doc/hang around in the lab to increase my research publications (currently 3 published first authors and 3 first authors to be submitted in the next two months). Either option would probably take two years. Any thoughts?

 

(Maybe even rewrite the MCAT 9VR, 9PS, QWS, 10B)

[Guest aneliz]

Well, I would definitely say that it was your GPA that did you in at Western....and likely at UofT, UofO and Queen's too...I would concentrate on that....regardless of how many publications you can scrape up in the next year...even if they are first author in Science or Nature....they aren't going to make that GPA go away in the ad comm's eyes....And, at UWO, they won't even bother looking past your low GPA to see that you have a PhD or any publications at all....

 

So, in my opinion, the best way to increase your standing would be to do something with that GPA. Not the most glamorous option at this point, I know...but a necessary evil. (and I don't necessarily agree with it either...)

 

The other thing that you might want to look into is rewriting the MCAT...your scores aren't bad but they aren't stand-out-awesome either....I think that you are probably just scraping the cuts at most schools and that 9 in VR may actually hurt you at some schools....

 

Other than that, I would spend time getting as much life experience, volunteer work, research experience as possible before the next round....you are going to want to show some 'productivity' to the ad comm....meaning that you are going to have to show that you didn't just do your PhD to fill in time or to try and score some 'bonus' points in the med admissions game. I'm sure that you are a wonderful applicant and, unfortunately, that darn undergrad GPA is still haunting you...you need to do something about it to have a real shot in my opinion....

 

Good luck!