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wait this is ridiculous. I'm kind of glad I got a second rejection instead of getting my hopes back up. BYE DUKE BYE
Even being rejected a second time, I'm back to thinking "what if". Damn it Duke, not nice. lolwait this is ridiculous. I'm kind of glad I got a second rejection instead of getting my hopes back up. BYE DUKE BYE
yep ofc, I have a twinge of that too but not nearly as bad as the people who ACTUALLY got back on the waitlist oh lord good luck yallEven being rejected a second time, I'm back to thinking "what if". Damn it Duke, not nice. lol
I was rejected in the first wave.
Duke admissions has been such a mess this year. I was actually originally accepted and then the day before second look received an email saying my acceptance was an administrative error. I was actually waitlisted. Oops! Thanks Duke.
Holy crap.Duke admissions has been such a mess this year. I was actually originally accepted and then the day before second look received an email saying my acceptance was an administrative error. I was actually waitlisted. Oops! Thanks Duke.
Based on the previous threads, am I correct in summarizing that we have :
few people who got previously accepted become waitlists,
some waitlists become rejections,
and some rejections become waitlists (along with people receiving rejections again).
It seems like DukeMed Admissions must made an administrative error of some sorts (I guess it will not be the first though; google Jesica Santillan if interested).
how was the email from Dean Armstrong phrased? did she offer an explanation? like "sorry we screwed up before"?
Most schools that have offered me alternate/waitlist positions are usually pretty conservative with their estimations of how much movement will occur, whereas the phrasing here was "We anticipate that there will be a number of opportunities to go to the waitlist as our class comes together". Idk.
Dean Armstrong's phrasing was simply "The email that you received today is the correct status assigned to your application and should be acted on".
And I'm about 99.9% sure that absolutely none of them will ever be answered haha-I'm right there with youThis is all crazy. Does this mean that Duke's previous WL was so small that they feared that they wouldn't be able to fill the class? Did they reevaluate rejected applicants? Or were the rejections an error from the beginning? How does the WL at duke work? Is everyone on equal footing now? I have so many questions haha.
Especially the day before second look, when travel plans may have been made. I think someone is just hoping to make trouble or to better his/her chance of coming off the alternate list.I find it hard to believe that an acceptance was withdrawn. Wouldn't that be against some kind of rules? And even if it weren't against any rules, would a school really be that mean? What if you were accepted to a school and withdrew from everywhere else or told all your friends and family and then that school says you are actually not accepted. They can't be allowed to put you in that position.
This is all crazy. Does this mean that Duke's previous WL was so small that they feared that they wouldn't be able to fill the class? Did they reevaluate rejected applicants? Or were the rejections an error from the beginning? How does the WL at duke work? Is everyone on equal footing now? I have so many questions haha.
I'm going to try to answer this with a complete guess based on second look and what I heard from a member of the "Super Exec Committee" (the ones who evaluate post-interview candidates). After you interview, your MMIs are scored...if you score high enough, your file is sent to a member of the super executive committee (their words for describing it, not mine haha). Those who do not meet the cutoff are rejected.
Once the member of the AdCom has your file, he/she prepares it for presentation to the rest of the committee. Once it has been presented, the committee votes 1 (reject), 2 (waitlist), 3 (accept). Obviously not everyone will vote the same, so my assumption is that they will average and round.
For this, I can only assume they either (1) misclassified certain people and realized later or (2) didn't like the size of their waitlist and decided to reclassify the waitlist to include those with a slightly lower average.
Very interesting! If this is indeed the case, then I wonder whether the entering class will vary quantitatively and/or qualitatively from the typical feel of previous Duke classes, or whatever ideal class "flavor" that the admissions office usually has in mind.The process that you described sounds very logical and reasonable. Built on this, one possibility might explain the chaos better than others:
Some applicants with high enough MMI score did not get to viewed by the "Supper Exec Committee" or SEC and the admission office did not realize this until later
Why this can explain everything, bear with me.
So this is probably how Duke does notification, they rank the applicant's SEC score from the highest to lowest. Then ask the system to spit out the information of the highest ranking XX number of students. Then ask the system to send out WL email to the next YY number of students. The rest of the students were rejected along with those who did not make it to Super Exec Committee. The accepted students were probably processed by hand, so there are all these discrepancies in terms of how students find out about their acceptances.
However, if for some reason some students never were discussed by the SEC, then the system won't be able to rank them. They also don't have some kind of special value assigned to it informing the system to take rejection action like the ones of those who are rejected pre-SEC. So the system just completely ignored those people in all the actions. The admission office might not know that thinking all students were assigned to one of the 3 groups. Which explains why they are so suspicious whether some of the limboland residents "actually interviewed at Duke". It also explains their confidence about asking people to "just wait for your letter". They were probably convinced that those were just accepted ones being impatient about being notified.
I think sometime during that 11 days, they realized this being the case, and so instead of fixing it, they just ask the system to rejected all the students who never had any SEC score assigned.
Then something happened in the past month. Exactly what we won't know. I'm guessing either
1)During second look, they probably realize that some of their preferred students post interview did not make it into the accepted student pool and they feel the effect of missing a significant portion of the best candidates on the whole dynamic of the class.
2)People from the SEC pressured to reevaluate the limboland applicants because they don't want to miss out on top applicants among those students
3) A brief moment of conscious took over the dean of admission.
In any case, the SEC met, discuss and assigned score to the limboland applicants. And now they ended up with a new and full ranking of the students post interview. Obviously the limbo land applicants are all over the place. Some should have been accepted and some should have been waitlisted and some should have been rejected all the same. The last group were the ones who are rejected twice. Due to the new ranking, some previously waitlisted applicants now fall below the cut off and are now rejected.
However, it's too late to accept any more student without the concern of over enrolling. So They ended up having to waitlisted those students who were newly discovered to be worthy of acceptances. And those are the students who will be the first ones to be accepted given any spot opening in the future, hence the super positive wording in terms of waitlist movement. This is the only possible explanation why they are so confident about waitlist movement while at the same time rejecting people off the waitlist so early.
Alright I'm done. I totally spent way too much timing thinking about this obviously, but I suspect that this is very likely the case and please duke med admission don't freakout, I'm not one of your employee, I'm just someone who's really good at making dots connect.
To quote the dean of Yale, they can easily accept 4 or 5 times the size of the class without affecting the academic performance of the student body any bit. I think we can all agree this is probably the same with Duke and most top schools.Very interesting! If this is indeed the case, then I wonder whether the entering class will vary quantitatively and/or qualitatively from the typical feel of previous Duke classes, or whatever class flavor the admissions committee has in mind.
The process that you described sounds very logical and reasonable. Built on this, one possibility might explain the chaos better than others:
Some applicants with high enough MMI score did not get to viewed by the "Supper Exec Committee" or SEC and the admission office did not realize this until later
Why this can explain everything, bear with me.
So this is probably how Duke does notification, they rank the applicant's SEC score from the highest to lowest. Then ask the system to spit out the information of the highest ranking XX number of students. Then ask the system to send out WL email to the next YY number of students. The rest of the students were rejected along with those who did not make it to Super Exec Committee. The accepted students were probably processed by hand, so there are all these discrepancies in terms of how students find out about their acceptances.
However, if for some reason some students never were discussed by the SEC, then the system won't be able to rank them. They also don't have some kind of special value assigned to it informing the system to take rejection action like the ones of those who are rejected pre-SEC. So the system just completely ignored those people in all the actions. The admission office might not know that thinking all students were assigned to one of the 3 groups. Which explains why they are so suspicious whether some of the limboland residents "actually interviewed at Duke". It also explains their confidence about asking people to "just wait for your letter". They were probably convinced that those were just accepted ones being impatient about being notified.
I think sometime during that 11 days, they realized this being the case, and so instead of fixing it, they just ask the system to rejected all the students who never had any SEC score assigned.
Then something happened in the past month. Exactly what we won't know. I'm guessing either
1)During second look, they probably realize that some of their preferred students post interview did not make it into the accepted student pool and they feel the effect of missing a significant portion of the best candidates on the whole dynamic of the class.
2)People from the SEC pressured to reevaluate the limboland applicants because they don't want to miss out on top applicants among those students
3) A brief moment of conscious took over the dean of admission.
In any case, the SEC met, discuss and assigned score to the limboland applicants. And now they ended up with a new and full ranking of the students post interview. Obviously the limbo land applicants are all over the place. Some should have been accepted and some should have been waitlisted and some should have been rejected all the same. The last group were the ones who are rejected twice. Due to the new ranking, some previously waitlisted applicants now fall below the cut off and are now rejected.
However, it's too late to accept any more student without the concern of over enrolling. So They ended up having to waitlisted those students who were newly discovered to be worthy of acceptances. And those are the students who will be the first ones to be accepted given any spot opening in the future, hence the super positive wording in terms of waitlist movement. This is the only possible explanation why they are so confident about waitlist movement while at the same time rejecting people off the waitlist so early.
Alright I'm done. I totally spent way too much timing thinking about this obviously, but I suspect that this is very likely the case and please duke med admission don't freakout, I'm not one of your employee, I'm just someone who's really good at making dots connect.
Maybe I missed it, but has anyone actually been bumped from waitlist to rejection already?This all makes sense except for one thing: As far as I can tell, I don't think most people who were placed on the waitlist post-rejection were previously in the "limbo" group.
However, it's too late to accept any more student without the concern of over enrolling. So They ended up having to waitlisted those students who were newly discovered to be worthy of acceptances. And those are the students who will be the first ones to be accepted given any spot opening in the future, hence the super positive wording in terms of waitlist movement. This is the only possible explanation why they are so confident about waitlist movement while at the same time rejecting people off the waitlist so early.
The process that you described sounds very logical and reasonable. Built on this, one possibility might explain the chaos better than others:
Some applicants with high enough MMI score did not get to viewed by the "Supper Exec Committee" or SEC and the admission office did not realize this until later
Why this can explain everything, bear with me.
So this is probably how Duke does notification, they rank the applicant's SEC score from the highest to lowest. Then ask the system to spit out the information of the highest ranking XX number of students. Then ask the system to send out WL email to the next YY number of students. The rest of the students were rejected along with those who did not make it to Super Exec Committee. The accepted students were probably processed by hand, so there are all these discrepancies in terms of how students find out about their acceptances.
However, if for some reason some students never were discussed by the SEC, then the system won't be able to rank them. They also don't have some kind of special value assigned to it informing the system to take rejection action like the ones of those who are rejected pre-SEC. So the system just completely ignored those people in all the actions. The admission office might not know that thinking all students were assigned to one of the 3 groups. Which explains why they are so suspicious whether some of the limboland residents "actually interviewed at Duke". It also explains their confidence about asking people to "just wait for your letter". They were probably convinced that those were just accepted ones being impatient about being notified.
I think sometime during that 11 days, they realized this being the case, and so instead of fixing it, they just ask the system to rejected all the students who never had any SEC score assigned.
Then something happened in the past month. Exactly what we won't know. I'm guessing either
1)During second look, they probably realize that some of their preferred students post interview did not make it into the accepted student pool and they feel the effect of missing a significant portion of the best candidates on the whole dynamic of the class.
2)People from the SEC pressured to reevaluate the limboland applicants because they don't want to miss out on top applicants among those students
3) A brief moment of conscious took over the dean of admission.
In any case, the SEC met, discuss and assigned score to the limboland applicants. And now they ended up with a new and full ranking of the students post interview. Obviously the limbo land applicants are all over the place. Some should have been accepted and some should have been waitlisted and some should have been rejected all the same. The last group were the ones who are rejected twice. Due to the new ranking, some previously waitlisted applicants now fall below the cut off and are now rejected.
However, it's too late to accept any more student without the concern of over enrolling. So They ended up having to waitlisted those students who were newly discovered to be worthy of acceptances. And those are the students who will be the first ones to be accepted given any spot opening in the future, hence the super positive wording in terms of waitlist movement. This is the only possible explanation why they are so confident about waitlist movement while at the same time rejecting people off the waitlist so early.
Alright I'm done. I totally spent way too much timing thinking about this obviously, but I suspect that this is very likely the case and please duke med admission don't freakout, I'm not one of your employee, I'm just someone who's really good at making dots connect.
I completely agree, I was thinking the same thing. I don't buy it and if it is indeed true then I wouldn't even want to go to a school that would do such a thing. If I I got into Duke early March then I would have withdrawn all my apps to other schools...I find it hard to believe that an acceptance was withdrawn. Wouldn't that be against some kind of rules? And even if it weren't against any rules, would a school really be that mean? What if you were accepted to a school and withdrew from everywhere else or told all your friends and family and then that school says you are actually not accepted. They can't be allowed to put you in that position.
Just to play devil's advocate here, we all questioned the legitimacy of the first reports of acceptance calls as well, given that we had written instructions from Duke indicating that would not be the case, and a number of things Duke has done this cycle seemed unreasonable/unlikely to occur and did anyway. Also, for the record, Duke's official position was that not all acceptees would receive calls.Also, so far the only report of an acceptance-turned-waitlist is by a person with one message on here and no proof of credibility. Frankly, given that admitted students were called, I would be amazed if this were actually true.
Just to play devil's advocate here, we all questioned the legitimacy of the first reports of acceptance calls as well, given that we had written instructions from Duke indicating that would not be the case, and a number of things Duke has done this cycle seemed unreasonable/unlikely to occur and did anyway. Also, for the record, Duke's official position was that not all acceptees would receive calls.
Creative and I like it but I think this is a long shot. Most likely they just wanted to make the waitlist a little bigger and at the same time they decided to reject some people on the waitlist that they reviewed and decided they didn't want.The process that you described sounds very logical and reasonable. Built on this, one possibility might explain the chaos better than others:
Some applicants with high enough MMI score did not get to viewed by the "Supper Exec Committee" or SEC and the admission office did not realize this until later
Why this can explain everything, bear with me.
So this is probably how Duke does notification, they rank the applicant's SEC score from the highest to lowest. Then ask the system to spit out the information of the highest ranking XX number of students. Then ask the system to send out WL email to the next YY number of students. The rest of the students were rejected along with those who did not make it to Super Exec Committee. The accepted students were probably processed by hand, so there are all these discrepancies in terms of how students find out about their acceptances.
However, if for some reason some students never were discussed by the SEC, then the system won't be able to rank them. They also don't have some kind of special value assigned to it informing the system to take rejection action like the ones of those who are rejected pre-SEC. So the system just completely ignored those people in all the actions. The admission office might not know that thinking all students were assigned to one of the 3 groups. Which explains why they are so suspicious whether some of the limboland residents "actually interviewed at Duke". It also explains their confidence about asking people to "just wait for your letter". They were probably convinced that those were just accepted ones being impatient about being notified.
I think sometime during that 11 days, they realized this being the case, and so instead of fixing it, they just ask the system to rejected all the students who never had any SEC score assigned.
Then something happened in the past month. Exactly what we won't know. I'm guessing either
1)During second look, they probably realize that some of their preferred students post interview did not make it into the accepted student pool and they feel the effect of missing a significant portion of the best candidates on the whole dynamic of the class.
2)People from the SEC pressured to reevaluate the limboland applicants because they don't want to miss out on top applicants among those students
3) A brief moment of conscious took over the dean of admission.
In any case, the SEC met, discuss and assigned score to the limboland applicants. And now they ended up with a new and full ranking of the students post interview. Obviously the limbo land applicants are all over the place. Some should have been accepted and some should have been waitlisted and some should have been rejected all the same. The last group were the ones who are rejected twice. Due to the new ranking, some previously waitlisted applicants now fall below the cut off and are now rejected.
However, it's too late to accept any more student without the concern of over enrolling. So They ended up having to waitlisted those students who were newly discovered to be worthy of acceptances. And those are the students who will be the first ones to be accepted given any spot opening in the future, hence the super positive wording in terms of waitlist movement. This is the only possible explanation why they are so confident about waitlist movement while at the same time rejecting people off the waitlist so early.
Alright I'm done. I totally spent way too much timing thinking about this obviously, but I suspect that this is very likely the case and please duke med admission don't freakout, I'm not one of your employee, I'm just someone who's really good at making dots connect.
I think the simplest explanation is that they were a little too conservative with the initial acceptances/waitlists, and decided to expand the waitlists, which probably bodes well for the people who were waitlisted originally.Creative and I like it but I think this is a long shot. Most likely they just wanted to make the waitlist a little bigger and at the same time they decided to reject some people on the waitlist that they reviewed and decided they didn't want.
Wow that's crazy. Was your first rejection letter addressed to you? I just re-read mine and it was very general and sounded like it was the letter for pre-II rejections. I definitely scanned through it the first time haha. This is so strange oh Duke.Rejected once again. Thanks duke!
Best part: not addressed to me, attachment is scanned in at an angle. Really in a hurry to reject me again I guess! Le sigh
The theory clearly didn't fit those parts of the details. Hopefully all have been settled and next year it'll be better.I was in limbo as well. But I haven't received any further notice-- no second rejections, WLs, anything. In case that helps build anyone's theory. Haha.
If there were ever such a thing as understatement, it would be this ^just reading up on the situation here. sounds like a hot mess and a half
Did anyone get a confirmation from the admissions office that they received your intent to stay active on the waitlist? Been trying to contact them.
aw mayneLast year the only reported waitlist acceptances were the day after the one acceptance deadline. Fingers crossed for next Friday!
I didn't.Did any fellow waitlister apply for financial aid?