For people on quarter system

[Nikki]

AMCAS has rearranged the order of my quarters so that it would be hard for an admissions committee to understand the order of my classes. Does amcas send a copy of our transcript too, or do they just verify our classes/grades and not send a transcript with the application. In that case, I was wondering if I need to send the schools a copy of my transcript. Did anyone else have this problem with their quarters?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[sandflea]

from evanston, huh? northwestern student? go cats! (i graduated a few years ago)

this quarter problem was the reason i started posting on this board--do a search for old threads. i submitted my AMCAS app about two months ago with the quarters all out of order (bet the problem is that every winter quarter isn't converting to the proper academic year!). as it turns out, the AMCAS app is configured to consider winter quarters as beginning in DECEMBER of the academic year, not january as one would assume. so when you enter the calendar year that each winter quarter took place, enter the *previous* year (which is the same year that fall quarter of the same school year took place) and everything will fall into place.

if your problem is something different, then ignore all of this.

 

[Ai]

The same thing happened to me. I read somewhere on SDN that they consider winter quarter to actually start the December before (of course! Why didn't I think of that!) and this put my winter quarters in order. I just sent it in with my summers all in the wrong places. I have sent AMCAS several emails about it (first one about 2 months ago) and have still heard nothing back. From what I understand this has happened to alot of people and they'll take care of it when (if!) they verify. Good luck

 

[Darwin]

I called AMCAS about this two months ago and they stated they were aware of the problem and not to "muck" with the system. Follow the directions and have everything listed out of order. So I did that. I was processed about a month ago and everything is still out of order, so they don't fix it upon verification.

 

[Nikki]

Ok, thanks. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I did fix the winter quarter switch-up by entering the next year, but my summer and spring quarters get placed where they shouldn't be.

 

[SMW]

Has anyone tried choosing the option that just lets you list all your courses for an entire academic year? That's what I did, and it worked just fine. I was having the same problem when I started the application, but then I noticed this other option which completely gets around the problem. Of course, the schools won't be able to see exactly what you took each quarter, except for series classes that are pretty obvious, but do you think they really care? Any way, I submitted mine that way, and my application printed out very nicely, with all the courses in the order in which they appear on my transcript.

 

[sandflea]

Originally posted by Nikki:
•Ok, thanks. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I did fix the winter quarter switch-up by entering the next year, but my summer and spring quarters get placed where they shouldn't be.•

actually, for winter quarters you should enter the PREVIOUS year that the quarter actually took place. so here's an example:

say we're talking about the 2000-2001 academic year. fall quarter actually took place in the year 2000, and winter and spring quarters took place in calendar year 2001. for your winter quarters to turn out correctly when the app converts it to academic years, enter the calendar years as follows:

FALL--2000
WINTER--2000 (not 2001!)
SPRING--2001

then, when the app changes the years you enter to the academic years, all three quarters should now say '2000' (for the academic year starting in 2000) and should be in the proper order.

i read somewhere that summer quarters are considered to be a part of the NEXT academic year, not the previous, so they're not considered an extension of spring quarter, but rather as a 'headstart' on fall, if that makes sense. so the app considers the quarters in an academic year to be in this order: summer, fall, winter, spring. so while the way the app lists summer quarters may seem out of order to you, it's in the right order according to whoever designed the app.

for the record, when i was working on my app i was *also* given the line that we shouldn't manipulate the order our quarters are listed by purposely listing the WRONG year for winter quarter, and that they were aware of the problem and would fix it during verification. well, my app has been verified for nearly a month and the quarters are still out of order. not only that, but someone posted an email that they received from their premed advisor regarding this problem, and the people at AMCAS said that the application was set-up so that it considered winter quarter to begin in december, immediately after fall quarter, not january like the way i'm betting 99% of schools on trimesters/quarters operate. so in reality you're SUPPOSED to list the 'wrong' year for winter quarter, even though i was explicitly told by several different people at AMCAS *not* to do this! anyway, at least other people can learn from this and enter winter quarter the right way....which is actually the wrong way....wow this is messed-up....

but i'm not concerned--the problem is actually rather minor. remember that you have to list your academic status (freshman, soph, etc) next to each and every course you enter, so if any adcom is confused by the way your coursework is entered they can piece it together using that info.

hope this helps!