Brief Profile:
AMCAS Verified 7/8 AMCAS Committee Letter Received 8/12
SR - Secondary Received SC - Secondary Completed C - Application Completed II - Interview Invite IA - Interview Attended R - Rejected W - Withdrew WL - Waitlisted A - Accepted! :)
Cost Summary: $992 - AMCAS Primary $35 - AMCAS, UCLA PRIME $50 - USPS Mail Costs $66 - Premed Committee + Misc Fees $120 - Einstein Secondary $95 - Vermont Secondary $110 - BU Secondary $75 - Chicago Secondary $130 - Dartsmouth Secondary $75 - Drexel Secondary $85 - Harvard Secondary $85 - Stanford Secondary $80 - UPenn Secondary $85 - Pitt Secondary $105 - Sinai Secondary $70 - UCLA Secondary $85 - Yale Secondary $105 - Tufts Secondary $70 - UCSD Secondary $100 - NYU Secondary $85 - Columbia Secondary $75 - Cornell Secondary $80 - UVa Secondary $136 - Pitt Interview Flight $95 - Brown Secondary $90 - USC Secondary $70 - UCLA PRIME Secondary $600 - Two suits + shirts $85 - Northwestern Secondary $50 - Shoes $25 - Costs in Pittsburgh $30 - Art supplies for thank you cards $30 - Bus fare to NYC (Einstein) $20 - Costs in NYC $25 - Train fare to Providence $70 - Gifts for hosts x 4 $30 - Bus fare to NYC (NYU, Sinai) $50 - Costs in NYC $15 - Bus fare from NYC (Cornell) $70 - Costs in NYC $173 - Outgoing flight to UCLA interview $20 - Brown revisit ------ TOTAL COST: $4542 (actual costs may be slightly greater)
Matriculating at Mount Sinai School of Medicine
// Applications //
Application Cycle One: 06/21/2010
Undergraduate college: MIT
Undergraduate Area of study: Biological/Life Sciences
Total MCAT SCORE: 519
MCAT Section Scores:
B/B 129,
C/P 129,
CARS 132
Overall GPA: 3.71
Science GPA: 3.50
Applied, Rejected
University of California, San Francisco
Applying for combined PhD/MSTP? No
Submitted: Yes
Secondary Completed: No
Interview Invite: No
Interview Attended: No
Waitlisted: No
Accepted: No
Rejected: Yes
Summary of Experience:
R: 9/23, Appeal: 9/27, R: 10/28
It was kind of funny that my very first interview this interview season was at Harvard. I doubt it made a difference though. My GPA (especially sGPA) I think hurt me a lot at Harvard. Oh well. It was an honor to be interviewed here! It got very stressful the few days leading up to the decision, though.
Early on in the cycle, I was a bit sad that NYU didn\'t decide to interview me earlier, because I spent the entire last summer working at Bellevue. NYU has a reason to be proud of Bellevue, but unfortunately through working during the summer there with the med students, I realized that most med students don\'t actually get to fully \"utilize\" this strength until relatively late in their med school years.
Nonetheless, it was a great experience working at NYU. Interview day was pretty interesting, because the interviewer basically just told me up-front that she didn\'t really have any questions for me and asked me to just ask her questions. I didn\'t particularly enjoy the vibe I got from the students, since NYU students all seemed to study/care about their classes a lot (very similar to the feeling I got at BU). The med school is located in a great location though :) I\'ll miss the M15 uptown bus =p
(really, in my mind, Sinai > NYU (probably other than name recognition outside of NYC), so this waitlist probably wasn\'t a bad thing =p)
Summary of Experience:
SR: 7/21, SC: 8/17, C: 8/20, II: 2/23, IA: 3/11, WL: 7/6, PRIME SR: 9/2, PRIME SC: 10/1, PRIME C: 10/14
last interview :) what a good note to end on! i loved UCLA :D
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MMI was interesting, although regretfully UCLA was a bit disorganized this year maybe because this is their first year doing MMI? I didn\'t receive my decision till July, and by then it seemed like it would be too late for any actual chance of getting into the school (school starts for them on August 1).
Otherwise, I really enjoyed the school, though. :(
It\'s really sad that I\'m getting waitlisted at the NYC schools! I think NYU would never be a contender in my mind to Sinai, but I knew when I got the interviews that it would come down to Cornell vs. Sinai. If I got in, at least I can go to the Second Looks and see how I feel, but it is how it is I guess.
Here\'s how I think about Cornell vs. Sinai:
-Community focus: Sinai (cf. East Harlem vs. ???) -Clinical exposure for med students: Sinai (Cornell feels like it\'s trying too hard) -Academic atmosphere/schedule: Sinai (boo to morning classes, also internal rankings at Cornell even with P/F? bleh) -Housing: Cornell (second year+) -Name recognition outside of NYC: Cornell -Location: Cornell (I like Midtown more than UES) -Mission/class composition: Sinai (I think HuMed and their liberal arts slant is something to be experienced and see whether it works - this is also a big reason why I really like Brown) -Potential: Sinai (seems like Sinai is a dark horse in the Top 20, while Cornell is plateauing) -Facilities: Cornell (this might be one of the saddest things about giving up Cornell)
So, staying on the WL, but if the WL actually doesn\'t move until past May 15, then I might just commit to Sinai.
First acceptance!! Really excited because Pitt and Pittsburgh gave me a really pleasant surprise on interview day :) I guess still kind of shocked (and honored) because I am not very research focused and Pitt made a really big deal about their #5 NIH funding during their presentations and interviews. But whatever, YAYYYY :D
Very honored by the acceptance, but probably will decline immediately - I don\'t particularly want to go to school in the Bronx, even though it is NYC...hopefully someone else can pick up this spot! :)
YAYYYYY :D I loved Brown SO MUCH. In the five schools I interviewed at so far, I have not yet seen a med school with happiness in its students so evident and so contagious. The best thing about Brown, IMO, is how progressive the school is - the school is innovative and not afraid to change. Given our entering year, a few awesome things are on the horizon: a brand new medical building for students, the integration of an \"academy system\" into its student body (aka. HMS\'s societies), and more e-resources for the med school curriculum (rumor has it that the \'15s may get free ipads...). I love the small sub-100 class size (although it\'s 102 our year, I think), and how Providence is a quaint town not very far from where I am now anyway. All around this is an amazing school, and the Director of Admissions is crazy awesome. Who hugs their interviewees before they leave for the train station? So proud of Brown <333 loveeee
I went as far as to attend Revisit at Brown, because I loved the school so much. It was nice seeing Barbara again, and a shocker that she still remembered me by name and as one of the guys accepted from MIT (there were two of us). The ultimate decision was hard, but mainly stemmed from the fact that I don\'t want to stay in the Boston area any longer (and that Sinai would be really cheap for NYC). We got a tour of the new building during revisit, and it looks like Brown will definitely be on the rise in the next few years!
Mount Sinai is a lot like BU, but in New York City, and with a more impressive student body. I didn\'t actually like the campus that much (although how cheap Aron Hall is definitely a huge plus). The associated hospital is not that big, and it might be a minus that the other major associated hospitals are out all the way in Queens. Living at the Upper East Side would definitely be cool. I think Sinai has several interesting ways of doing things - for example, table conferences for anatomy, unproctored, self-scheduled exams, traditional lecture-based curriculum - which might make attending an interesting experience. The biggest draw, however, is really...
THE STUDENTS.
I love Sinai students. I stayed over with a host, and everyone from the host to the students we ate lunch with to the students who led us on the tour were all phenomenal. Everyone seemed truly passionate about something, and wants to spend their professional career and time in medical school chasing after that dream. This, actually, is a remarkable difference between Sinai and many schools that I have interviewed at/heard stories from. I would attend for just the students.
In any case, I CAN LIVE IN MANHATTAN NOW! YAYYY - dream come true :)
Yay! I really like the underserved focus that BU has, especially with their affiliation with Boston Medical - they\'re definitely the primary provider of healthcare for the underprivileged in Boston. I\'ve done some of my volunteering training at BMC too, so being admitted to BU is also like revisiting something that\'s already familiar to me. :) Also, it definitely is nice to have the option to stay in the city for med school since I already go to school here. However, I didn\'t expect to get admitted to Pitt and Brown earlier than BU, so it would be a tough choice to make between the current options. Keeping my options open, but grateful for the acceptance :) It would be a shame to not get to meet Dean Witzburg again, though. =p
