Although the title of this post sort of spills the beans, I still think the story of how I found out about the news is still pretty interesting. I heard that Queen’s had tried to send out all interview invites as well as rejections last Friday, but many people (including myself) didn’t receive one. So I was expecting Queen’s to go ahead and re-send a bunch of those emails today.

This morning, while sitting in my Social and Political Philosophy class, I got an email from my dad who had read online that students who had emailed or called Queen’s this morning got a quick response about their interview status. So I quickly sent off an email to them, hoping to hear back soon.

After that class, I headed over to a dining hall to meet up and have lunch with some friends. After not hearing back for about an hour, I figured the admissions committee was probably out for lunch, plus they were probably having to deal with a gazillion emails and phone calls about the same topic. But then, about a half hour before I had to leave for my philosophy tutorial, I got this email:

Thank you for your application to the Doctor of Medicine program of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. The Admissions Committee will review 3,839 applications this year for the 156 positions available and will interview approximately 550 candidates.

This year, in our admission policies, academic excellence remains the first criterion used by the Admissions Committee for selecting candidates for interviews, followed by an evaluation that takes into consideration the detailed autobiographical sketch.

Your application was carefully reviewed and although your academic performance did meet the required level, we regret that the evaluation of your detailed autobiographical sketch does not permit your application to advance further in the selection process. This decision is final and cannot be appealed. We are governed by an internal policy which does not allow us to provide feedback on the assessment completed by the Sub-Committee.

Because I skimmed through this email very quickly, and had been expecting an email from Queen’s, I immediately assumed this was from Queen’s and that I didn’t make the interview stage. But then I re-read the email, and it didn’t make sense, because Queen’s only uses academic cutoffs before offering interviews, and here the email was talking about how my autobiographical sketch was not good enough. That’s when I looked back at the top, and realized this email was a rejection from Ottawa.

I mean I had heard that Ottawa was probably going to send interview invites/rejections early this week, but it completely left my mind because I was so focused on Queen’s during my lunch break. It was kind of a weird feeling – I mean, even looking at the numbers, it’s obvious that the process is extremely competitive, but rejection in general always feels pretty sad.

I wasn’t extremely upset or anything, but it was still somewhat of a sad feeling. By the time I had to leave for my philosophy tutorial, I still hadn’t received anything from Queen’s, so I just got up and left.

Obviously, being the neurotic person that I am, I instantly logged onto my laptop as soon as I got to the tutorial room. At first, nothing still. But just a few minutes before my tutorial was about to start, I suddenly see a new email in my inbox titled: “Resent Queen’s School of Medicine Application”

Which kind of scared me, because in my experience, emails with general titles tend to be bad news – I think the main reason is that it’s kind of depressing to open your email account and see the word “Rejected” as a title in your inbox. For example, my McMaster interview invite was titled “Invitation to Interview at McMaster University MD Program”, and I think such good news emails are generally titled in a similar way.

Of course, you have to open the email anyways…

Dear Mr Liu

On behalf of the Queen’s School of Medicine Admissions Committee, I am pleased to invite you to an admissions interview.

So that was quite the change in emotions within that span of maybe half an hour.

I mean I did think my MCAT score and GPA was probably good enough for Queen’s cutoffs, but the cutoffs change every year, and it’s not like my MCAT was so ridiculously high that I would be guaranteed an interview no matter what.

So that was my day. I honestly had not felt this nervous since waiting to hear about my Loran interview results three years ago. Maybe it was because this was my first day back at school in three months and I was a bit anxious.

For the Queen’s interview, the possible interview dates we can pick from are February 27/28, and March 1/27/28. However, my first term exam period is going to run for February 20 – March 3. Also, I already have my McMaster interview scheduled for March 27, and well, I don’t really want to have to go to the Queen’s one the day after that.

So I’m hoping my exam schedule is released soon (like this week or something), and since I will only have 1 or 2 exams this semester, I think there’s a good chance my exams will be over early and I can select one of the earliest Queen’s interview dates, while still having an extra week off beforehand to prepare.