How many interviews is too many?

mcat2
Thu, 13 Oct 2011 01:22:54 +0000

Why would anyone reject an interview without an acceptance in hand? You might be turning away your only potential acceptance.

Some just dares to “gamble.” I believe DS started to reject an interview without an acceptance in hand. From my point of view, it was stupid for him to do so. But with some luck, it turns out OK in the end.

At the beginning of the application cycle, he was even toying with the idea of applying to TMDSAS schools only because he thought “his yield” (not school’s yield) would be higher, and not dealing with AMCAS at all. Hearing this, I warned him that the outcome of medical school application could be very unpredictable, and he finally changed his mind. But I guess for many schools that he applied to (except for some of them he really cared about), I think he likely applied half-heartedly.



I think the mission now has to be follow the money …

DS knows an URM applicant (I do not know his stats) who was accepted to many schools (but not too many because he did not applied to too many to begin with – likely because he does not want to waste money carelessly.), including one top 10. In the end, he decided to go to some other school (like top 30-40-ish but in a nice medium-sized city), which happens to give him most money. He was from a middle class (not one of those “URMs” who went to a high power prep school or those newly immigrated from overseas whose parents are already high achievers) and DS had rarely met anybody who is so level-headed about finance at such a young age. The growing-up environment matters.