August MCATers:)

[dreaminOfMD>.<]

For those of you who took the August MCAT's...please offer some insight as I (and probably many others) will be taking the summer exam. When did you send in your primaries? When did you start hearing from the schools in terms of secondaries, interviews, acceptances? What were your stats like?

If you can offer some of your knowledge, that would be great!

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[UCLAMAN]

send amcas asap. preferrably no later than early july. why? that way you will have all of your secondaries mailed to you by the time the mcats are over with. Why is this important? Once the mcats are over you want to work like crazy to complete all of your secondaries and send them in by mid september. furthermore, you want all of your LORs into the schools by mid sept as well. basically have everything complete at the schools by mid sept. assuming it takes some schools a week or two to put your file together then they will be ready to go by early october. your aug scores will come in early to mid october and once they do your file will be reviewed as early as possible. so it all starts with getting your amcas in as early as possible then doing everything else asap as well. basically you want your files complete and ready to go before your aug scores come in. so when the scores do get to the schools your files will be reviewed as early as possible.

 

[conure]

UCLAman pretty much said it all.

And of everything he said perhaps the bigest obstacle (at least to me) was the LORs. You will get everything done and sit waiting for a letter and it totally blows b/c your fate is in the hands of a prof. who may or may not care one way or another (sure they do have better things to do with their time).

If you get a committee letter then you have to have your LORs even sooner particularly if they have a deadline. Ultimately you want to have your LORs in hand before you end your spring semester.

 

[Moskeeto]

yeah, my LOR were my biggest problem. The advising office at my school screwed up and didn't put that my letters had come in and I kept checking with them and they kept getting mad at me, but eventually I pushed enough to have them check my actual folder instead of their list and sure enough all my letters were in there. So taking the august MCAT really didn't have that much of an effect on my application since the school didn't tell me that all my letters were in until november even though they were all in well before that. I can't tell you how much this killed me. aaah, it hurts just thinking about it again. As far as secondaries go, I was getting them before and after my MCAT scores were reported. I received most of them right away. with the committe letter, at least at UCD, you have to have your MCAT scores in before you can do the interview to get the letter, so keep that in mind. but, yeah, UCLAMAN said everything perfectly.

 

[dreaminOfMD>.<]

So when do you actually send in your LOR's??? My school (UCLA) has no premedical committee and does not have an *actual* premed counselor. Most of us get our premed counseling from our DEPARTMENT counselors...so, I will obviously NOT go about this using any committee. We do have a service available where the letters written for you by professors, etc, are sent straight to our career center and they then duplicate and send your letters out to schools at your request. By the way, I got all of this information from this website by fellow Bruins...thank God I know now.

So, when exactly do you start sending the LOR's. To this point, I thought that they HAD to be sent out with your AMCAS primaries. Do you send them with your Secondaries? Is it completely independent of any of the applications?

I know, I have so many questions...thanks so much for helping me out. Like I said b4 (in another thread), I really think I'll be able to make it through with so much support and help from this website.

 

[Moskeeto]

Originally posted by dreaminOfMD>.<
My school (UCLA) has no premedical committee and does not have an *actual* premed counselor. Most of us get our premed counseling from our DEPARTMENT counselors...so, I will obviously NOT go about this using any committee. We do have a service available where the letters written for you by professors, etc, are sent straight to our career center and they then duplicate and send your letters out to schools at your request. By the way, I got all of this information from this website by fellow Bruins...thank God I know now.

So, when exactly do you start sending the LOR's. To this point, I thought that they HAD to be sent out with your AMCAS primaries. Do you send them with your Secondaries? Is it completely independent of any of the applications?

I know, I have so many questions...thanks so much for helping me out. Like I said b4 (in another thread), I really think I'll be able to make it through with so much support and help from this website.

ok, thats wierd that UCLA doesn't have a premed advisor, maybe they have a pre-professionals advisor or something like that. anyways, you definitely want to use the LOR service that they have there because most, if not all, of the schools that I applied to wanted your LORs from a service or wanted an explanation why you didn't use the service. Its pretty much a must.
How it works here at UCD is you have your letter writers send the LOR to the advisors and sign off a confidentiality sheet and some other stuff then when you're ready to send of your letters, you bring the LOR service your stamped adressed envelopes and they mail them out. You have to send off LOR with secondaries, not the primary.

 

[SistaKaren]

The reference letter service through your Career Center is great. I used it for my reqs (we don't have a committee at UNC either) and it's worked out great.

And everyone's so conscientious! I didn't get my primary in till late sept and finished all secondaries in Nov/Dec/Jan. But I don't recommend Jan...do it by Nov....I think it hurt me for one of my schools...

 

[UCLAMAN]

Originally posted by dreaminOfMD>.<
So when do you actually send in your LOR's??? My school (UCLA) has no premedical committee and does not have an *actual* premed counselor. Most of us get our premed counseling from our DEPARTMENT counselors...so, I will obviously NOT go about this using any committee. We do have a service available where the letters written for you by professors, etc, are sent straight to our career center and they then duplicate and send your letters out to schools at your request. By the way, I got all of this information from this website by fellow Bruins...thank God I know now.

So, when exactly do you start sending the LOR's. To this point, I thought that they HAD to be sent out with your AMCAS primaries. Do you send them with your Secondaries? Is it completely independent of any of the applications?

ucla's career center only has a LOR service. basically when you ask for a letter of rec from a prof the professor doesn't send the letter to you. the letter is sent to the career center in a sealed envelope signed by the prof across the flap along with a waiver of access form signed by you(which can be found at ucla's career center website). then when you want to send your letters out ucla career center sends them directly to the schools you are applying to(not to amcas). each school has a school code and you just select which codes you want and the career center will send your letters to those schools. each school is like 4 or 5 dollars...i forget. however, that is for normal us postal delivery which takes 15 days to process(so 15 days before ucla actually gets the packet in the mail and then think about the time it will take the medical schools after a week in the mail to sort out their mail and actually put it in your file). there is an option to ups next day air the letters but that is 20 bucks per school you send to. as a former ucla student i recommend that you get your letters in asap so you can afford to take the 15 day processing time(say a month before the letters are actually in your file at each school) and only pay 5 bucks or whatever per letter. the first year i applied i had a late letter come in and i had to next day air to like 20 schools. so 20 dollars times 20 schools...$400!!!!

oh yeah...you can also select which letters(from the ones you have on file with them) to send. ie if u have 7 letters u can select the any combination of them to be sent to each school.

get your letters in early!!!! if you haven't realized it yet...the theme involved with applying to medical school is to DO EVERYTHING AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE!!!!!

good luck!!!

 

[UCLAMAN]

by the way...if you go to ucla's career center website...this is all explained in their letter of rec service section.

i put the link on the bottom.

you will need to click on the graduate and professional school planning section and the link to the LOR service will pop up.

http://career.ucla.edu

 

[UCLAMAN]

sorry...i'm dumb and didn't read your whole post. didn't mean to give you the website.

however, what i said on the first post still stands....15 days is the time to get your letter of rec packet sent out. plus lets say a week in the mail. plus say another week before those letters actually get into your file. round that off and say a month after your request at the ucla career center is how long it will take before your letters to be in your file at each school.

if you go the $20 big baller route then slash 15 days from that time frame estimate.

so if you are an august mcater you want to request those letters sent out before september so they will be in your files by october(assuming u don't want to use ups next day and pay gazillions to the uc regents on your bar account) this means that you wnat all of your letters into the career center before late august because it does take the career center a couple of days to enter those letters on file. i suggest telling your LOR writers that you would like to hand carry their letters to the career center. usually they will say yes. as long as the envelope is signed across the seal by them the career center is ok with this as well. don't trust ucla mail. this means that you really want to have in mind who you want to hit up for letters since some of them may take a really long time to complete them(ie possibly months)

just some things to keep in mind!

good luck!

 

[denali]

UCLAMan pretty much covered what you need to know, but I just wanted to add something from my perspective.

If you are non-trad or have a ugrad GPA <3.4, it behooves you to get everything complete ASAP. Why? People in these situations may be relying more on their whole application (EC's, life experience, etc.) to bolster weaker objective measurements and you want to ensure adcoms/screening committees have PLENTY of time to look at your whole application.

In my case I know at least two of the schools I applied to summarily rejected me after screening my ugrad GPA. I wasn't very dilligent in making sure my apps were ready to go when MCAT scores came out, and ended up completing them in late Nov & Dec. Had my apps been complete earlier, I think a little more care would have been taken to look at the whole app, rather than having to resort to a screen based on limited criteria. Med schools have to meet their deadlines too.

Long story short: August MCAT isn't the kiss of death, but it is wise to get stuff in (primary, LOR's, secondaries) ASAP to give yourself the best chance.

 

[chocolate-e]

Anybody have some advice?

I'm trying to decide between April and August MCAT. I've been planning on April, but I have done almost no studying (looked through the Kaplan book a bit, done some problem sets, done their computerized half-length practice, and that's it) and I am getting SO stressed out about that on top of my classes and everything ... I feel like I could probably get 30-ish in April, and I'd like to think I'd do much better with time to study over the summer ... although there's no way to know for sure. But theoretically, would it be better to have mediocre MCATs in sooner or good MCATs in later? If any of you guys have faced this dilemma ... what do you wish you'd done?

 

[UCLAMAN]

Originally posted by chocolate-e
Anybody have some advice?

I'm trying to decide between April and August MCAT. I've been planning on April, but I have done almost no studying (looked through the Kaplan book a bit, done some problem sets, done their computerized half-length practice, and that's it) and I am getting SO stressed out about that on top of my classes and everything ... I feel like I could probably get 30-ish in April, and I'd like to think I'd do much better with time to study over the summer ... although there's no way to know for sure. But theoretically, would it be better to have mediocre MCATs in sooner or good MCATs in later? If any of you guys have faced this dilemma ... what do you wish you'd done?

good mcats in later...especially if u are projecting a 30ish score this april. ANYTHING can happen on test day that may give you a lower score than expected. If you were pulling mid 30's then i'd say go ahead and take the april because if something happens you will more than likely still be above 30.

i took the aug mcat and got a 30ish score fyi.

 

[dreaminOfMD>.<]

Thanks everyone for the help. Yup, I totally agree with UCLAman about the august mcats. That's precisely why I'm taking the summer exam. You should DEFINITELY take it when your the best prepared. I was actually going to take it this April, but I decided against it thinking that I wouldn't be able to handle school and kid and mcats and sometimes, unexpected things arise, like my father's illness. I would've been so stressed right now...whew!

Dang UCLAMAN! Thanks for your many posts. I'm so glad you decided to post as many times as you did anyway cuz I got alot of useful information...thanks! You must have graduated. What was your major over at UCLA??? How's your progress with your applications and interviews? Well, I wish you the best of luck and I hope everything goes you way...

Anybody taking the MCATs in August??? Am I the only loner here ?

 

[UCLAMAN]

Originally posted by dreaminOfMD>.<
Dang UCLAMAN! Thanks for your many posts. I'm so glad you decided to post as many times as you did anyway cuz I got alot of useful information...thanks! You must have graduated. What was your major over at UCLA??? How's your progress with your applications and interviews? Well, I wish you the best of luck and I hope everything goes you way...

Anybody taking the MCATs in August??? Am I the only loner here ?

i finished last march. walked in june. i was a neurosci major, sha, and covel tutor. i have 2 more interviews to go to and then i play the waiting game. no accepts yet.

wish i was done interviewing. jet lag sux!!!

 

[UCLAMAN]

That was my original plan. But then I didn't get in with those scores!