2 Questions about AMCAS... please help!

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Symphony101

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1. Suppose I send in my primary AMCAS early June. How long does it typically take until I get a secondary back? When should I aim to complete my secondaries by?

2. I am currently working on my personal statement. I have a decent overall GPA (3.7) but my frosh and soph GPA was much lower (3.3) and I had to haul @ss to get it back up. The main reason I did poorly early in college was because I was bulimic. I'm not proud of it, but bulimia did mess me up GPA-wise. Now, should I ever talk about this to the med schools? I don't want to be seen as weak, but I know I will be asked to explain my GPA at least somewhere down the line.

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1. Suppose I send in my primary AMCAS early June. How long does it typically take until I get a secondary back? When should I aim to complete my secondaries by?
Secondaries depend on the school, some send you electronic links by email like a day or two after you turn it in. Others snail mail it to you, or even screen primaries so it might take longer.

Turn around time for secondaries is totally up to you. Some secondaries don't even have essays, those will obviously take less time. The ones with essays - depends on how much effort you want to put in, which I guess correlates with how much you want to go to that school. Towards the end though, you will pump them out faster, since many secondaries share similar questions, it becomes a cut and paste/revise for the prompt game.

2. I am currently working on my personal statement. I have a decent overall GPA (3.7) but my frosh and soph GPA was much lower (3.3) and I had to haul @ss to get it back up. The main reason I did poorly early in college was because I was bulimic. I'm not proud of it, but bulimia did mess me up GPA-wise. Now, should I ever talk about this to the med schools? I don't want to be seen as weak, but I know I will be asked to explain my GPA at least somewhere down the line.

3.7 is still extremely good. You probably show an increasing trend, so it may not even be necessary to mention it. However, if your BCPM is lower, or if you just want to explain it anyway, most secondaries have a box with a prompt that reads "is there anything else you want the admission comittees to know about you" - you could write about your bulimia in there. I wouldn't waste PS space on it however.
 
3.7 is a strong GPA. Psychological problems, on the other hand, are of some concern. I would advise not to bring up the bullimia.
As far as secondaries go - a lot of them are available online, so you can start working on them as early as you want to. Most questions stay the same from year to year as well, and there is a thread from this past cycle with secondary questions by school, so you could search for that if you're that eager or just want to get an idea of what you will need to do.
 
I'll third the above -- I would think you're best off not mentioning the bulimia. Spend time in your PS focusing on positive things.

3.7 is excellent and 3.3 isn't horrible either. You might not be even asked to speak to your frosh and soph grades. With that said, you should have something to say if your earlier grades come up in an interview. But don't go too crazy trying to explain it. Everything can be spun into a positive light.
 
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