AAMC's Negligence towards the AMCAS

[Sammmeyeam]

I think that the web-application was a good idea, considering its convenience and user friendliness, but I think the AAMC really screwed up, considering how slow the application is.

They should have anticipated all these people...and the bottom line is that they just need to expand their resources / servers to accomodate all these people.

The scariest part is that it is just May 7th, and the application is THIS slow... imagine how busy their servers will be as we approach the end of June... better yet, can you guys imagine June 18th?

I understand that the web-application is a huge project and very hard to implement, but considering how important the medical application process is to the lives of so many of us students, the AAMC should have planned it better. Moreover, all it comes down to is that they need to spend more $ and upgrade their systems. That's it. Period. Spend more money, hire more people, and fix the problem.

It has been 6 days now since the application has come out, and I do not see any progress being made towards speeding up the application. The application is just as slow today as it was on May 2nd (actually, on May 1st, when the application first came out, it was really fast, I guess no one knew it came out yet...)

For those of you that skipped my elegant paragraphs above, I will summarize the gist: The AAMC really screwed up.

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[Hopkins2010]

I agree the AAMC people definitely were shortsighted in their approach to AMCAS this year.

They should have anticipated problems and had a backup plan, but clearly they failed to do that.

Oh well, it looks like it is going to take me all the way until June 18th before our apps are going to be ready anyways, seeing as how it takes FOREVER to enter in stuff like all the college courses you have taken.

At this point, any changes they try to make to the system probably would cause more harm than good. They've had the site down for maintenance a couple of times, and its probably obvious to them that there is no easy way to fix this problem.

This is a good lesson to future web developers: ALWAYS consider how your platform will operate in a real-time environment under the expected maximum demand.

I get the impression that the AAMC programmers tested out their web app using a simple functional approach and said "IT works, hurray now we dont have to do anything more and just let it fly." THINK AGAIN.

The AAMC people need to take a note from the programmers who designed the Texas common application service online application. Although the Texas system has a much smaller pool of users requesting access, their simple design strategy insures that users only need to issue one request per page to the webservers. With AMCAS, some sections take literally dozens of webserver transactions.

 

[EMDrMoe]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone been able to get into the application lately? I've tried for 4 days now and cannot even add coursework. For me, slow would be a godsend. Right now, I'm just having trouble dealing with the fact that I can't enter anything. At midnight last night, I could (finally, at least) get to the semester page, and then get an error page that says the system has been down for "scheduled maintenance" since 6 pm!?! Why could I get that far (and waste an hour just logging in)? Thanks for the ear... I'm driving my husband crazy

 

[Street Philosopher]

I can't believe this POS can't even handle 40,000 users, probably a LOT less at any given time. They must have some old 486 on a 56k modem as their server. Just goes to show that these testing services like AAMC and ETS are ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS.

 

[Big Bill]

Im glad that I am waiting until next year to apply that way the can get the kinks out of the app process. They should just switch to a listing service like Law and business schools. Where you give general info like the application, Transcripts, personal statement, recommendations, and scores. Every school requires that and they can discern secondaries from that information. The servers for the lsdas for law schoools handles far more apps that amcas would. For you guys applying this year your going to have to get up at 3:00 am to do this when the internet and the app isnt so cluttered. I think that is the only way around this.

 

[Spang]

I have not been able to get back in since I initially started my application last week. Today the servers are down for "scheduled maintenance" from 0700-0900 EDT. It's now 1100 EDT and they are still down. Maybe they should do maintenance in the "early morning hours!!"

Spang

 

[Big Bill]

Check the new post about amcas, looks like they are taking steps to correct.

 

[Jalopycat]

I haven't even been able to get into the program to register, and I have a cable modem. It suggests trying back "early in the morning" when there's less traffic. Well, I work full time in a high stress job and can't just get up at 2am to fill out an application. I'm hoping they'll get desperate and have to revert back to the disk.We'll see.