<p>Yes, we can only hope that location will work out. But there is no way to control it at all. One lucky factor is that there are 3 programs that D. will apply at her location and 3 additional in-state. There about 3 or so that are further but still somewhat desirable, but they will be much harder to adjust in terms of life outside of the medicine. That is why, D. keeps saying that she will be ecstatic to match, but where she will match is not so much in her control.
In addition, their GPA is not under their full control either. All pre-clinicals are p/f. Clinicals mostly depend on evals, shelf exams are very small percent and in addition sometime it can only bring the grade down, but never up even if the score is very high. Evals are written by very busy people. Sometime they even do not look at the format. She showed me her evals with the extrememly positive comments written in the column for the negative comments. I am talking about something like “One of the best I have seen in the past 20 years”. Imagine, if the person who is in hurry making the decision for the final grade, does not read what is in a column but instead just count negatives and positives, then she is screwed. Since negatvie column is the first and positive column is the second, most comments (all very positive) are written in the negatvie column. This is just one example. The others include the fact that some are looking for very specific examples to give an H, while people who write evals just do not take time to provide specific detailed examples when student went way beyond and above. What I am saying is that evals are very subjective, but at D’s school GPA ended up based strictly on evals. Sometime you lucky, sometime you are not, despite of all efforts. At least, it is a lesson in maturity, many times our lives is in the hands of others.<br>
I tell my D. just to stay cool and do not think much about next March. Just go by your daily business with the best positive outlook possible under circumstances.</p>