I am looking forward to your posts. It’s certainly been an interesting journey for you!
AECOM probably has the least organized admissions process of any school that I have dealt with. They do everything be snail mail, and they do not let applicants know when their files are complete. I called multiple times to find out whether they had received everything, but I was not ever able to get a straight answer. Then, one day, an email arrived inviting me to an interview. So I guess that means my file was complete. Since AECOM is affiliated with Yeshiva University, which is orthodox Jewish, everything closes there on Friday nights and Saturdays. The cafeteria is kosher, and there are several orthodox Jewish students studying there. As far as I know, they do not give any kind of preference to Jewish applicants. The subject of religion did not come up at all during my interview. There is a required scholarly project, and there are multiple opportunities to do research, service activities, and electives abroad.
Interview day: AECOM has a relatively flexible type of curriculum that allows students leeway in shaping their own educations, and their interview day is in keeping with that. I was pretty much able to select what I wanted to do, although of course I did have to attend the interview. 
But everything else is optional. I chose to go on the tour, have lunch with students, meet with a researcher, attend a class, and meet with the financial aid officer. You could also choose to meet with the dean, but I did not see any reason for me to do this. I stayed in the school-owned student housing, which is more like an apartment (separate bathrooms, kitchens, etc.) than a dorm like they have at some schools. It is heavily subsidized and very affordable and convenient, especially during the first two years. My interviewer was an MD, and we had a conversational interview. He also took me on an impromptu tour of the ER and the bariatric chamber. I am SCUBA-certified, so I found that very interesting.
Non-trad considerations: AECOM is a diverse, eclectic school, and the student body reflects that. There are a lot of non-trads, foreign student, URMs, and people from all over the U.S. The students I met were really interesting and seemed to like the school. On the other hand, AECOM’s financial aid policy is not particularly non-trad friendly. They do not give non-trads independent status for institutional aid regardless of age. Apparently you can petition to get that stipulation waived. Some scholarships are awarded based on service record, research, and need. You have to apply for the scholarships. One other consideration for those of you with families: I don’t think that AECOM’s on-campus housing is a great place to live with children. They do have a playground on the facilities, and there are some families living there, but it is small and crowded. I think it would be fine for a married couple though.
Final outcome: accepted. AECOM is a non-rolling school. They begin to send acceptances, waitlists, and rejections by snail-mail in mid-January.
Got my second interview: Mt. Sinai School of Medicine on Friday morning.
So the scorecard is:
Interviews:
Cornell
Mt. Sinai
Rejections:
Georgetown
UC San Francisco
Albert Einstein
SUNY Upstate (Don’t ask me, dude…)
Mysteries:
Harvard
Hopkins
SUNY-Downstate
SUNY-Buffalo
SUNY-Stony Brook
UCLA
George Washington
NYU
Columbia
Yale
Emory
Matt,
Way to go on your interview! I’m sure you’ll do great. Just relax and show them how passionate you are about medicine. Good luck!
Gina
Jeez Gina, Thanks!
For the record, you guys don’t have to slap my back every time this happens-- I’m just maintaining the list since some of my listserv buddies like to keep track.
We’ll see how I like Mt. Sinai. I LOVED Cornell. They promised to fund (including airfare) any credible study abroad project their students design. And the facilities were GLEAMING. A very far cry from the crappy labs and low academic standards (like in biology, as Dr. Belle has noted!) at City College of New York. I’m trepidatious about moving into a dormitory at age 35, but the price is really going to drive me from my home and into a dorm room. I currently pay $850 for my room in a two-bedroom I share with my cousin. At Cornell, MD first-years pay $450 for a room in the dorm. Ergo, I could put my stuff in storage for $100 a month, live in this dorm room, and still save $300 a month.
And before I forget, thanks a lot to Pushkin who took me to a cafe and gave me the straight dope after the day of propaganda was over.
Third one just came in-- I’m going to SUNY Downstate on Feb. 16.
It is very interesting that only New York City med schools seem to have any interest in me-- I wonder if the SUNYs for example get together and split up their desired students geographically. One more mystery school knocked out:
Latest scorecard is:
Interviews:
Cornell
Mt. Sinai
SUNY-Downstate
Rejections:
Georgetown
UC San Francisco
Albert Einstein
SUNY Upstate
Mysteries:
Harvard
Hopkins
SUNY-Buffalo
SUNY-Stony Brook
UCLA
George Washington
NYU
Columbia
Yale
Emory
USF is one of my state schools, and I had an absolutely fantastic experience there. For those of you who frequent SDN, you may have seen posts by REL, who is the USF COM admissions director. The rest of the USF staff is just as helpful and nice as REL is. He was one of the people I met with about my application before beginning this process last summer. I think that USF has the friendliest, most transparent admissions process of any school. After the committee meets, REL personally calls every interviewee to tell them whether they’ve been accepted or waitlisted. He also tells the waitlisted people where they are on the list, and when they can expect to get off it based on how the list has moved in previous years. Tampa is a nice city, not too big and not too small. It’s about an hour’s drive to Orlando. The school itself is fairly young, and they just built a really nice new simulation center where students can practice their clinical skills on standardized patients. The Moffitt Cancer Center is also located on the USF campus a couple of blocks away from the med school. Some of the med students do research projects there.
Interview day: USF interviews once per week on Mondays. The day begins bright and early, and after the orientation, we were taken by shuttle down to Tampa General Hospital. We had a tour of the hospital, and our interviews were there as well. I had two interviews, one with an MD, one with a student. Both were closed-file; the interviewer literally knows absolutely nothing about you when you walk in the room. Basically the MD wanted me to tell her about myself, and the student mostly asked about what I like to do for fun, that kind of thing. Both interviews were conversational, although the student one was conducted in a coffee shop, which made it kind of hard to talk. After the interviews, we went back to USF for talks on financial aid and a campus tour. They gave us a goodie bag at the end with a chocolate bar, which in and of itself made me love them all the more. 
Non-trad considerations: If you are a Florida resident and you want to go to school with a lot of other non-trads, this is the school for you. The average age of the MSI class there is 25. (Unfortunately, if you’re not a FL resident, it will be nearly impossible for you to get accepted to USF.) They have a GPA and MCAT floor of 3.0 and 24 respectively, although they would like applicants to have a 30 MCAT. However, USF is VERY service-oriented, so excellent ECs will really help you there if your academic record is a bit weak. The area around the school is nice and would be good to raise a family. There is even a science museum across the street and daycare/schools on campus. The cost is $20,000 tuition for in-state residents, which is much cheaper than a private school. USF will not consider non-trads to be independent for institutional aid, regardless of age. Since they are a public school, they also do not award merit scholarships.
Final outcome: accepted. REL called me the week after I interviewed and told me that Tampa real estate is an excellent investment. I had mentioned to him at the interview that I wanted to buy a condo wherever I ended up, and I thought it was pretty neat that he remembered. 
I’m originally from Michigan, which was the main reason why I included another state’s state school on my list. It turns out though that U Mich is pretty open to taking OOS students; about half of their students are from OOS. The school is very technologically savvy; all of the quizzes are done on line any time between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. U Michigan is probably the most spirited school out there. If you love college sports, this is a great place for you. For a big school, U Mich is all about the personal touches. This is the only school where the admissions director hand-wrote ME a thank you card to thank me for interviewing there. They also periodically hold on-line chats with the admissions staff where interviewees and acceptees can ask them questions.
Interview day: This is another school that invites large groups of students, though their interview group still wasn’t as big as Baylor’s. I had three interviews here, one with an MD and two with students. They are open-file and last exactly thirty minutes; no going over b/c otherwise you’ll miss the next one. The MD was a psychiatrist and she asked me to tell her about myself. The first student was a non-trad like me who had her PhD and went to med school afterward. The second student was a trad, but he had taken a year off to do economics research. They also gave us a virtual tour of the technology at U Mich, as well as school itself.
Non-trad considerations: U Mich is a fantastic school in terms of taking non-trads. There were several there, both students and interviewees, and including one of my interviewers as I already mentioned. The students were interesting and accomplished people, and they all seem very happy there. Ann Arbor is a bit expensive for COL, but it’s a nice town and it would be a good place to raise a family. Financially, U Mich is a nightmare, especially for OOS students. They are as expensive as a private school, and they do not give non-trads over age 30 independent status for institutional aid. They do give some merit scholarships, however, and in-state students pay much less. One other disadvantage: if you are OOS, you cannot change to in-state residency after MSI like you can at many other schools.
Final outcome: accepted. U Mich sends a great video by email showing the dean of admissions typing the acceptance email and hitting the “send” button exactly at 12:00 AM on Oct. 15. I couldn’t open the video, so he actually called me at 12:45 AM to confirm that I had indeed been accepted. U Mich wins for style, no contest.
How much is the OOS tuition? Being from Illinois I thought of applying there. It does seem like a cool place!
The 2005 entering class paid just under $35,000 for tuition and fees. Including living expenses and other costs, it’s about $54,000 for MSI. In-state tuition is about $22,500. That’s still a lot, but it’s a significant savings.
One other thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that U Mich apparently gives automatic interviews to all applicants with GPAs and MCAT scores over a certain cut-off. I don’t know what the cut-off is, but I didn’t receive one because of not having an undergrad GPA.
Now that I know that you are from Illinois, I will post U Chicago for you soon. That’s the only school I applied to in Illinois.
Yay!
I went to talk with the adcom at Pritzker, but an actual interview is much more educational.
You didn’t apply to NW?
Right, I remember that. You posted a thread about it in the non-trad forum on SDN.
No, I didn’t apply to Northwestern. Somehow it didn’t strike me as being as research-oriented compared to a lot of other schools. Chicago, on the other hand, is a huge powerhouse in physical science research as well as medical research. One of my physicist friends is totally jealous…he didn’t get into grad school at Chicago, and so he had to “settle” for going to Cornell or Harvard instead. 
Chicago is a fantastic school, very eclectic and interdisciplinary. I met a guy there who was doing his MD/PhD in p. chem of all things, and there are other people doing MD/PhDs in humanities and social sciences. The school is heavily research-oriented, and I liked that the medical campus was right there with the main campus, making it easier to take classes in other areas. Chicago does have a heavy class load, however, so it may be difficult for many people to take outside coursework. The first two years are P/F, making it a more cooperative atmosphere. I would have to say that Chicago quite possibly has THE coolest children’s hospital. I won’t ruin the surprise and tell you about it here, but if you go, make sure to ride the elevators.
Interview day: I had two interviews here, one with a faculty and one with a student. The faculty interview focused more on why I want to go to medical school and about research opportunities, while the student wanted to hear about my field research. (I spent four months doing field work in Antarctica a few years ago.) Oddly, the student interviewer turned out to be my host that same night; luckily we hit it off during the interview. 
The interview day itself is pretty standard: there is an orientation in the morning, a tour, and we had lunch with students. One of the other interviewees the day I was there was another non-trad from SDN. My interview was on Halloween, and I went to a party afterward with my host, where I met a bunch of first year MSTP students. One other odd thing about Chicago that no other school did is that they take a picture of you and your interview group, and give copies to all of the interviewees. I’m not sure why, but, it’s actually not the weirdest momento that I’ve gotten from a school…more on this in future posts.
Non-trad considerations: Chicago is a VERY non-trad friendly school. They encourage all of their applicants to take off a year or two before applying, so even the trad students tend to be interesting, well-rounded people. Also, they also consider non-trads over age 30 to be independent for financial aid purposes. That being said, the city is fairly expensive compared to many other midwestern cities, so this may be an issue for some people. The area around the school is also urban and may not be the best place to raise children. I did not feel that it was unsafe, however.
Final outcome: accepted, with full tuition scholarship. This is one of my top choice schools. They called me and told me about the acceptance and the scholarship at the same time, and followed up with a snail-mail letter. I did not have to apply for the scholarship.
Awesome!
I really liked the school when I looked around, too. It was nice to have all the buildings in one spot. I hope I have a shot someday!
Quote:
That being said, the city is fairly expensive compared to many other midwestern cities, so this may be an issue for some people. The area around the school is also urban and may not be the best place to raise children. I did not feel that it was unsafe, however.
I did my undergrad at the U of C. My long, 7 year, off-and-on undergrad
And then I lived in Hyde Park for 2 years after that while doing research there. While I don’t want to scare people off from the U of C, which I did like very much as an institution, Hyde Park is probably the least safe neighborhood of any midwestern medical school that I can think of. The first year I actually lived in Hyde Park rather than commuting my car was broken into twice in 3 months. Nothing was stolen either time, as there was nothing worth stealing, but getting your windows replaced gets tedious awfully quickly. My best friend was mugged on the main quad of the campus, another friend was carjacked less than a mile away, I narrowly avoided 2 attempted muggings, serial rapists seemed to pop up at least once every 2 years (if not more often), and it won’t take long to get to know some of the area con artists.
That said, for anyone who does end up choosing to move into Hyde Park, my advice would be to live as close to the lake as possible. Rather less convenient for getting over to the hospital, but I never had any problems when I lived further over that way as opposed to half a mile or so directly north of the hospital. The U of C is a truly great institution, and I appreciate it that much more now after taking some classes more recently at a community college and Northeastern Illinois University. There is much to love about the university and the hospital, and I do want to congratulate you on your acceptance. But anyone who does plan to go to school there should think carefully about where they choose to live. Appearances can be somewhat deceiving when it comes to Hyde Park. For my part, if I were to get into Pritzker next year, I would choose to live elsewhere. Possibly in the south Loop, the north side, or commuting from the western (or possibly even southern) suburbs.
Thanks for your post. I guess I should amend mine to explain that compared to the other urban campuses I have visited, I did not feel that Hyde Park was especially dangerous. I haven’t posted about Miami yet (maybe I will do that one next!), but the area around their medical campus and Jackson Memorial Hospital is much rougher IMO than the area around U Chicago. (The Miami medical campus is separate from the undergrad campus, which is in Coral Gables and in a relatively nice area.) I did not feel afraid to be out walking around while I was at Chicago, whereas I did at Miami. The student I stayed with at Miami lives in what I can only describe as a walled compound, where you drive in, and the gate shuts behind you. I did not see any of that sort of thing in Hyde Park.
If my last post sounded too cavalier, I didn’t mean to come across that way. It is of course necessary to be careful at ANY urban campus, including AECOM, Baylor, Chicago, Miami, Wash U., etc. But I did want to express that Hyde Park was not the worst medical school neighborhood that I have seen, nor was it as bad as I had expected it to be from what some other people had told me.
Hopkins came though-- wow, I’m really delighted. So this is scorecard:
Latest scorecard is:
Interviews:
Cornell
Mt. Sinai
SUNY-Downstate
Johns Hopkins
Rejections:
Emory
Georgetown
UC San Francisco
Albert Einstein
SUNY Upstate
Mysteries:
Harvard
SUNY-Buffalo
SUNY-Stony Brook
UCLA
George Washington
NYU
Columbia
Yale
AND lest I ever get a big head…
Acceptances:
Big fat zero.
CONGRATS Matt! Be thankful as some folks never get this far & you’ve gotten interviews at some major players. Be patient young grasshopper - your time will come!
Again, sincerest CONGRATS!
UF had to be the biggest surprise of every school that I’ve visited. I went there with a bit of a chip on my shoulder expecting not to like it, but it was fantastic. The facilities were very impressive, the research opportunities there are great, and I liked the people that I met while I was there (students and other interviewees). The coolest thing at UF is Stan, their robotic dummy. He breathes, blinks, has a pulse and a heartbeat. They can make him code, give him drugs and a computer programs him to react, and simulate various other medical conditions. It’s a little freaky how lifelike he is, actually. And just FYI: Gatorade was invented at UF. Far-out.
Interview day: My UF interviews were by far the best ones I’ve ever had. Every interview day should be like this one! I had two interviews, both with faculty. The first one was with a researcher whose work I had written about in my research essay. (The UF research essay is optional.) I did not realize at the time that he was also an adcom member, so when I saw his name as my interviewer, I was pretty shocked! Anyway, he didn’t even really interview me; he said that he’d be happy to take me on his lab, and we basically spent the interview time discussing religion and food. He also gave me a tour of his lab and introduced me to some of the people working there. The second interview went equally well. That interviewer hadn’t read my app, which he said was because he didn’t want to have any preconceived notions about me before meeting me. So he asked me to tell him about myself. About ten minutes into my spiel, he stops me and says he’s already made up his mind about me. Then he asks how I did on the MCAT. I said that I did well on it. He asked me how well. I wasn’t sure if I should tell him, but he said to go ahead b/c he was going to read my file later anyway. After I did, and he was sure that I was serious, that was the end of that interview, too. We started talking about my first interviewer, with whom he was friends, and what things there are to do for fun in Gainesville.
Non-trad considerations: Here’s the issue with UF: it’s in Gainesville, and Gainesville is basically a town that is nothing but UF. There are 40,000+ college students going there, and if that’s your kind of thing, you’ll love it. But I am not sure that it’s the best social environment for a non-trad. That being said, it’s relatively safe there, although this was where Ted Bundy (the serial killer) murdered several female students a couple of decades ago. Financially, UF does not consider non-trads to be independent for institutional aid, and they do not give merit scholarships. Also, there are not a ton of older students here, especially compared to USF or U Miami. And you will probably have to go up to Jacksonville for some of your rotations, which is a big drag IMO.
Outcome: accepted. They called me, and followed up with a snail mail letter.
Quote:
Non-trad considerations: Here’s the issue with UF: it’s in Gainesville, and Gainesville is basically a town that is nothing but UF. There are 40,000+ college students going there, and if that’s your kind of thing, you’ll love it. But I am not sure that it’s the best social environment for a non-trad. That being said, it’s relatively safe there, although this was where Ted Bundy (the serial killer) murdered several female students a couple of decades ago.
I’m a graduate of UF and Q’s assesment for nontrads is right on point although they have some of the best family housing I’ve ever seen. One correction though, is that Ted Bundy murdered the ladies of that OTHER major Florida school (FSWho?) and that 1 guy was killed also by Danny Rolling. I was living there at the time, and can tell you that it was a pretty frightening experience.
