for crying out loud!!!
okay, so i just hung up with amcas. this is my third phone call asking the exact same question, and i believe i spoke to someone that i haven't spoken to before.
i explained that my college was on a quarter system, and for some reason winter quarter--and ONLY winter quarter--wasn't properly converting to the academic year, instead remaining as the calendar year in the AMCAS's app list of all of my undergraduate academic terms. so it appeared that i completely skipped winter term my freshman year (since this term was grouped with my sophomore year fall and spring terms) and that i had a 'leftover' winter term that according to the way my terms were listed, actually occurred AFTER i graduated from college. i explained that i had called twice and spoken to two different people about this, and what both stated was that this was something that they would correct when they verified my grades, as the software programmers would have fixed this glitch by then and they would be able to make everything 'look' right. they were both adamant that i get my app in as soon as possible, as it was to my advantage to apply ASAP, and that the problem was on their end and i couldn't do anything to 'fix' it.
what this (very angry-sounding) guy told me was these two people told me to do the wrong thing--that i should have entered my winter terms as occurring in the same calendar year as fall (which would have made everything 'look good'). i told him that that was NOT the way the terms occurred at my school (that winter and spring occurred in the same calendar year, while fall was the previous calendar year), and that this was exactly what i was forcefully told NOT to do before--to NOT manipulate the calendar years to make everything 'look' right. i explained to him that because i had been told the same thing twice, on two separate occasions, i went ahead and submitted my app, based on the instructions from these two other AMCAS employees--what was i supposed to do now?! he said, 'you already submitted it--there ISN'T anything you can do now. sorry!' so i ask him, 'are med schools going to see an incorrect list then, if _I_ was supposed to be the one who 'fixed' the mistake in the software, even though i was told otherwise?' he told me that as long as it doesn't affect my gpa, it won't matter. i told him that of course it doesn't affect my gpa, it just affects the order in which my courses are listed and that i would rather my courselist look correct rather than wrong! he said that the med schools 'know what they're looking at', and he proceeded to hang up on me.
so the issue still isn't resolved. i could always do what this guy told me, and then recertify and submit, but i still have no idea who's right! fine, i understand that the software is new and that they might be some glitches, but at the very least, they should be some uniform way that these glitches are handled. instead, i keep being told something different.
*sigh* my app's already gone anyway. i'm thinking about calling again tomorrow to see if i get someone different. but i'm thinking that since there is no consensus as to how this should be handled, i will leave my app as it is and just explain the discrepancy on my secondaries. i know that med schools will be able to figure it all out (as even though the years look wrong, we still have to enter 'freshman', 'soph', etc, for each course so they can still match the terms up) but i still want everything to look perfect. and why should i not expect to be able to do that? this process is too much of a crapshoot and there's too much at stake for me to look like a ***** on my AMCAS app.
sorry that i couldn't get a more definitive answer....
