More than 30,000 of the most hard-driving students in America now have an extra reason for heart palpitations: near-collapse of a computer system that distributes their applications to medical school.

And with life decisions at stake, applicants who have been striving for straight A's since middle school are not taking the technological betrayal lightly.

"You couldn't pick a worse group of people to throw a bombshell in the middle of," said Richard Silverman, director of admissions at Yale University School of Medicine.

In a move that was supposed to speed decision-making, the clearinghouse for the first time this year asked students to file their applications online. But a series of software bugs has nearly crippled its efforts to process applications for the 16,000 medical-school slots available for the 2002 academic year.

"It's just a black hole," lamented James Chen, 24, of Los Angeles, whose online application was submitted in June but still hasn't reached his more than 25 prospective schools. "We're all just super-frustrated."

The breakdowns mean delays of several weeks or more in applications and admissions. And they have set off a scramble among many students to apply to their top-choice schools directly, before someone else grabs their slot.

Administrators at the nation's 125 medical schools aren't happy either. Many are encouraging students to apply directly — via the low-tech, but reliable, paper method. All five medical schools within the University of California system last week hurriedly unveiled an application specific to their campuses.

Tulane School of Medicine in New Orleans was among the first to "pull the cord" and establish a parallel admissions system. Tulane wants applicants to print out their stalled online applications and send them in.

The idea behind the clearinghouse — which for years involved copious paperwork, then computer disks, is that instead of applying to each individual medical school, students submit a master application to a system run by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Nearly every school requires students to use this service.

The goal of the centralized system is to process and verify transcripts and scores on the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, saving colleges time and money.

But this year, things started badly and got worse.

First, software malfunctions kept booting students off the Internet site as they tried to file sections of their applications. Once that was fixed, other glitches hampered the association's ability to verify contents. A third problem still plagues the process: The system can't get the data to the colleges.

"Applications that should have been arriving in June still haven't come in," said Silverman, the Yale admissions director.

Timing, to prospective medical students, is key. Most take the MCAT in April of their junior year and complete their required courses so they can be among the first applicants. Because most colleges have a rolling admissions process — which stays open until all seats are filled — applying early is considered a competitive advantage.

Jordan Cohen, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, said he doesn't know when all of the problems will be fixed.

"If I knew the answer to that question, we would win the lottery," he said, adding that progress is being made each day.

"We had hoped by the end of this month that everything would be up and running. But ... the closer we get to that date, the less confident I am about it," he said.

Seattle Times

-- Anonymous, August 26, 2001