This service is part of Student Academic Affairs and Advising and is open to all Mason community members interested in pursuing a graduate degree in the health professions.
Communities > Reapplicants > Why I wasn't offered letter
There is little consolation if your year-long pursuit for a place in a health professions program does not end successfully. The fact is that many applicant pools are increasing yearly at a rate of 8-15% while the number of available spots has not grown. Many applicants with excellent credentials get squeezed out due to numbers alone.
Certainly everyone should not be too discouraged. Many students have gotten into medical school as reapplicants, but what did they do the next time around?
First off, if you do not have a sufficiently high GPA or entrance exam scores, there are too many people who have better academic records for you in the applicant pool to apply again without making a significant effort to address this concern. If this is the case, you should think about participating in a postbaccalaureate preparatory program or get more experience working with scientific concepts and projects. Some people get jobs as laboratory technicians or enter a master's degree program before applying again. These are second-chance opportunities to impress yourself and other evaluators about your ability to handle difficult scientific knowledge; do well with this opportunity to enhance your reapplication.
If you have a low entrance exam score, you should take some time to evaluate your preparation strategy before taking the test again. Nothing raises a red flag to an admissions committee like multiple attempts at the MCAT or DAT where improvement was marginal. There are some circumstances where rushing in to take a test again is worth pursuing, but repeat test-takers usually have a small improvement in their scores (by around 3 points on the entire MCAT score).
If you have a competitive GPA and exam score, you need to also evaluate the schools you applied for. Not everyone should apply to an Ivy-caliber graduate school. How realistic was your assessment of how well you fit with the educational style and mission of the health professions schools you applied to? The non-quantitative variables include how well you as an applicant would fit into the student body of the institution and their mission to train you with the resources of their school.
Having a significant experience in health care or community service within the profession of choice is very important. Most applicants will have experience, but the non-matriculants may not be able to express how well this experience has prepared them for a career in the health professions. Activities that do not involve significant contact with patients or people in need do not enhance the application. Committed involvement in a few activities is better than superficial involvement in many.
Personal characteristics and presentation can prevent an applicant from getting an offer. While your letters address many of the personal interactions we have that give us insight into your success in health care, sometimes an applicant will undermine all of that with the admissions interview. Behaving in an immature or unprofessional fashion once one steps onto a campus (yes, even when you are not being interviewed), being late for your interview, or not comporting or dressing yourself appropriately (wear flip-flops to an interview) completely ruins your chances for admission. "Professionalism" is a trait that many admissions officers are evaluating, and your previous years as a college student or graduate will reveal how much more you have to learn about that concept. Doctors don't stop being professionals once they earn their degrees, so as aspiring doctors, you need to accept those behavioral expectations.
In short, there are few circumstances in which a rejection from a health professions program is a final, unappealable verdict, and after consultation with the Health Professions Advisor, you can develop a plan to reapply. However, not getting into a health professions program is not the end of the world, but it may be a signal that you need to evaluate more realistically your professional goals and your plan to achieve them.
This advice was inspired by a presentation that Dr. James G. Peden, Jr. (the Associate Dean of Admissions) gives to students who were unsuccessful in their pursuit for admission at Brody East Carolina University School of Medicine (which only admits North Carolina residents). I strongly recommend that you read that web page to get an idea of what one admissions officer tells disappointed applicants.