First time Applicant. I have some questions and need advice.

[JohnFe]

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Like the post said, I am a first time applicant and still quite lost regarding MCAT/AMCAS process.

I searched various threads about my questions but can't really find what I need.

So, to fellow pre-meds and current medical students, can you share the most effective and efficient timeline? For example, when to apply, register to take the MCAT for Fall 2014, etc. I registered for June MCAT, is that too late? What is the most ideal date to take it for Fall 2014?


My timeline right now is as follows:

April
-Review for the MCAT
-Shadow/Volunteer
-Work

May
-Same as above
-Start my AMCAS Application (Can this be done in a day? How can I effectively tackle this? When should I submit this to increase my chances of admissions?)

June
-MCAT Test Date

July - August 2014
-Clinical Training
-Work
-Volunteer

Thank you for reading!

 

[BABSstudent]

Like the post said, I am a first time applicant and still quite lost regarding MCAT/AMCAS process.

I searched various threads about my questions but can't really find what I need.

So, to fellow pre-meds and current medical students, can you share the most effective and efficient timeline? For example, when to apply, register to take the MCAT for Fall 2014, etc. I registered for June MCAT, is that too late? What is the most ideal date to take it for Fall 2014?


My timeline right now is as follows:

April
-Review for the MCAT
-Shadow/Volunteer
-Work

May
-Same as above
-Start my AMCAS Application (Can this be done in a day? How can I effectively tackle this? When should I submit this to increase my chances of admissions?)

June
-MCAT Test Date

July - August 2014
-Clinical Training
-Work
-Volunteer

Thank you for reading!

Short answer, this looks okay.

Personally, I would move the volunteer and clinical stuff to pre application to include it. But I heard you can mention future things on the AMCAS for next year so that advice might change. I would still strive to max out your app before you send it and then do stuff to include for updates.

Submit AMCAS on first day possible to one school to enter verification. Then when MCAT score comes, add more schools. Your app will go to the schools when they download them. You will be plenty early. How do I know? That's what I did.

 

[Hawaiianhost1]

Second-year med student here. I took my MCAT during May of my application cycle, so June shouldn't be too bad. Just make sure you start your AMCAS in early May and submit it as soon as possible in June. It it not likely that you can finish the AMCAS in one day, as you will need to write a description of all your work experiences, activities, leadership roles, research experiences, etc. Also, your personal statement should take you a while since it is a very important part of the application. You can still submit the AMCAS even if your MCAT isn't scored yet. The AMCAS can take up to two weeks to verify, so it is better to have it completed as soon as possible. When applying to med school, applying early is extremely advantageous - no question about it. When you receive your secondaries, submit them within a week of receiving them

 

[Ismet]

-Start my AMCAS Application (Can this be done in a day?)

No, that would be one horrendous day.

-You have to manually input every class you've ever taken at the college level, complete with name, classification, credit hours, grade, etc. That part takes forever.
-You have 15 slots for work/activities that you can fill out, 3 of which you can specify as your "most meaningful" experiences, and you should put effort into the descriptions for those as adcoms WILL read them.
-Personal statement takes quite a while to write and revise, unless you already have yours finished and can copy and paste

If you haven't started your personal statement, I'd suggest starting a rough draft now. Mine took me 3 months and multiple reviewers to get to the finished product, but ymmv.

 

[BABSstudent]

I didn't even see the OP wanted to do the app in a day. My PS took three weeks to get it how I wanted it. The app classes took a few hours. The work activities and getting contact info took a week.

Start on it now and just copy paste into the app when it opens.

 

[dsoz]

I took over 4 months to get a personal statement in shape and edited. Then a week before submission I got a wild hair and decided to scrap it all and start over from scratch.

I hammered out a rough draft in about an hour, edited it that afternoon, had three people proof it the next day (VERY minor revisions and changes). It was ready to submit on time.

Part of the reason I scrapped my original PS in favor of the new one is that the new one built into and supplemented my activities and my "most influential" activity. I used each of the different essay areas to build my application. Everything tied together, and it all pushed my application in the same direction. My original essay would have worked, but my second one really helped.

It is possible to do most of this in a day, but it would be stupid. Unless you are a professional writer, and can write novels without editing. For those of us that are mere mortals, it takes a while to get it all right.

dsoz

 

[JohnFe]

Thanks guys for the input. I have some questions. If you guys are able to answer them, it is greatly appreciated.

-Does pharmacy tech work experience count as clinical experience? This is not retail but at an inpatient hospital pharmacy where I do TPNs, IV admixtures, med preps, etc.

-Should I write about 50% clinical work/volunteer experience and 50% personal development in my PS? What is more advisable to do since I will be talking about this in my "ECs section" of AMCAS? Based on what I wrote on my rough draft, I wrote about 80% personal development (school, life experiences, maturity, skills, abilities, etc.) and integrated 20% of my clinical work/volunteer experience...

-I don't quite understand why I have to submit the application on the first day? What does this mean? Verification??? I'm lost. Please explain and elaborate. Apps will be up next month!

Again thank you so much for reading and helping me. I just want to know more about the application process since AMCAS FAQs and guidelines are too confusing 🙁

 

[Ismet]

-Does pharmacy tech work experience count as clinical experience? This is not retail but at an inpatient hospital pharmacy where I do TPNs, IV admixtures, med preps, etc.

Are you interacting with patients or just working in the back of the pharmacy (I worked in a hospital pharmacy in high school, and the techs were in the back prepping stuff). If you interact with patients, it's clinical experience.

-Should I write about 50% clinical work/volunteer experience and 50% personal development in my PS? What is more advisable to do since I will be talking about this in my "ECs section" of AMCAS? Based on what I wrote on my rough draft, I wrote about 80% personal development (school, life experiences, maturity, skills, abilities, etc.) and integrated 20% of my clinical work/volunteer experience...

There's no formula for the PS. It definitely should not a resume in paragraph form and you should try to have a central theme so you're not all over the place. It's fine to reference some things from your ECs if they were really instrumental in your interest in medicine, but the PS is so much more than the activities you've done. If someone asked you right now why you want to be a doctor, what would you say? What was the instance that you realized you were interested? What were the instances that confirmed your interest? Don't just discuss what you do in your volunteer experience, write about a patient that moved you or an interaction with a healthcare professional that inspired you in some way. The PS is the place for you to share things that are not quantifiable by work/activities, like compassion, humility, etc.

-I don't quite understand why I have to submit the application on the first day? What does this mean? Verification??? I'm lost. Please explain and elaborate. Apps will be up next month!

You do not have to submit on the first day, that's just SDN neuroticism. It is very beneficial to submit EARLY in the cycle, but that doesn't mean day 1, that means June-July.

When you fill out the AMCAS, you have to manually input every single college class you've ever taken. You also have to submit transcripts from every institution you've taken classes at. Verification is the process of verifying the courses you put in the application against your transcripts. Your AMCAS is not released to schools until it is verified (and no one's AMCAS is released to schools before June 29, which is another reason why it's not necessary to submit on day 1. Verification is done on a first come, first serve basis, so as more and more applicants submit their application, the system gets more and more "backed up." If you submit within the first couple days, you get verified within the same day or at the very most within the week. If you submit in July, you're probably looking at 3-ish weeks (there's data on this in another thread, I'm just too lazy to look). 2 years ago I submitted on August 1 and it took a month to get verified.

Anyway, after your AMCAS is verified and released to schools, they can start sending you secondary applications (yay more essays and yay spending more money!)

 

[Pattycake25]

*snip*Verification is done on a first come, first serve basis, so as more and more applicants submit their application, the system gets more and more "backed up." If you submit within the first couple days, you get verified within the same day or at the very most within the week. If you submit in July, you're probably looking at 3-ish weeks (there's data on this in another thread, I'm just too lazy to look). 2 years ago I submitted on August 1 and it took a month to get verified.

Ismet offered excellent advice OP, I just want to elaborate a little bit on applying early. Most American schools operate on rolling admissions, which basically means that they are continually judging applications as they come in, and not waiting to start until after the submission deadline. All schools have a supplemental application in addition to the AMCAS, which varies substantially in form (some basically just ask you to cut them a check, others have a multitude of follow-up questions, essays, the whole gamut). Those won't be sent out before the beginning of July, but once they are sent out, they of course start getting returned within the next day. Once the school has your primary (AMCAS) and secondary (supplement), they will confer over your application, and decide whether or not to offer you an interview (or put you on hold).

So, two things:

1. AMCAS verification is "dead" time. There is nothing you can do to advance your application ANYwhere while it is being verified, because you do not get supplements until verification is complete. At the beginning of the season, it's only a few days at most, and it doesn't matter because it's not even the end of June yet. Come August though, you've reached the peak of the season for this stage, and verification can take as long as SIX WEEKS. And those are six weeks that other applicants who got theirs in first are using to turn around secondaries, get reviewed by adcoms, complete interviews...you get the idea.

2. Interview invites start going out in August, and you can't get one until the adcom has looked at your primary AND secondary. Furthermore, those invites are a fixed number - they can't just invite everyone "good enough". So, the later your application is complete (P+S), the fewer of those slots are still open for you to snag, making your chances lower and lower. Once you get into September and later, standards start rising for the remaining slots - someone who might have gotten an invite in August could be declined one in October, simply because they are stingier at that point. It's worth noting that the case for actual seats in the class is similar, but the first offers don't go out til October.

That all being said...mid-June is still over 2 months away. That is really enough time to get your AMCAS ready, with diligent planning. And the payoff for applying early is worth it. =)

 

[sciencebooks]

I don't think anyone's mentioned this, but don't forget about your letters of recommendation either! You might want to start asking for them *now* or ASAP because in my experience (and the experience of many others on here), it's not always a fast turn around.

 

[sinombre]

I don't think anyone's mentioned this, but don't forget about your letters of recommendation either! You might want to start asking for them *now* or ASAP because in my experience (and the experience of many others on here), it's not always a fast turn around.

👍

It really is stressful to depend on really busy people to write and submit letters for you within a certain time frame. Especially because you need so many of them. The sooner the better.

 

[A7X]

Some letter writers take forever, so you'll want to make sure you have them done beforehand

 

[JohnFe]

Thank you guys for your responses! I will sure take note of everything.

Again, thank you so much!