Expectations Are Hard to Manage

I was expecting my mailbox to be busting with good news last week. After all, the previous week I had gotten my first and second invitations to interview on two consecutive days. Certainly that was a harbinger of things to come.

Except that it wasn't. Instead, it was a dreary week with my anticipatory joy going, going, gone, until opening email felt like a sure-fire way to take a plunge into the sea of disappointment. Yep. I've become a victim of the insanity I so smugly watched my friend go through last fall.

Visiting Marian University

Marian University is reviewing its first group of applicants for the College of Osteopathic Medicine's inaugural class. A few weeks, I headed to Indianapolis on a business trip, and the friendly folks at Marian COM agreed to meet with me face to face.

Marian is on the edge of a part of town that, um, needs a little lovin'. Too many boarded up houses for me to keep count. Needless to say, there is ample opportunity for students to participate in community out-reach.

The campus is small, and the under-construction health science center promises to be a solid cornerstone, sitting prominently at a busy intersection. With 200 enrollees at the medical school, Marian University's total enrollment will go up by about 10%. I hope the school will be able to withstand the inevitable growing pains.

I'm a bit trepidatious about attending a new medical school, but Marian looks very promising. They have pulled together a faculty experienced in start-ups and I love the energy of new ventures. Their collaboration with well-established health systems is solid and reassuring. There are too many osteopathic hospitals in the US (could not find a reliable number), and Marian University has the good fortune of partnering with a well-established osteopathic facility. Kinda cool.

I submitted a primary app to MU-COM, but haven't yet decided if I'm going to submit a secondary. I'm narrowing down my DO secondaries to the cities I truly want to live in. I don't know if Indy is for me. I like what I've seen and heard from MU-COM, but moving, at this stage in life, means considering employment opportunities for my husband and college options for my kids.

You know you are going crazy when...

you check your email 6 times a day for an interview invite.

Kicking off Interview Season

I got my first interview invitation on Friday. I was elated! I'll be interviewing for a seat in a DO program. Though I submitted primary applications to a total of 8 osteopathic schools, I only did secondaries for 3. It's good to hear back from one of those just two weeks after my second MCAT scores were released.

After doing my happy-dance and calling my husband ("Guess what?!"), I decided that maybe I should check my "spam" box again. I've been pretty good about going through it once a day. Lo and behold! There was another interview invitation that had been sent on Thursday afternoon! This one is for an MD program in Texas. Texas schools are manadated to have no more than 10% of their students from out-of-state. I'm just so excited. This school only interviews about 1/10 of out-of-staters, so I'm feeling pretty good about making it past "first-cuts."

Now, I just need to figure out how to schedule these interviews (and travel) with my work, my kids, and my genetics class.

MCAT (take 2) Scores Released!

Verbal Reasoning went down by one point to 11--big whoop, still sizzlin'.

Physical Sciences went up by one point to 8--that's good enough for me.

Biological Science--bam!--jumped up FOUR points to an 11.

Sweet, sweet, sweet satisfaction. 26o to 30p.