Grades/applying early question

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AbujaMan

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Im pretty new at the forums and I have by far the worst premedical adviser on the planet. I was wondering about submitting my grades in terms of applying early. I want to apply this coming june. My grades for the spring semester dont come in until mid june. I was thinking of submitting my transcript earlier before my grades come in (so the grades for this semester would be pending) so I can get my application complete earlier. I figured I could get my app complete early so i can get my secondaries faster and interview as early as possible. If I'm missing something, please let me know. Thanks

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are your grades up to fall semester good though? are you doing good this semester? have you already taken your mcat? these are the questions you have to ask yourself.

generally if you want to be out as fast as possible, you need to make sure your letters of reccomendation are done and that you have gone to your undergraduate committee if there is one at your school, so your packet can be finished. these are the things that usually take the longest.

i don't know whether schools will want to know about the spring grades, but make sure the GPA you send is above a 3.5. if not and your spring grades can bring it up to that wait for your spring grades but get everything else done. make your your personal statement is good to go. if your ambitious, look around for secondary essay topics and get started. have you taken your MCAT yet? even though you turn in your stuff it will not matter as much if the schools do not have your mcat.
 
That's what I would do. You can always update your AMCAS to reflect your new grades as they come in, and they won't have to re-process your application. The longer you wait to apply, the longer your primary processing time will be- my friends who applied in June had their apps processed in 4 days. I applied in late July and it took me a whole month to get mine back. The earlier you apply, the better. Good luck! In my experience, SDN gave much better advice than my actual advisor, most of the time :laugh:
 
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I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference, and they are going to need to put those grades in anyway. If you submit your transcript on June 15 I think you will be ok, especially if everything else is already submitted.

Anytime before July is really quite early.
 
Well the thing is, the gpa is fine. Im taking the MCAT in april and the letters and everything will all be in by june. So i figured if I could have a complete application sent out june 1st, id be really early then i could just update the grades later but that wont slow med schools from sending secondaries or inviting to interviews (i think thats the case, right?.

My advisor was clueless and never even thought about sending the grades in earlier. I was thinking the only problem may be that it may look like i wanted to avoid med schools from seeing my spring grades (ie if i messed up or something). but my grades have been pretty consistent so i dont really think that should matter. what do you think?
 
You can't really submit on June 1st anyway, can you? It was made available on June 5th this year, and I don't think it could be complete before like the 20-somethingth. Really, anytime in June is fine. My letters couldn't even be sent out until 8/14, so I wasn't getting an interview before then. Just make sure to stay on top of your transcripts and your letters. They will be lazy and not process them. If they don't show up in a week, call.
 
Submitting on the first day and submitting in mid-June are pretty much the same deal. Like someone said previously, anything before July is pretty good.

But if you really want, there's nothing wrong with submitting your transcript before spring semester grades come out. I applied this year without my grades from spring quarter and it made no difference. As long as your grades are decent and one semester won't make a difference, then go ahead.

Also, you have to consider that it takes time to mail transcripts and then be processed by the AAMC. In this regard, earlier is better in case they don't get it (which happens somewhat frequently). If grades come out mid-June and you send them out immediately, it's likely that the final processing will be about 1-2 weeks later, which you should take into account.

However, you can't update AMCAS with new grades. What you put in is final. There is the option, though, of sending an updated transcript directly to the school as an update, which is something I did do.
 
Im pretty new at the forums and I have by far the worst premedical adviser on the planet. I was wondering about submitting my grades in terms of applying early. I want to apply this coming june. My grades for the spring semester dont come in until mid june. I was thinking of submitting my transcript earlier before my grades come in (so the grades for this semester would be pending) so I can get my application complete earlier. I figured I could get my app complete early so i can get my secondaries faster and interview as early as possible. If I'm missing something, please let me know. Thanks

You can submit in early June, and your application will be processed quickly. However, if I remember correctly, the AMCAS information wasn't ditributed to schools until June 21st, or 22nd. So if you get your grades out on around June 15th you can just send that transcript in and get your application verified in time to be within the first few days of applications that go out to the med schools.

It's actually a great opportunitiy. By early June I knew my grades for all of my classes, they just hadn't posted to my official transcript. At that time you'd be able to send in everything and submit early if you wanted to avoid showing a C or something bad that had happend in spring, or you could wait and send in a final batch of grades and reinforce your consistent academic record, or to show improvement. And either way, you'd still be very early. Letters of Recommendation definitely take the longest. I'd start requesting them by March, or April at the latest. Good luck!
 
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