Notifications by email?

[Guest mumfirst]

Hey Mac students,

 

This might be right out of left field but does anyone know whether we might possibly be notified of our acceptance/rejection by email? I understand that some of the other med schools notify applicants this way. Last year, Mac had set up an "applicant status" link on their website - it never worked and was eventually removed but the idea was obviously there. :rolleyes

 

The idea behind Ontario schools sending out acceptances and rejections for the last business day in May is so that all applicants find out at the same time. If some get emails or phone calls (I don't know if any actually phone) and others have to wait for snail mail then it sort of defeats the purpose of the set date.

 

Anybody know if an email is a possibility this year, or what the thoughts are behind not emailing?

[Guest aneliz]

As far as I know, there is only ONE school in Ontario that notifies applicants in any other way other than snail mail....

 

Ottawa attempted to notify those that were accepted by e-mail last year (I believe that it was the first time that it was tried!) Problem was that it didn't work out so well....the UofO mail server crashed in the middle of the e-mail send out...and some people got e-mails and others didn't (even though they had been accepted). Meanwhile, news that some people had been e-mailed and news that the server had crashed mid-send leaked out into the general applicant pool...result: Ottawa was absolutely flooded by calls from people wanting to know their status...people that didn't receive e-mails and thought that maybe their e-mail had gotten lost in cyberspace, people that hadn't given Ottawa an e-mail address, or couldn't get at the e-mail address they gave them....caused quite the disaster....because they ended up having to personally speak to most of their applicant pool...(even those with a 'bad waitlist' status)

 

I imagine that not too many other schools are going to be willing to try this given last year's results at UofO...although it seems that Ottawa may be willing to give it a second shot (see Ottawa forum).

 

As for everybody not finding out together: the point of the common release is so that people cannot RESPOND to an offer of admission to any school before ALL of the schools have had the opportunity to get their frist round acceptances out...(eliminate competition within Ontario)...As it is, different schools are different distances aways from people's homes...so even if they all mail their notification at exactly the same time (to the second) you wouldn't necessarily receive all of the letters at the same time (thanks to the logistics of the mail system). About the only way to fix that would be to have the schools all submit all of their decisions to OMSAS, have OMSAS compile all of the results for each student (ie accepted at Mac, waitlisted at UofO, rejected at Queens, etc) in one letter or e-mail and release it.... that would solve the problem, but given the speed that OMSAS works, I imagine that they probably wouldn't have everything correlated and ready to release until about July 30!!!