Called all florida MD programs....

[jcfreakdavid]

A couple days ago, I called all the medical schools in florida because I had a question about a statistics class I took during graduate school in 2007 (I never finished the program) to see if it fulfilled the statistics requirement for each individual school. While on the phone, I went ahead and asked about applying "late" because I'm taking the MCAT in early August. To my suprise, everyone on the 7 schools said that they don't give out interviews until late August and a couple until September. Furthermore, they all encoraged me to get all the application materials in by next month so they can just wait on the MCAT score to make a decision. Most everyone in this forum was saying that taking the MCAT so late is pretty much useless. Yet, ALL the schools said it was fine and that it's not to big of a disadvantage. Any thoughts?

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[PharMed2016]

A couple days ago, I called all the medical schools in florida because I had a question about a statistics class I took during graduate school in 2007 (I never finished the program) to see if it fulfilled the statistics requirement for each individual school. While on the phone, I went ahead and asked about applying "late" because I'm taking the MCAT in early August. To my suprise, everyone on the 7 schools said that they don't give out interviews until late August and a couple until September. Furthermore, they all encoraged me to get all the application materials in by next month so they can just wait on the MCAT score to make a decision. Most everyone in this forum was saying that taking the MCAT so late is pretty much useless. Yet, ALL the schools said it was fine and that it's not to big of a disadvantage. Any thoughts?

They lied?

Actually, it is pretty late in the game but there are always exceptions. They have the saying, the early bird gets the worm... or in this case the acceptance.

 

[aerodoc]

A couple days ago, I called all the medical schools in florida because I had a question about a statistics class I took during graduate school in 2007 (I never finished the program) to see if it fulfilled the statistics requirement for each individual school. While on the phone, I went ahead and asked about applying "late" because I'm taking the MCAT in early August. To my suprise, everyone on the 7 schools said that they don't give out interviews until late August and a couple until September. Furthermore, they all encoraged me to get all the application materials in by next month so they can just wait on the MCAT score to make a decision. Most everyone in this forum was saying that taking the MCAT so late is pretty much useless. Yet, ALL the schools said it was fine and that it's not to big of a disadvantage. Any thoughts?

It depends on how each school does their admissions process. By that I mean whether they have rolling admissions or not. If they don´t do rolling admissions, it really doesn´t matter when you apply.

I did this last year just like you, as I was taking the MCAT in August so didn´t even get my application complete until September. I got interviews and multiple acceptances, so applying late isn´t a death sentence. But there are schools where I wonder whether my applying late did hurt me, because they have so many applications and get backed up, I wonder whether they don´t have time to get to everyone, and as you can imagine, it is first come-first serve so to speak. I found that the schools with the lower number of applicants tended to respond more favorably to me, and those with high numbers of applicants, aka 5-6k plus just possibly never even got around to it....

 

[EdLongshanks]

A couple days ago, I called all the medical schools in florida because I had a question about a statistics class I took during graduate school in 2007 (I never finished the program) to see if it fulfilled the statistics requirement for each individual school. While on the phone, I went ahead and asked about applying "late" because I'm taking the MCAT in early August. To my suprise, everyone on the 7 schools said that they don't give out interviews until late August and a couple until September. Furthermore, they all encoraged me to get all the application materials in by next month so they can just wait on the MCAT score to make a decision. Most everyone in this forum was saying that taking the MCAT so late is pretty much useless. Yet, ALL the schools said it was fine and that it's not to big of a disadvantage. Any thoughts?

The advice on this board is predicated on the applicant applying broadly. There are school exceptions to the "apply early" rule. Applicants who only apply in Oklahoma might as well not be complete until August 31st, since that is when they seriously begin reviewing apps. Florida sounds similar.

On the other hand, someone applying to Duke or Vanderbilt would want their applications complete in July. If you apply broadly (which is the consensus advice of this board) then you need to apply early. If you are trusting in a smaller subset of schools, then you should know their timelines intimately and your timing is based on only those schools.