application process

[Bob Hanrahan]

Could someone describe the whole process of applying to med school for me? I have heard lots of talk about secondaries, ad coms and stuff like that, but I am not clear on what all of that means exactly. If someone who has been accepted to med school wants to tell me their story, Id love to here it! or if someone who hasnt applied yet knows about all of this I would be glad to hear from them too. Thanks!

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[relentless11]

The text book case of applying to med school is as follows:

I. Through the course of your undergraduate career from freshman to junior year you should have befriend many professors so they can write you letters of recommendation. You should have also done some clinical work as well as other extracurricular activities.

II. Junior Year in college: Take MCAT exam in April. It is a wonderfully exciting exam that takes up your entire day. You study for about 2-3 months (and still feel you're not ready..hehe). It encompasses-

1. Physical Sciences (Physics and General Chemistry)
2. Verbal Reasoning
3. Writing Sample (2 Essays)
4. Biological Sciences (Biology, Genetics/Evolution, Organic Chemistry)

About a month and a half later you get your MCAT scores back...hurray you did good!

III. June of your Junior year, you set up your AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service) application. This is your primary application which will be sent to all med schools you apply to. This is an online process. You put in your GPA, MCAT, personal statement (why i want to be a doctor), extracurriculars, blah blah blah, and of course your personal info. Click send, and you also forward all your transcripts to AMCAS, and you sit and wait. AMCAS costs $150 for the first school, and $30 for every other school afterwards.

IV. If schools think you're good enough after going through your AMCAS application they will send you a secondary application. Some schools automatically give you a secondary application so thats kinda cool. The secondary would either just ask you to send more info like letters of recommendation, updated GPA, etc, and/or ask you more questions. But definately they will ask you to send more $$..haha. So you will be paying for every secondary you get.

V. Through divine intervention by whatever god you believe in, and with a great amount of luck, they may review your secondary and ask you for an interview. You fly, drive, walk to where ever you applied to. Talk to them, take a tour, and then go home. The members of the admissions committee will then meet to talk about you and your application. If all goes well they send you a letter of acceptance.

Pretty much i believe going from Step I to Step V, it will go from 5000 people to just 500. Depending on the class size, after interviews they'll probably accept between 100-250 people. Good times. Additionally, by the time you figured out you got in or not, you're a senior and almost ready to graduate. Of course this is the TEXTBOOK way, many people don't do it this way. Hence the term "non-traditional applicant".

 

[ZekeMD]

I felt the exact same way you do about a year ago. I had no clue what I needed to do, but somehow I managed and have been accepted. I'll try to describe the process:

First things first, you must take the MCAT. Most people tend to take it April of the year you're going to apply. Some take or retake it in August, but this delays your application and may hurt your chances at some schools.

After the MCAT it doesn't hurt to start working on your personal statement. I think there's a 3000 character limit (if I remember correctly). To help you with this you should try searching the forums. There have been many posts about this.

June is when you can begin submitting the "Primary Application." This application can be found at http://www.amcas.org. This is a central application processing service, so they will send this initial application out to all the schools you apply to. (Note that not every schools participate in this service, and for those schools you need to get the application from them). You will be required to submit your transcripts to AMCAS so they can verify your grades. I would advise you to do this early since AMCAS tends to lose things.

If the school has a favorable review they will send you a secondary application. This may involve sending a picture or writing essays. Once you submit this (including the hefty fee) your application will then become complete. This is where the waiting begins. You will have to wait for the school to offer you an interview. I typically called once every 3 weeks or so to check on the status of my application. Once you interview, there's more waiting until you are either accepted, waitlisted, or rejected.

 

[jlee9531]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?threadid=1153&highlight=Official+Guide

 

[Alexander99]

Originally posted by Bob Hanrahan
Could someone describe the whole process of applying to med school for me? I have heard lots of talk about secondaries, ad coms and stuff like that, but I am not clear on what all of that means exactly. If someone who has been accepted to med school wants to tell me their story, Id love to here it! or if someone who hasnt applied yet knows about all of this I would be glad to hear from them too. Thanks!

Once you decide you want to be a doctor, you kiss several professors' asses so they can write you letters saying how good of a student/person you are. Next, you take the MCAT where you try to do better than 90% of the people taking the test. Many people choose to spend $1500 preparing for this test. (I was lucky I wasn't foolish enough to fork out the dough.)

In the meanwhile, you do meaningless volunteer work where you can't do anything significant because you have no medical training. Then, you spend thousands of dollars applying to lots of schools. The next part is important:

Once the schools receive your raffle ticket fee (they like to call it an application fee), they hold a drawing where you hope your ticket is a winner. If so, you're in. If not, you go through this whole process again until you run out of money, resolve, or both.

Does this sound about right to you guys?

 

[relentless11]

I thought they put every applicant's name on a big wheel and the dean of admissions spun it around a few times until the class was filled up...haha.

Yea that pretty much sounds about right, although not accurate but serves teh purpose

 

[Bad Mojo]

People are always saying its a big crapshoot, so I pictured a giant craps table with room for the entire adcom around it. Your name is called, if you hit seven or eleven you're in. On a side note, does anyone actually understand all of the rules to craps. Man, that game confuses me good.