Why don't people apply to more schools?

I think the number of schools you should apply bases almost entirely on your context, such as your nationality (are you American?), home state (is your state medical school, or schools, reasonable to get into, given your application?), your family's (or your own) income, your set of target schools, what you plan on doing the summer you apply, and even the content of your app. For some, maybe they only need 5 applications, for others it can be 40. Just use your common sense; only you know your limits. Applying to medical school is a sound investment, and worth saving for when it comes to the other expenses of life IMO.

Personally, I think you should apply anywhere you would regret not applying to, and to plan on making this whole application process a one-time-only deal; I value a year of my life, off-track from my own goals and especially at a young age, well over the extra $1000 spent on paying for extra secondaries. Writing all of those secondaries in such a short amount of time is definitely tough, but keep in mind that a lot of schools ask very similar questions, and you can re-adapt stories/anecdotes to fit their prompts in most cases.

For what it's worth, I applied to about 40 schools (including some on TMDSAS), and so far I'm at 5 interviews, 10 rejections, and one acceptance. I did this because I think my application has some very unique components to it, and although my stats are somewhat competitive for some selective schools (LizzyM 71), they're still below the median at most of these places, and I wanted to give myself a shot at these schools. The school I was accepted at is a school continually bandied about on SDN as "low-yield", and three of the schools I'm interviewing for (including a top 10), weren't even on my original list of 20 schools. I count myself extremely fortunate, but I certainly think that applying to a large number of places gave me an advantage for getting interviews/acceptances already.

tl;dr: The number of schools you apply to almost entirely depends on your life situation.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Why don't people apply to more schools?