2A — Monday, November 11, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News

TUESDAY:
By Design
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Twitter Talk
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Behind the Story
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This Week in History

MONDAY:
Looking at the Numbers

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.”

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

MEDICINE
From Page 1A

