2011-2012 Texas A&M Application Thread

Getting into Med School is Hard? Not with BeMo.
This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Sammich117

Sammich117

Full Member
Moderator Emeritus
Verified Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2009
Messages
7,271
Reaction score
5
  1. Describe briefly any experiences and/or skills that have made you more sensitive or appreciative of other cultures or the human condition. (3500 character maximum).
  2. The honor code for the Texas A&M College of Medicine is: "A Texas A&M medical student is a professional who exhibits leadership, honesty, integrity, compassion, respect and self-discipline." Please briefly discuss what activities or personal attributes demonstrate best that you would be a good custodian of our honor code (3500 character maximum).
  3. Describe any circumstances indicative of some hardship, such as, but not limited to, financial difficulties, personal or family illness, a medical condition, a death in the immediate family, educational disadvantage, or disability. (Do not leave blank. If not applicable, please so indicate. The character limit on this essay is 3500).
  4. OPTIONAL QUESTION: List the area (or areas) of medicine that appeals to you and briefly explain. (Limit your explanation to 50 words or 250 characters for each area of interest you list.) Do not leave blank. If not applicable, please so indicate.
Good luck! :luck:
Members don't see this ad.
 
Last edited:
Transmitted 5/25. Secondaries in 5/25....... Now we wait :eek::scared:
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Submitted my A&M secondary today...My app was transmitted on the 19th, but I need my last transcript to be complete..it's taking forever!
 
BuffNerd said:
Submitted my A&M secondary today...My app was transmitted on the 19th, but I need my last transcript to be complete..it's taking forever!
Click to expand...

Once your transcript gets in the turn around is pretty quick. Submitted on 5/19 as well. Last transcript came in on 5/20.
 
Don't hold your breath guys. It's exciting, but it'll be almost a year-long process. Just worry about only the things you have control over. BTW, what undergrads are you guys coming from?
 
Ursa said:
Don't hold your breath guys. It's exciting, but it'll be almost a year-long process. Just worry about only the things you have control over. BTW, what undergrads are you guys coming from?
Click to expand...

Sometimes the stress doesn't end even after you get matched, like this year lol
 
Ursa said:
Don't hold your breath guys. It's exciting, but it'll be almost a year-long process. Just worry about only the things you have control over. BTW, what undergrads are you guys coming from?
Click to expand...

Representing Abilene Christian here!
 
Waiting for my transcript from Texas A&M to get to TMDSAS before I can submit the secondary. It's funny how that works.
 
So many secondary app. essays! Have two of them left and submitting everything by Sunday (hopefully!). And I'm from Abilene Christian as well.
 
Ursa said:
Don't hold your breath guys. It's exciting, but it'll be almost a year-long process. Just worry about only the things you have control over. BTW, what undergrads are you guys coming from?
Click to expand...

Oklahoma State!
 
Members don't see this ad :)
This secondary is a pain.

Is the general consensus to write something for all 4 essays?
 
Last edited:
therunner12 said:
This secondary is a pain.

Is the general consensus to write something for all 4 essays?
Click to expand...
Hmm well I was thinking of writing something for all of the essays except number 3. I can't think of anything from my life that fits any of their examples. Personally, I think it would be foolish to not write something for number 4, even though it is technically optional
 
I would try to have everything filled out very elaborately, if I were you guys. Everyone should have something to say in #1 and #2. Clearly you shouldn't fabricate a story (#3), so if none of those things apply to you, just say so (it specifically states not to leave blank). For #4, its up to you. If you are interested in primary care, you are golden. Talk about your passion for it and it will weigh in your favor (Texas A&M is a very primary-care-oriented school). If you are not interested in primary care, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. You can opt not to write the essay and let them assume whatever they might assume. Or you can write what you think they want to read. Completely up to you.
 
Ursa said:
I would try to have everything filled out very elaborately, if I were you guys. Everyone should have something to say in #1 and #2. Clearly you shouldn't fabricate a story (#3), so if none of those things apply to you, just say so (it specifically states not to leave blank). For #4, its up to you. If you are interested in primary care, you are golden. Talk about your passion for it and it will weigh in your favor (Texas A&M is a very primary-care-oriented school). If you are not interested in primary care, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. You can opt not to write the essay and let them assume whatever they might assume. Or you can write what you think they want to read. Completely up to you.
Click to expand...

I'm glad I found this threat because I was wondering about #4! Thank you!
I am interested in primary care so I will definitely fill it out!
 
My TMDSAS was verified and sent to schools on 5/12 and secondary submitted 5/20. For those who are also at this point, when you log on to BAMF, does it only say "true" next to secondary application? It's been over two weeks and they haven't acknowledged anything else.

Is it just really early and they aren't even updating the website yet, or should I call them to verify they received my TMDSAS back in May?
 
Morzh said:
My TMDSAS was verified and sent to schools on 5/12 and secondary submitted 5/20. For those who are also at this point, when you log on to BAMF, does it only say "true" next to secondary application? It's been over two weeks and they haven't acknowledged anything else.

Is it just really early and they aren't even updating the website yet, or should I call them to verify they received my TMDSAS back in May?
Click to expand...

I'm curious about the same thing. My primary was just sent to the schools last week, but I am still wondering how long it takes until the BAMF is updated.
 
Submitted my secondary for this school today.

I hope my essays weren't too short. They weren't really close to 3500 characters at all.
 
I know the secondary essays need to be free of errors but do they need to be edited as in depth as the personal statements? BTW writing seems to be my weak point.
 
carp56 said:
I know the secondary essays need to be free of errors but do they need to be edited as in depth as the personal statements? BTW writing seems to be my weak point.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily but I you don't want adcoms to see your PS and compare it with the writing style in your secondary and think maybe someone else wrote your PS. Do I think this would happen, maybe not but IMO if you really want it then you should give it everything you've got.
 
hownowmauvecow said:
Not necessarily but I you don't want adcoms to see your PS and compare it with the writing style in your secondary and think maybe someone else wrote your PS. Do I think this would happen, maybe not but IMO if you really want it then you should give it everything you've got.
Click to expand...

Actually I once read a LizzyM post where she talked about how this happens all the time--most reviewers will read secondary essays immediately after your PS. She said it is overtly obvious when someone has had some service basically write their PS but then are left to write the secondary essays themselves.
 
With that said, I think the 3500 character limit is really high. I wrote about half that much for the first two big essays, one sentence saying I have not been significantly disadvantaged, and a bullet-point style short response for the areas of interest question.

As long as you write something well-written, thoughtful, professional, and sincere I'm sure it will be fine. You may have a different approach that works for you, but I know I would get really tired of reading long, winding narratives over and over again. They've already got a personal statement and maybe one or two optional essays to read closely--by the time they get to the secondary essays I have a feeling that most reviewers will appreciate something that is high quality, but concise.
 
Morzh said:
With that said, I think the 3500 character limit is really high. I wrote about half that much for the first two big essays, one sentence saying I have not been significantly disadvantaged, and a bullet-point style short response for the areas of interest question.

As long as you write something well-written, thoughtful, professional, and sincere I'm sure it will be fine. You may have a different approach that works for you, but I know I would get really tired of reading long, winding narratives over and over again. They've already got a personal statement and maybe one or two optional essays to read closely--by the time they get to the secondary essays I have a feeling that most reviewers will appreciate something that is high quality, but concise.
Click to expand...

My secondary essays were naturally very close to the character limit. I didn't write one of the optional essays on the primary and I didn't write the third essay on the secondary though so I feel like I wasn't too purposefully long-winded. I do feel that a&m will know me better than 95% of my friends after reading my app though.
 
Ok thanks. I wrote all of my essays but had a lot of help in terms of recommendations from about 10 people. I made sure to write everything in my own words hoping to prevent any one from thinking I had some one else write it. It would have completely changed the meaning or personality if I would have used exact edits that most gave me. But I am running out of reviewers they are getting burned out from the personal statements.
 
carp56 said:
Ok thanks. I wrote all of my essays but had a lot of help in terms of recommendations from about 10 people. I made sure to write everything in my own words hoping to prevent any one from thinking I had some one else write it. It would have completely changed the meaning or personality if I would have used exact edits that most gave me. But I am running out of reviewers they are getting burned out from the personal statements.
Click to expand...

That's the best thing about having a girlfriend that wants you to stay in state. She is making sure all of my secondaries are perfect.
 
As some of you may have heard (you can read all about it on last year's thread) A&M had a bit of a fiasco earlier this year when they somehow "matched" far more students than they had spots for. It sounds like they now have to persuade--financially at first, possibly by force before classes start--some accepted students to defer (I think around 80).

Does anybody who is more familiar with the situation than I am know how this will affect us applying for 2012 entry? Since they try to have an incoming class of about 150 (MSAR) but ~80 of those are already spoken for, does that mean A&M just became twice as difficult to get into this year?

Please forgive any misconceptions I may have about this whole thing. That's why I'm asking.
 
Morzh said:
As some of you may have heard (you can read all about it on last year's thread) A&M had a bit of a fiasco earlier this year when they somehow "matched" far more students than they had spots for. It sounds like they now have to persuade--financially at first, possibly by force before classes start--some accepted students to defer (I think around 80).

Does anybody who is more familiar with the situation than I am know how this will affect us applying for 2012 entry? Since they try to have an incoming class of about 150 (MSAR) but ~80 of those are already spoken for, does that mean A&M just became twice as difficult to get into this year?

Please forgive any misconceptions I may have about this whole thing. That's why I'm asking.
Click to expand...

Wow, I had no idea that had happened. That sucks for us.
 
Morzh said:
As some of you may have heard (you can read all about it on last year's thread) A&M had a bit of a fiasco earlier this year when they somehow "matched" far more students than they had spots for. It sounds like they now have to persuade--financially at first, possibly by force before classes start--some accepted students to defer (I think around 80).

Does anybody who is more familiar with the situation than I am know how this will affect us applying for 2012 entry? Since they try to have an incoming class of about 150 (MSAR) but ~80 of those are already spoken for, does that mean A&M just became twice as difficult to get into this year?

Please forgive any misconceptions I may have about this whole thing. That's why I'm asking.
Click to expand...

I had heard that they accidentally overextended offers to over a hundred students, and after all of the deferred year business, it would reduce the amount of available seats for our cycle by about 50ish spots-probably making it much more competitive for us applying to A&M. I don't know any exact details though...
 
Overextended by ~80** (was thinking of something else when I typed that, oops lol). Again, just what I heard though*
 
From what I can tell from last year's application cycle thread, they expanded the class to 200 and had no forced deferrals. I doubt our year will affected a considerable amount.
 
therunner12 said:
From what I can tell from last year's application cycle thread, they expanded the class to 200 and had no forced deferrals. I doubt our year will affected a considerable amount.
Click to expand...

This. My cousin is going to be an M2 there, and this is what he said when I asked him about it.


Anyway, I'm definitely applying here, even though I'm out of state. I've visited a few times, and the surrounding area and the med school are awesome! Their facilities are nice, and I've met some of the professors, and they're great. The people are really down to earth as well
 
phnerd1105 said:
This. My cousin is going to be an M2 there, and this is what he said when I asked him about it.


Anyway, I'm definitely applying here, even though I'm out of state. I've visited a few times, and the surrounding area and the med school are awesome! Their facilities are nice, and I've met some of the professors, and they're great. The people are really down to earth as well
Click to expand...

Good to hear- thanks for the correction!
 
Has anyone's TAMHSC status been switched from pending to reviewed? I only have true so far for secondary and fees. Just wondering.
 
Last edited:
I go to A&M for undergrad and am applying to A&M Medical school too. Our advisor told us that A&M's medical school simply expanded their class to about 180 - 200 and so basically this is a a good thing for our incoming class because there will be more spots for us

Gig em!

Morzh said:
As some of you may have heard (you can read all about it on last year's thread) A&M had a bit of a fiasco earlier this year when they somehow "matched" far more students than they had spots for. It sounds like they now have to persuade--financially at first, possibly by force before classes start--some accepted students to defer (I think around 80).

Does anybody who is more familiar with the situation than I am know how this will affect us applying for 2012 entry? Since they try to have an incoming class of about 150 (MSAR) but ~80 of those are already spoken for, does that mean A&M just became twice as difficult to get into this year?

Please forgive any misconceptions I may have about this whole thing. That's why I'm asking.
Click to expand...
 
Papa J said:
I go to A&M for undergrad and am applying to A&M Medical school too. Our advisor told us that A&M's medical school simply expanded their class to about 180 - 200 and so basically this is a a good thing for our incoming class because there will be more spots for us

Gig em!
Click to expand...

That's great to hear. The school has been wanting to reach a class size of about 180-200 recently, so if this comes true great.

Gig'Em
 
BMEN said:
That's great to hear. The school has been wanting to reach a class size of about 180-200 recently, so if this comes true great.

Gig'Em
Click to expand...

do you know what was the class size before they increased it and how many deferred?
 
MilkIsGood said:
do you know what was the class size before they increased it and how many deferred?
Click to expand...

Internet search says 250 accepted for 170 spots. However for the 2010 entering class, the website says they have 150...

When I talked to some of the deans earlier this year they wanted to increase the size to about 180-200ish and the A&M pre-med advisor basically reiterated
the same .
Although news earlier from this year said they would reduce this class size down to 90 to make up for the spots but this seems highly unlikely. We'll see.

For those curious: Seems that they started reviewing the secondaries that were submitted already and will start looking at both starting later with july being the start of the busy reviewing month. Interviews starts in August from my sources at the school. This might answer why my application is still "pending"
 
BMEN said:
Internet search says 250 accepted for 170 spots. However for the 2010 entering class, the website says they have 150...

When I talked to some of the deans earlier this year they wanted to increase the size to about 180-200ish and the A&M pre-med advisor basically reiterated
the same .
Although news earlier from this year said they would reduce this class size down to 90 to make up for the spots but this seems highly unlikely. We'll see.

For those curious: Seems that they started reviewing the secondaries that were submitted already and will start looking at both starting later with july being the start of the busy reviewing month. Interviews starts in August from my sources at the school. This might answer why my application is still "pending"
Click to expand...
hey all! I am starting at A&M in the fall. Online it says that the class size was 150, but they decided to increase it to 170 during the interview season (they probably forgot to publish this online). But the over-accepting thing caused them to increase it again to 200. It should probably be at 200 again next year because I think they really werent looking to increase it that much for a couple of years anyway. Good luck! And let me know if you have any questions
 
texasgal87 said:
hey all! I am starting at A&M in the fall. Online it says that the class size was 150, but they decided to increase it to 170 during the interview season (they probably forgot to publish this online). But the over-accepting thing caused them to increase it again to 200. It should probably be at 200 again next year because I think they really werent looking to increase it that much for a couple of years anyway. Good luck! And let me know if you have any questions
Click to expand...
Super awesome info. Thanks!
 
The class size was supposed to be 170. When the situation came about, roughly 12-15 people voluntarily deferred. Then they increased the class size to 200. So for yall's class, they should be able to accept around 185 people.
 
for the secondary essay, did you guys put a space between the paragraphs to separate it? Im worried that the application system won't recognize my break between each paragraph once I submit. Thanks.
 
ilostmytail said:
for the secondary essay, did you guys put a space between the paragraphs to separate it? Im worried that the application system won't recognize my break between each paragraph once I submit. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes I spaced it. I assumed it would look more less the same to them as it did to me when I submitted it. Otherwise they will be getting a lot of headaches from reading giant blocks of texts with no paragraphs.
 
Morzh said:
Yes I spaced it. I assumed it would look more less the same to them as it did to me when I submitted it. Otherwise they will be getting a lot of headaches from reading giant blocks of texts with no paragraphs.
Click to expand...

ok I jus submitted mine, but my essays didn't retain the spacing format and it looks like one huge paragraph....hopefully it adcom has the spaced version? :scared:
 
ilostmytail said:
ok I jus submitted mine, but my essays didn't retain the spacing format and it looks like one huge paragraph....hopefully it adcom has the spaced version? :scared:
Click to expand...

Don't worry about it, it's not a big deal.
 
Does anyone else have their Secondary Application and Secondary Fee listed as complete but their MCAT scores and Primary Application blank?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Next unread thread

Similar threads

wysdoc
2022-2023 Texas A&M
10 11 12 13 14
Replies
668
Views
114K
mini_nimi
M
wysdoc
2021-2022 Texas A&M
6 7 8 9 10
Replies
490
Views
147K
JoonJK
J
wysdoc
2022-2023 Texas Tech Lubbock
8 9 10 11 12
Replies
578
Views
103K
wysdoc
wysdoc
aboyblast2
Texas A&M College of Medicine
Replies
0
Views
901
aboyblast2
aboyblast2
TheDataKing
2020-2021 Texas A&M
11 12 13 14 15
Replies
711
Views
200K
physicianeer1639
physicianeer1639
Top