2009-2010 AMCAS Questions Thread

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secants said:
For the question:


"Have you ever taken a post-secondary course anywhere other than at your home institution, including college courses taken while in high school?"

Does this also include A.P. courses?

-thanks
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it includes AP courses if your college counted them as credits
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Elijah05 said:
yes because you should sorta explain your research in work/activities.

Myuu can correct me but im fairly sure that you list publications separately.


Also for one of my jobs i worked i dont even remember my bosses name or info...is that a big deal if i dont put that down for the activity?
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yea i think you should be fine. i listed the department or something like that like R&D dept. and gave them a generic number for an activity that i lost total contact with. Obviously if you can find out his name/contact then do
 
Elijah05 said:
Yes you can use interfolio to send everything to amcas. It works fine w/o any problems. Then for schools who dont accept amcas lors then just have interfolio send them to the individual schools.
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awesome! you just lowered my blood pressure substantially, thanks!
 
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when explaining your research should you not use abbreviations. for example most docs would recognize PE as pulmonary embolism but would it be better just to write pulmonary embolism everytime?

bigman225 said:
awesome! you just lowered my blood pressure substantially, thanks!
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lol glad I could help. you actually just raised my BP as when i looked at your stats i almost had a heart attack. That mcat is seriously insane dude good luck getting a full ride scholarship to any med school on the country! :). People will be begging you to come to their school.
 
Elijah05 said:
when explaining your research should you not use abbreviations. for example most docs would recognize PE as pulmonary embolism but would it be better just to write pulmonary embolism everytime?
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first few words blah blah pulmonary embolism (PE) blah blah blah. second sentence blah blah PE was my favorite subject in high school blah blah blah. abbreviate in parenthesis after the first time and you can do whatever you likeee
 
adcoms consist of both MDs and PhDs, so note your audience. One may pick up on clinical terms easier and the other may not be bother by technical science. I would rather avoid being too detailed however
 
witness23 said:
adcoms consist of both MDs and PhDs, so note your audience. One may pick up on clinical terms easier and the other may not be bother by technical science. I would rather avoid being too detailed however
Click to expand...

its kinda hard since it is clinical research, i cant just be like we ran electrophoresis and western blots all day, I guess i should just try to keep it as minimal as possible. I figured for the most part anyone reading your app would understand the terms, but i guess thats a bad assumption. Oh also part of the description i just took from our abstract since its a nice succint overview of what we are doing, is that wrong? I obviously went into more detail afterwards.
 
i know this is very trivial but is there a disadvantage to specifying your ethnicity or your parent's education if you are not an ethnic minority and both your parents are college educated?

i know this sounds ridiculous but i've heard from several friends that it does matter and i just want to confirm that it DOESN'T... THANKS!!! and enjoy filling the application out... it feels nice to finally get to start this process
 
parhumn said:
i know this is very trivial but is there a disadvantage to specifying your ethnicity or your parent's education if you are not an ethnic minority and both your parents are college educated?

i know this sounds ridiculous but i've heard from several friends that it does matter and i just want to confirm that it DOESN'T... THANKS!!! and enjoy filling the application out... it feels nice to finally get to start this process
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personally, i feel like you will not be at a disadvantage. i disclosed that i was of an overrepresented group. note that many applicants have parents that are doctors (also me).

you will have to answer the question of race during secondaries for sure. its completely optional for you at the primary stage
 
Elijah05 said:
its kinda hard since it is clinical research, i cant just be like we ran electrophoresis and western blots all day, I guess i should just try to keep it as minimal as possible. I figured for the most part anyone reading your app would understand the terms, but i guess thats a bad assumption. Oh also part of the description i just took from our abstract since its a nice succint overview of what we are doing, is that wrong? I obviously went into more detail afterwards.
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when I did interviews, I found out that I should have been a bit more detail. Science and clinical medicine changes rapidly so the reader/future interviewer may or may not have an idea of what yuo are talking about.

I think abstract/paper/presentation is a great place to start, especially a powerpoint presentation. I think this is a common approach that many applicants use. I would try to highlight the relevance/novelty to the clinical/scientific side, and try to emphasize the important role you played in it.
 
In order to transfer from CC to the university, I had to satisfy the English requirement by taking two courses. One course had "English" in the title and was an expository writing class. The other had "Philosophy" in the title and was a critical thinking course. Would I put the Course Classification of both these courses as English? My university accepted both courses as transferable/equivalent to their English courses, don't think that matters though to AMCAS.... My other option of course is putting the philosophy class under the classifcation of Philosophy/Religion which I really don't want to do.....:(
 
StealYourCarbon said:
In order to transfer from CC to the university, I had to satisfy the English requirement by taking two courses. One course had "English" in the title and was an expository writing class. The other had "Philosophy" in the title and was a critical thinking course. Would I put the Course Classification of both these courses as English? My university accepted both courses as transferable/equivalent to their English courses, don't think that matters though to AMCAS.... My other option of course is putting the philosophy class under the classifcation of Philosophy/Religion which I really don't want to do.....:(
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yea I put down a course from another department as an ENGL course and AMCAS verified. It was writing intensive and was commonly used as an english elective. Put it down as ENGL, worst thing is that they change it.
 
witness23 said:
it includes AP courses if your college counted them as credits
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O man, I already said no to this question. I went back to fix it, but does anyone know how to get back to this question exactly. I can't find it under the schools attended page anymore.....I just assumed they meant community college classes (didn't think of AP).
 
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does anyone know what to do for courses that were "credit/no credit" rather than "pass/fail."

the difference is that "pass/fail" is a voluntary choice you can make when signing up for classes while "credit/no credit" is determined by the university before students can register for it
 
alibai3ah said:
O man, I already said no to this question. I went back to fix it, but does anyone know how to get back to this question exactly. I can't find it under the schools attended page anymore.....I just assumed they meant community college classes (didn't think of AP).
Click to expand...

I had to, too. It's under the transcripts subsection.
 
Suppose I took an AP exam in May 2004 and I entered college in 2006-2007 academic year, would I still list the year for this class as 2006-2007?
 
If I was exempt from certain classes because of high ACT/SAT, would I include these in my courses? If so, under what heading? I was given 6 hours credit (3 each for Math 100 and English 100, or something like that)
 
MDman87 said:
If I was exempt from certain classes because of high ACT/SAT, would I include these in my courses? If so, under what heading? I was given 6 hours credit (3 each for Math 100 and English 100, or something like that)
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If the credit is on your transcript. And I'd classify it as AP.
 
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really stupid question probably, but HOW does the amcas LOR system work? i signed up for interfolio about a month ago and have a couple of my LORs uploaded to there. do i tell my letter writers to upload to a diff place? and the LOR service for AMCAS is free?

sorry, just kind of confused and there's nobody i know personally that i could ask.
 
ALSO...

work/activities section...

anyone else going to have a little trouble narrowing it down?

also...i am part of 3 honors things at my school...there is the regular honors society, the school's national honors society, and the biological sciences honors society. do i list all 3 of them? do i combine them into one? or do i just not list them at all bc that's lame?
 
When entering coursework, class standing is determined by units taken, not time since you've been enrolled, correct? For example, I was a sophomore the first semester of my second year, but a junior that spring because I had enough units.
 
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really stupid question probably, but HOW does the amcas LOR system work? i signed up for interfolio about a month ago and have a couple of my LORs uploaded to there. do i tell my letter writers to upload to a diff place? and the LOR service for AMCAS is free?
Click to expand...

Here's an even dumber question: what is interfolio? I mean, I know it has to do with LORs, but how exactly does that work?
 
JRock310 said:
ALSO...

work/activities section...

anyone else going to have a little trouble narrowing it down?

also...i am part of 3 honors things at my school...there is the regular honors society, the school's national honors society, and the biological sciences honors society. do i list all 3 of them? do i combine them into one? or do i just not list them at all bc that's lame?
Click to expand...

you can list them all, honestly if you browse through this thread youll find the answer to your question and much more, it was really helpful to me

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=202513

Anyways as far as whether entering them all or narrowing down its up to you. Basically how important was the expererince? Is it something almost everyone gets and is it just useless padding (i.e listing deans honor list as everyone is on that thing). You could try to combine them by explaining in your description the different ones. Basically it comes down to this, if you have more then 15 activities, put in the best/most interesting/unique/meaningful ones. Skip padding such as the deans list, scholarships everyone gets, or possibly honor socities that really dont mean a whole lot.

JRock310 said:
really stupid question probably, but HOW does the amcas LOR system work? i signed up for interfolio about a month ago and have a couple of my LORs uploaded to there. do i tell my letter writers to upload to a diff place? and the LOR service for AMCAS is free?

sorry, just kind of confused and there's nobody i know personally that i could ask.
Click to expand...

You upload the letters onto interfolio then you tell interfolio to send the letters to AMCAS. tell your letter writters just to write the letters to interfolio that way, for the schools who arent using amcas, you can still send your lors to them from interfolio. If you dont use interfolio tehre can be some problems. For one if you have to reapply amcas wont save your letters so you will have to have them resent, second not all schools use amcas. If you only had your teachers send letters to amcas youd also have to ask them to send letters to each individual school who doesnt use amcas. Point being just use interfolio.
 
JimmerJammerMrK said:
When entering coursework, class standing is determining by units taken, not time since you've been enrolled, correct? For example, I was a sophomore the first semester of my second year, but a junior that spring because I had enough units.
Click to expand...
Not sure about this one. I had the same situation, though (junior during second year, etc). I sorted mine according to the year instead of the hours I had taken - i.e. 1st year was Freshman, 2nd year was Sophomore, etc, even though my actual classification might have been different
 
alibai3ah said:
O man, I already said no to this question. I went back to fix it, but does anyone know how to get back to this question exactly. I can't find it under the schools attended page anymore.....I just assumed they meant community college classes (didn't think of AP).
Click to expand...

I had AP and IB courses and said no, but it didn't affect me at all, so I guess it's your choice.:thumbup: AP and IB courses are by definition _high school_ courses for which some colleges and universities elect to award credit. Interpret as you see fit. AMCAS will do what they want with it in the end.
 
MDman87 said:
Not sure about this one. I had the same situation, though (junior during second year, etc). I sorted mine according to the year instead of the hours I had taken - i.e. 1st year was Freshman, 2nd year was Sophomore, etc, even though my actual classification might have been different
Click to expand...

AMCAS rendered me into a senior for the last three years, so just do whatever you think makes sense.:thumbup:
 
Hi,
I'm applying to just one med school and this school does not want any letter of recs until they choose who to interview. However, I might ask my recommenders to submit letters to AMCAS even before I submit my AMCAS application. Does anyone know the technicalities for preventing my letters of rec from going out to the med school and then sending over my letters when my med school actually wants the LORs?
Appreciate any help.
 
onb2014 said:
Must our schools include those AMCAS transcript request forms? A lot of my schools only have online transcript request, so they probably won't send my transcript request form with their transcript? Any 2013ers have issues with this?
Click to expand...

If you have AP or IB courses that don't list individually on your transcript (mine just lists it as transfer credit from IB and AP), you may need the transcript request form to get the breakdown from your school. But you don't have to send it with your transcript, so long as they have some way to match your transcript to your AAMC ID (so put in your student ID from your school as an 'other' ID).

Elijah05 said:
Are you supposed to enter in future classes under the coursework section?
Click to expand...

You can, but you don't have to. Last time, I listed the courses I was already registered for, but not the classes beyond that that I planned to take.

MDman87 said:
Dang, I don't even know all the course numbers. They're not even listed on the unofficial transcript
Click to expand...

This is why it's a good idea to get a copy of the official transcript for yourself, just so you can make sure that your information matches up and so it takes less time to verify you once you submit.

secants said:
For the question:


"Have you ever taken a post-secondary course anywhere other than at your home institution, including college courses taken while in high school?"

Does this also include A.P. courses?

-thanks
Click to expand...

Yes, but the main reason they ask that question is to see where you need transcripts from. If you've already listed all the colleges/other schools you've attended, it doesn't matter what you answer that question as. If you answer yes, and then say you need a transcript, it'll just bring you back to the page where you enter in your college information at.

parhumn said:
i know this is very trivial but is there a disadvantage to specifying your ethnicity or your parent's education if you are not an ethnic minority and both your parents are college educated?

i know this sounds ridiculous but i've heard from several friends that it does matter and i just want to confirm that it DOESN'T... THANKS!!! and enjoy filling the application out... it feels nice to finally get to start this process
Click to expand...

Regarding parental information... they ask where you're parents live and on the final application, they'll note whether the county that they live in is underserved, rural, neither, or both. In my case, both my parents live in rural, underserved counties, so I in theory have a higher chance of working in a similar county.

twoinone said:
Suppose I took an AP exam in May 2004 and I entered college in 2006-2007 academic year, would I still list the year for this class as 2006-2007?
Click to expand...

Yes. And list it as 'Freshman', not 'High School'.

JimmerJammerMrK said:
When entering coursework, class standing is determining by units taken, not time since you've been enrolled, correct? For example, I was a sophomore the first semester of my second year, but a junior that spring because I had enough units.
Click to expand...

Yes. Don't worry too much about the classifications. Last time I filled out coursework, they manipulated it so that I was a Freshman for 1 semester, a sophomore for 2 semesters, and a senior for one semester... and I still had a year of college to go. I kinda wonder how they're going to edit my class standing this time around...
 
thanks for all your help!

i have another quick question. what do you do if the course name of a class you took has changed and is different than what is on your transcript? do you put down the new name or the old one? i'm just wondering if AMCAS cross-references the courses with the current names or just uses your transcript? thanks!!!
 
Into what category do film classes fit? The best way to describe the film class is that it was like a literature class, but with films...we watched and analyzed them. They don't seem to fit the AMCAS mold for communications, or do they?
 
parhumn said:
thanks for all your help!

i have another quick question. what do you do if the course name of a class you took has changed and is different than what is on your transcript? do you put down the new name or the old one? i'm just wondering if AMCAS cross-references the courses with the current names or just uses your transcript? thanks!!!
Click to expand...

The directions state to list them exactly as they appear on your transcript.
 
JimmerJammerMrK said:
When entering coursework, class standing is determined by units taken, not time since you've been enrolled, correct? For example, I was a sophomore the first semester of my second year, but a junior that spring because I had enough units.
Click to expand...

heres the guidelines amcas recomends

High School (HS) College-level course work taken while in high school
Freshman (FR) 0-32 semester hours
Sophomore (SO) 31-64 semester hours
Junior (JR) 61-96 semester hours
Senior (SR) 91 or more semester hours

I just used that. Also thats not a typo on my part where SO is 31-64 but JR is 61-96...thats copy and pasted from the 2010 amcas application instructions....
 
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Elijah05 said:
heres the guidelines amcas recomends

High School (HS) College-level course work taken while in high school
Freshman (FR) 0-32 semester hours
Sophomore (SO) 31-64 semester hours
Junior (JR) 61-96 semester hours
Senior (SR) 91 or more semester hours

I just used that
Click to expand...
Cool, thanks
 
So if my school granted me AP credits, I should enter those in "Course Work" section?
 
So in Work/Activities...

I'm presenting a poster at a national math conference in July, but I can't put future dates. I also did a presentation on it today for my school. What do I put for the date?

Also, do I have to put it separately from my research? I'd like to put them together...
 
Elijah05 said:
heres the guidelines amcas recomends

High School (HS) College-level course work taken while in high school
Freshman (FR) 0-32 semester hours
Sophomore (SO) 31-64 semester hours
Junior (JR) 61-96 semester hours
Senior (SR) 91 or more semester hours

I just used that. Also thats not a typo on my part where SO is 31-64 but JR is 61-96...thats copy and pasted from the 2010 amcas application instructions....
Click to expand...

I graduated high school a semester early, so how should I handle that? I went to college part time in the spring that would have been my final semester of HS. I think I will list it as high school. It was only 8 credits. I don't know.
 
lrkoehle said:
I graduated high school a semester early, so how should I handle that? I went to college part time in the spring that would have been my final semester of HS. I think I will list it as high school. It was only 8 credits. I don't know.
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If you already graduated HS those 8 credits would be part of your freshmen year. Remember these are general guidelines and its not like if you are over or under you will be denied or something. That and as myuu said amcas will fiddle around with it to what they see fit
 
BlueElmo said:
So if my school granted me AP credits, I should enter those in "Course Work" section?
Click to expand...

They want us to list them as "Freshmen"?

I feel dumb quoting myself. W/e.
 
ksmi117 said:
So in Work/Activities...

I'm presenting a poster at a national math conference in July, but I can't put future dates. I also did a presentation on it today for my school. What do I put for the date?

Also, do I have to put it separately from my research? I'd like to put them together...
Click to expand...

Yeah I think you put them separately. But it's your call.
 
ksmi117 said:
So in Work/Activities...

I'm presenting a poster at a national math conference in July, but I can't put future dates. I also did a presentation on it today for my school. What do I put for the date?

Also, do I have to put it separately from my research? I'd like to put them together...
Click to expand...

You do not have to list them separately if you don't want to. You can explain that you had a poster presentation for this research in the comments of the research section. It all depends on what you want to stand our in your application.

lrkoehle said:
I graduated high school a semester early, so how should I handle that? I went to college part time in the spring that would have been my final semester of HS. I think I will list it as high school. It was only 8 credits. I don't know.
Click to expand...

No, don't list it as high school. It is your freshman year of college, because you already graduated from high school.

BlueElmo said:
They want us to list them as "Freshmen"?
Click to expand...

Yes, list your AP classes as "Freshman", right along with the classes you took your first semester in college.
 
Just curious - Will AMCAS send our letters of rec to our schools with the primary? Should I have all my letters submitted to AMCAS before I send in the primary or is it fine to get them in a couple weeks after I submit the primary?
 
ksmi117 said:
So in Work/Activities...

I'm presenting a poster at a national math conference in July, but I can't put future dates. I also did a presentation on it today for my school. What do I put for the date?

Also, do I have to put it separately from my research? I'd like to put them together...
Click to expand...

I'm wondering about this too. I have multiple presentations from research and activities that are going to occur in the future through research. At this point I'm thinking about listing the presentations in a separate entry. Not sure what I'm doing about future dates yet.

EDIT: What about listing all presentations under one entry? It doesn't let you select multiple dates from the drop down menu.
 
If I complete the application, send it in at the earliest date, then retake the mcat in early august, will this still put me at good odds of getting an interview? or do schools just look at the initial mcat and then reject immediately
 
drwham said:
If I complete the application, send it in, then retake the mcat in early august, will I still have a chance?
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Will you theoretically have a chance? Sure there are applicants every year who arent 100% complete until late in the cycle and get in, are the odds against you? yes they are. Applicants who are complete late but still get in typically are very strong, meaning 3.7+ GPA 34+ mcat, good ecs, etc etc...but if you really wanna apply dont let anyone tell you not too. Just realize things arent in your favor.
 
for the AMCAS letter service, what does it mean when it asks "is this letter from a school?"

Is it asking whether the writer is from a school or that the letter is from a school?
 
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