looking back, I wish I had...

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I graduated from a top 20 university, competitive bio major (literally everyone was either premend or predent), 3.7 cummulative and 3.7 bcp , 23AA 22PAT , shadowed over 100 hours, worked as dental assistant after college, 3 years of research, graduated with honors, president of a large philanthropic club..you get the point...I worked VERY hard.

I applied to 12 schools knowing that dental admissions is very difficult and random. But here's the thing...I worked 8 hours a day, stuck in traffic for 2, then private tutored for an hour or two everyday. I was always completely drained after work and I didn't complete my app until end of Sept and was mailed out in October. Biggest mistake ever. I've worked so hard to build up a good resume and then kinda shot myself in the foot by applying late.

Lucky for me, I got 1 acceptance. Oh boy was I relieved. I got flat out rejected from 4 schools, and haven't heard from the rest for the past 4 months. I really have been taking what my peers have said witha grain of salt, mostly because I know how premeds/predents are...gunnerish and I also heard of people getting plenty of interviews when they applied in september. But now I am a true believer that you must apply early. At first, I thought I had a red flag somewhere, but at the interview, my interviewer told me cold that I had a great application and one of the strongest letters of rec, but I had applied too late. They told me that I was in the last interview cycle, and anyone who had applied after me (October) would "not be considered for an interview unless they have a 3.9".

I am so thankful I have this acceptance and really think that this is the plan of a higher being, but I will always wonder if I could have gotten into my state school (which would have been $80k cheaper) had I applied earlier. I never knew what the deadline was for being considered "early". From calling and talking to a couple schools a couple weeks ago, I think it is late-August. Anything after that, I think you are taking a big risk. I wish I had known what this "deadline" was. I thought, "boy I am submitting my app 3 months earlier than the absolute deadline. Not bad.." Wrong.

What are some of your biggest regrets during the application cycle?

only applying to 5 schools, none private and 2 of them being extremely out of state unfriendly...yea I should have done a little more research..o and apply earlier app was complete like mid-late august

Same boat here (as far as tardiness). My app went out Nov 18, with no shadowing hours and no letters of rec from professors (albeit one from a science grad student and one from an ortho). Applied to only 4 schools. Good stats and fantastic EC's; I got 2 interviews (one said it was for a waitlist spot) and ended up with 1 acceptance and 1 wait list. Worked out for me, but the stress of not knowing made it feel like a long, arduous process. PS I did 40 hours of shadowing and received a great letter from a prof before the interview, so I was prepared by then. Guess I got lucky, since applying late didn't seem to work out for most. Should have applied to more programs to expand my safety net though.

Wow, all 3 of you pretty much contradicted the SDN stigma that comes from applying late.

2012predent do you mind sharing your stats out of curiosity?

My biggest regret was not doing the transcripts sooner. I took my good old time and did it last after the rest of the application....MISTAKE. Do it first. They take a while to process. Held me back til the end of July. It all worked out but still, stressful.

My biggest regret is applying to too many schools.I was unconfident in my application & didn't think id get in my state school or nearby schools. Also somehow I decided to apply to west coast schools(I'm from east coast) because I was thinking of moving there.

I wasted soo much money for nothing. Didn't even go to the west coast school interviews cuz I heard back from my state school December 1st.

All that money could have been used got the price of a laptop & I feel soo guilty for wasting my parents money because of some doubts.


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I applied late last cycle and got wait-listed at a couple of schools. No acceptance!
This year, I applied early (July) had 11 acceptances....I applied to many, many schools because I thought I didn't want to risk zero acceptances again - now I know I wasted money and time...but...my sGPA was very, very low, so for the next cycle I also had time to re-take the DAT and scored very high to offset this. So in hindsight, for me, it was better that I didn't get accepted from the waitlists last year because this time I had more acceptances to choose from.
In your case, I can't believe you barely got in with such good stats!! I guess this is just another example that stats aren't everything!

I regret holding up my application for one LOR. I had everything else completed and submitted to AADSAS by mid-July (including two professors' LORs), but waited to mail out my application to schools until September when my final two letters were received.

I'm extremely grateful that I got one of the last interview dates for my state school (which was my top choice ). I figure had I sent it out one week later, I would be preparing my application again for this cycle.

I also regret not calculating my GPA by AADSAS standards as soon as they did. They thought one of the classes I took was AP credit, when it was actually a 3 credit math course that I got an A in. It wound up bumping my overall by 0.01 and science by 0.02, so it wasn't a big deal, but still make sure you're not getting cheated!

Good luck to anyone applying this cycle

Originally Posted by dantemac

My biggest regret was not doing the transcripts sooner. I took my good old time and did it last after the rest of the application....MISTAKE. Do it first. They take a while to process. Held me back til the end of July. It all worked out but still, stressful.

dantemac,

I will be applying this coming cycle and wanted to know what you mean by having the transcripts in early? Do you mean putting your grades in AADSAS early or what? I appreciate your help.

Thanks

I don't mind that I applied in September. What I would change is that I delayed studying for the DAT until I finish organic chemistry 2.

I should have been on top of studying earlier. But, I hate breaking work into chunks. This is more of a character flaw, I dislike doing things in pieces or over time because I like to start a task and finish it! Thus, I didn't feel like I could effectively study until I finished all the pre-reqs. This resulted in me not taking the DAT very seriously and I only studied for three weeks.

Originally Posted by DPad

dantemac,

I will be applying this coming cycle and wanted to know what you mean by having the transcripts in early? Do you mean putting your grades in AADSAS early or what? I appreciate your help.

Thanks

In addition to putting grades for every course into AADSAS, you also have to send official transcripts from every college/university you've attended to AADSAS. Then AADSAS receives, processes, and verifies them. This can take a long time on both the university and AADSAS end, so the sooner you have them sent, less likely they will hold up your submission.

Applied to UCSF and UCLA.

Made damn sure my letter writers were going to get those letters in relatively early, I was put on application hold for almost every school I applied to due to lack of LORs submitted at time of application submission, and I'm sure that had some impact on what happened overall.

Now if I was asked if I could go back and re-do it, addressing the above, no way in hell.

Originally Posted by Kahr

Applied to UCSF and UCLA.

Made damn sure my letter writers were going to get those letters in relatively early, I was put on application hold for almost every school I applied to due to lack of LORs submitted at time of application submission, and I'm sure that had some impact on what happened overall.

Now if I was asked if I could go back and re-do it, addressing the above, no way in hell.

Where you going next year?

Originally Posted by ChubbyBaby

Where you going next year?

Midwestern (AZ)