Dental School Fail
Hi, Journal! Time for a well-deserved rant.
During the last week of August, my adviser asked to see my AADSAS application so that she could write my cover letter to submit with my letters of recommendation (which I sent to her in April). On the same day, I printed out everything that she would need and walked across campus to drop it off at her office. The next day, she emailed me saying thanks, and that I could pick the application up to see the comments she had made on it.
I had to wait another 3 weeks after that point for my summer '09 transcripts from OU to arrive and be processed by AADSAS. When they were finally posted, I emailed my adviser asking if there was anything else I needed to do or wait for with regards to my application. She emailed me back saying "Nope, you're all set. Go ahead and submit it. So I submitted my AADSAS application on September 15th (a long-ass time ago). On the same day, I also submitted a request for my DAT scores to be sent out to ATSU, CSDM, Tufts, UM, and UF. I got no error messages, and I even checked my account statement to make sure the $125 payment had gone through; it had. I then went through the ridiculous web sites for each of the NINE schools I was applying to, filled out supplemental applications, wrote checks for additional application fees, send out extra transcripts, all that jazz. I finished everything as soon as possible so that the schools would be able to review my application right away.
A month later, on October 15th, I got another email from my adviser asking to see a copy of my AADSAS application so that she could write my cover letter to submit with my letters of recommendation. (Wha??? Deja vu!) I called her to find that she had lost the copy she made of my application, never finished my cover letter, and therefore never submitted my letters of recommendation (which should have been attached to my application when I submitted it). I gave her the information she needed, and within 5 minutes she had finished and posted the letters on AADSAS, insisting that her forgetfulness would have no affect on the speed with which schools would review my application.
I checked my application status on the AADSAS site to find that each of the school had my application listed as "Received/ Waiting for Additional Information." The same day, I received 2 emails from schools saying that they couldn't review my application until my letters of recommendation arrived. AADSAS only mails stuff out once every couple weeks, so I had to wait almost a full week, until October 21st, before my letters were even mailed out (even though I submitted them to my awesome adviser in April)! It took almost a full week for the schools' statuses to start changing from "Received/ Waiting for Additional Information" to "Received/ Under Review".
Today, I checked the statuses again to see if any of the 4 schools who actually use this feature of the site were still waiting. Seeing that my UF application was still marked as incomplete almost 2 weeks after the letters had been mailed out, I called their admissions office to see what was going on. Apparently, they hadn't received my DAT scores! I almost told the lady on the phone that she was wrong, because I submitted those in September! Instead, I got on the ADA website and paid another $25 for have my scores sent to them (again?). Oh, and by the way! I got an email from this school a month ago saying that they had received my application, and that they would contact me if they needed anything else... why didn't they?!
At this point I started calling all of the other schools' admissions offices to make sure they weren't secretly missing materials, too. Five of them didn't have my DAT scores. And none of them had felt like telling me at any point... they all just emailed me saying "yay, we got your stuff, we'll let you know what we decide!" ...so I had waited, oblivious.
I looked at my records and figured out that the five schools who hadn't gotten my DAT scores were the ones for which I had sent the score report request in September. I called ADA and was told that my payment for the score reports had never gone through, so they didn't send them (nor did they tell me that they hadn't sent them). I went through my bank records and saw that I had been charged the $125 fee that supposedly "hadn't gone through," so the lady on the phone told me to email some random person about it with a screenshot of the bank report. So that's what I did tonight. Yayyyy.
To conclude, I submitted my complete application and all relevant materials on September 15th. Today, more than half of the schools still have not even looked at my application. And there are a limited number of interview offers available for each school. And early applicants are highly favored. So pretty much, I'm not going to dental school next year. /cry
On the (somewhat) bright side, I got an interview invitation for MWU... buttt I don't really want to go there, and the earliest available interview time is Feb 16th. (They fill 3/4 of their class in December.) Epic fail.
PS, Jeffree is awesome <3
During the last week of August, my adviser asked to see my AADSAS application so that she could write my cover letter to submit with my letters of recommendation (which I sent to her in April). On the same day, I printed out everything that she would need and walked across campus to drop it off at her office. The next day, she emailed me saying thanks, and that I could pick the application up to see the comments she had made on it.
I had to wait another 3 weeks after that point for my summer '09 transcripts from OU to arrive and be processed by AADSAS. When they were finally posted, I emailed my adviser asking if there was anything else I needed to do or wait for with regards to my application. She emailed me back saying "Nope, you're all set. Go ahead and submit it. So I submitted my AADSAS application on September 15th (a long-ass time ago). On the same day, I also submitted a request for my DAT scores to be sent out to ATSU, CSDM, Tufts, UM, and UF. I got no error messages, and I even checked my account statement to make sure the $125 payment had gone through; it had. I then went through the ridiculous web sites for each of the NINE schools I was applying to, filled out supplemental applications, wrote checks for additional application fees, send out extra transcripts, all that jazz. I finished everything as soon as possible so that the schools would be able to review my application right away.
A month later, on October 15th, I got another email from my adviser asking to see a copy of my AADSAS application so that she could write my cover letter to submit with my letters of recommendation. (Wha??? Deja vu!) I called her to find that she had lost the copy she made of my application, never finished my cover letter, and therefore never submitted my letters of recommendation (which should have been attached to my application when I submitted it). I gave her the information she needed, and within 5 minutes she had finished and posted the letters on AADSAS, insisting that her forgetfulness would have no affect on the speed with which schools would review my application.
I checked my application status on the AADSAS site to find that each of the school had my application listed as "Received/ Waiting for Additional Information." The same day, I received 2 emails from schools saying that they couldn't review my application until my letters of recommendation arrived. AADSAS only mails stuff out once every couple weeks, so I had to wait almost a full week, until October 21st, before my letters were even mailed out (even though I submitted them to my awesome adviser in April)! It took almost a full week for the schools' statuses to start changing from "Received/ Waiting for Additional Information" to "Received/ Under Review".
Today, I checked the statuses again to see if any of the 4 schools who actually use this feature of the site were still waiting. Seeing that my UF application was still marked as incomplete almost 2 weeks after the letters had been mailed out, I called their admissions office to see what was going on. Apparently, they hadn't received my DAT scores! I almost told the lady on the phone that she was wrong, because I submitted those in September! Instead, I got on the ADA website and paid another $25 for have my scores sent to them (again?). Oh, and by the way! I got an email from this school a month ago saying that they had received my application, and that they would contact me if they needed anything else... why didn't they?!
At this point I started calling all of the other schools' admissions offices to make sure they weren't secretly missing materials, too. Five of them didn't have my DAT scores. And none of them had felt like telling me at any point... they all just emailed me saying "yay, we got your stuff, we'll let you know what we decide!" ...so I had waited, oblivious.
I looked at my records and figured out that the five schools who hadn't gotten my DAT scores were the ones for which I had sent the score report request in September. I called ADA and was told that my payment for the score reports had never gone through, so they didn't send them (nor did they tell me that they hadn't sent them). I went through my bank records and saw that I had been charged the $125 fee that supposedly "hadn't gone through," so the lady on the phone told me to email some random person about it with a screenshot of the bank report. So that's what I did tonight. Yayyyy.
To conclude, I submitted my complete application and all relevant materials on September 15th. Today, more than half of the schools still have not even looked at my application. And there are a limited number of interview offers available for each school. And early applicants are highly favored. So pretty much, I'm not going to dental school next year. /cry
On the (somewhat) bright side, I got an interview invitation for MWU... buttt I don't really want to go there, and the earliest available interview time is Feb 16th. (They fill 3/4 of their class in December.) Epic fail.
PS, Jeffree is awesome <3