2A — Monday, November 11, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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SHANAHAN :)
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FIND ME
EMMA MATI/Daily
André Aciman reflects on his past works nd discusses his new book “Find Me” at an event held by Literati Bookstore at Rackham Auditorium
Saturday evening.
DESIGN BY TAYLOR SCHOTT
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The U-M Medical School charges
$85. After secondaries, Arimoto
said his total application costs were
already in the range of multiple
thousands of dollars, not including
MCAT-related fees.
“Secondary is a cash grab,”
Arimoto said. “Obviously, you don’t
need a hundred dollars from every
single applicant for them to send you,
what, two essays?”
Without family support, Arimoto
said, he would have been in financial
distress at this point in the cycle.
“Even before my interviews
started, I would’ve just been drained
monetarily,” Arimoto said. “There
would have been no question about
that.”
Steven Gay, assistant dean for
admissions at the U-M Medical
School, said though secondaries are
expensive, the school-specific aspect
makes sense.
“Every school has its own
secondary, and I think that’s very
appropriate,” Gay said. “Just like
students are looking for certain
things in schools, we should be
attempting to get the best students
to succeed in our curriculum, to
become the type of physicians we
feel it’s our mission as an institution
to create.”
Gay
acknowledged
the
cost
of secondaries, noting the U-M
Medical School does try to alleviate
it by offering fee waivers to students
who reach out and demonstrate
need. In addition, Gay said when
the University began accepting a
“people skills” test called CASPer as
part of medical school applications,
the Office of Admissions did not
raise secondary fees, recognizing
that students were now paying to
submit those scores.
“We’ve worked to keep our
secondaries lower in terms of the top
institutions,” Gay said.
There are also some scholarships
available through the AAMC. For
instance, Tran said she was able to
get 15 or 16 schools worth of primary
and secondary application fees
waived, covering all the schools she
applied to.
As a final step, qualified applicants
hear back from medical schools with
interview invitations. Arimoto said
someone who applies to 20 schools
might expect to get five interviews
if they’re fortunate. The travel costs
are not reimbursed.
“If you’re lucky enough to get
interviews, they don’t pay for your
interviews,” Arimoto said. “If you
have to fly out to California from
Michigan, it’s like $500, and then
you have to buy a hotel, that’s $200
a night, and if you have to spend two
nights there, then you’re already at a
grand for one interview.”
Gay said medical schools have
some ways of mitigating the cost
of attending interviews. Schools
in similar locations may try to
coordinate
interview
dates
so
students only have to make a
single trip. In addition, Gay said
the U-M Medical School works to
provide interviewees with more
affordable
housing,
food
and
transportation options, as well as
travel reimbursements for some
applicants.
“We
tend
to
give
travel
reimbursement for our students
who are low-income so that it’s
not an issue to travel,” Gay said.
“We have an extensive program
where students can stay with other
students on their visits and aren’t
paying for places to stay.”
Tran
received
a
$200
reimbursement from the University
to support her interview. She
also tried to offset travel costs by
grouping interviews in similar
locations.
“I tried to group my interviews
together,” Tran said. “There are
things like that that you can do, but
that being said, sometimes you don’t
have that choice because the school
will pick a date for you.”
Tran said hearing back from the
University of Michigan, one of her
top schools, by early October spared
her the cost of additional interviews.
In addition to seeking out schools
that offer a quick turnaround,
she said applicants should think
carefully about what schools are
truly a good match, rather than just
applying to as many as possible.
“There are some people who
don’t need to apply to that many,
and there will be people applying
to schools that are not a good fit for
them,” Tran said. “Just think about
what the school’s values are.”
Gay echoed Tran’s sentiments,
noting
the
“one-size-fits-all”
primary application, which allows
prospective medical students to
apply online to dozens of schools at
once, may encourage people to apply
to more schools than necessary. He
said applicants should narrow down
which schools actually match their
interests. For instance, some schools
might better prepare students for
medical research, while others
might fit students aspiring to become
primary-care physicians.
“Part of applying to medical
school,
just
like
applying
to
undergrad, is the onus of when it’s
easy to apply to all of them, you just
apply to all of them,” Gay said. “There
is responsibility on the student to be
an informed consumer with some
discretion, saying, these are actually
the things I want.”
Gay said increasing the number
of schools one applies to doesn’t
necessarily improve the chances
of getting an interview. Medical
schools have specific criteria, so Gay
said applicants need to be honest
with themselves about what schools
they are likely to be accepted to.
“The application process isn’t a
lucky thing,” Gay said. “Students
do the very best they can to prepare
themselves to be the best candidates
for medical school. But once they
have done that, it’s important
to assess what you look like as a
candidate and have others with
experience frankly assess what your
candidacy looks like.”
One thing medical schools can
do to help applicants make educated
choices, Gay said, is to be open with
pre-med advisers and prospective
students about what requirements
and values they’re looking for in an
applicant.
“All of us, as medical schools,
should be transparent in our
processes,” Gay said. “We should
be very open with letting students
know how we are trying to assist
them, knowing that finances can be a
significant barrier to the application
process.
But
students,
equally,
should work hard to pick schools
they feel they have not only the best
opportunity of getting into but fit
who they wish to be.”
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MichiganDaily.com
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