How Much Time Did You Spend on Writing Up Your Application?

[StudyLater]

---

Members don't see this ad.

How long, in hours, did you take to write up your AMCAS application? I'm not sure if it's one of those things that's just very straightforward (reporting information) and takes maybe 3-5 hours, or if it is something that is generally done over a 50-100 hour stretch, with all of the tweaking needed. How long did you spend, and what were the most time-consuming portions for you?

 

[pageantry]

Inputting transcripts is a long, tedious chore (probably several hours.)

Work and Activities is a much bigger and more confusing project than most people anticipate. Plan on several hours at least. For me, first draft of that will probably take ten hours (I have a lot of things to put in tho.) Luckily, there's a large, very helpful thread for that section in this forum.

 

[mehc012]

Inputting transcripts is a long, tedious chore (probably several hours.)

Work and Activities is a much bigger and more confusing project than most people anticipate. Plan on several hours at least. For me, first draft of that will probably take ten hours (I have a lot of things to put in tho.) Luckily, there's a large, very helpful thread for that section in this forum.

I would agree with the second half...maybe even bump up the time.
I found transcripts to be straightforward and quick...maybe an hour, max (and I have 2 schools and a lot of credits due to postbacc work)

 

[StudyLater]

Work and Activities is a much bigger and more confusing project than most people anticipate.

Can you expand on this? Do you not simply list your activities and then the "description" of said activities? Or is it just that you personally have quite a few to list and describe? I'm asking because I'd assume the average person has maybe 4-6 main EC's, and then perhaps a few other random short-term activities things here and there. I suppose I'm just not getting why this would need to take so long, unless you feel you need to write a mini-essay for some of your activities to make adcoms understand what they meant to you/how they helped you grow your love of helping people and interest in medicine etc.

 

[mehc012]

Can you expand on this? Do you not simply list your activities and then the "description" of said activities? Or is it just that you personally have quite a few to list and describe? I'm asking because I'd assume the average person has maybe 4-6 main EC's, and then perhaps a few other random short-term activities things here and there. I suppose I'm just not getting why this would need to take so long, unless you feel you need to write a mini-essay for some of your activities to make adcoms understand what they meant to you/how they helped you grow your love of helping people and interest in medicine etc.

You are required to 'write a mini-essay...to make adcoms understand what they meant to you/how they helped you grow your love of helping people and interest in medicine etc' for at least one of your activities, and encouraged to do so for up to three.

Beyond that, it takes longer than you'd think just to ensure that hours, dates, contact info (do they still work there? Are they OK with getting the call?) are all correct, etc. And even with 700char descriptions, it can take a bit to get the phrasing just right.

Also, many people have more than 4-6 activities. Some have more than 15, and struggle over how to combine them, etc.

It just takes more time than you'd expect.

 

[pageantry]

^^this.

 

[familyaerospace]

I put about 60 hours into my personal statement (prewritten), at least 30 into my activities plus their essays (prewritten), transcripts took three full 8 hour days to input initially. I have over 300 credit hours though, although 270 were inputted into AMCAS.

 

[mehc012]

I put about 60 hours into my personal statement (prewritten), at least 30 into my activities plus their essays (prewritten), transcripts took three full 8 hour days to input initially. I have over 300 credit hours though, although 270 were inputted into AMCAS.

Mine were admittedly easier because all of my school's courses are listed on the transcript as '1' credit. The hard part comes later, when AMCAS converts them to 'real' credit hours during verification and (apparently frequently) messes that part up and I have to be vigilant to fix it.

So yeah, I look as if I have only 30 credit hours from my home institution

 

[BLACKMD]

With a prewritten PS it took me about ~35-40 hours. Split over several days. 10 MD 7 DO apps.

The longest was my disadvantaged statement and activities for both.

 

[HybridEarth]

Don't know why transcripts are taking people so long, took me 2 hours tops. Am I missing something here? lol

 

[justadream]

Don't know why transcripts are taking people so long, took me 2 hours tops. Am I missing something here? lol

Yeah how is it taking people so long?

AMCAS saves the settings for you so when you "add another course", you don't even have to change the semester every time.

If you are concentrating, it should take no more than 1-2 hours. Even if you have like 300 credits, it should take you like 2.5-3 hours.

Maybe we're doing it wrong?

 

[pageantry]

Yeah how is it taking people so long?

AMCAS saves the settings for you so when you "add another course", you don't even have to change the semester every time.

If you are concentrating, it should take no more than 1-2 hours. Even if you have like 300 credits, it should take you like 2.5-3 hours.

Maybe we're doing it wrong?

Data entry is a drag. YouTube beckons.

Btw, the AACOMAS version is truly a pain. Such a clunky set-up. I think they did it on purpose so people would pay for their transcript-entry service.

 

[calisurfer19]

God I hope we didn't, but I suppose we'll find out soon enough. I've got roughly 300 credit hours from 7 different institutions (non-trad, military, don't ask) and it took me about about an hour. I did order myself a copy of my official transcripts earlier this year though to make sure I knew what was going to be sent to AMCAS. But honestly I can't knock any of my fellow applicants for being thorough.

 

[MightBeACylon439]

As an adult, you work until the job is finished.

 

[orangetea]

I swear I am not trolling.. but this question made me giggle because EVERYONE's application is going to be different.... people come from 4 institutions and 10 activities, while having to write a disadvantaged essay. Also.. some like myself are horrible spellers and have to read it 7 times to make sure everything sounds/looks correct. But honestly after a while I am just gonna be like

 

[johnnytest]

PS- lost track but >20
Activities and grade entry were most annoying. I felt I had ocd rechecking each grade, credit, class name, type, etc. So that it would match my transcript.same goes for the contact info for activities. Hardest part was figuring out how to describe what I did and what it meant to me or how it helped me grow in under 700 characters. And don't get me started on the 3 meaningful entries. I am not a writer.

 

[miamiheatfan]

Doing everything, writing and editing my PS and ECs 15+ times it felt like, plus entering everything else? Like days worth of my life, couldn’t tell you an exact number.

 

[prettylittledoctor22]

would it be wiser to use bullet point format for the activities, or should the activities section description be crafted into good sentences?

 

[miamiheatfan]

would it be wiser to use bullet point format for the activities, or should the activities section description be crafted into good sentences?

Sentences for sure, think of it as writing a mini-story.

 

[Oranges2]

would it be wiser to use bullet point format for the activities, or should the activities section description be crafted into good sentences?

Er, I would personally write in complete sentences that logically follow one another. Exception being the shadowing activity.

 

[italiancowgirl]

I viewed it like this, I have one PS and 15 short activities essays to convince the schools to offer me a secondary. Additionally those words may influence my interviews or the final evaluation of my overall file. I am given very few opportunities to truly try and to show who I am, so why would I rush or halfway do these essays? It will take everyone different times but the point is to get to what you feel is a perfect description of how you fit in medicine!

 

[Rainbow Zebra]

Don't know why transcripts are taking people so long, took me 2 hours tops. Am I missing something here? lol

Takes longer if you had summer courses, study abroads, weird classes you don't know how to classify, classes from 2 different institutions (I had CC classes from HS that transferred to college, as my HS didn't have AP). Then figuring out which had lab, and adding the "and lab" to course name. It was a PITA, probably took my 3 hours or first time, then printed out and double check the years, all the S1,S2 stuff. This was just for the course work. I did not find it straight forward, read the whole damn AMCAS section on course work.

Spent literally weeks working on my PS and work activities/meaningful experiences essays. Definitely treated them like mini PS.

 

[HybridEarth]

Sorry you had a rough time. Maybe I'm just lucky and my institution made it easy to the point where I literally just typed what was on my transcripts (which is what everyone is hopefully doing, because that's what they compare the info you input to), and the course names were straightforward enough to classify instantly. Not here to have a contest with people to see how fast we all finished, but I was just commenting that I find it hard to believe this took more than 3 hours unless you attended multiple institutions, not counting time spent double checking.

 

[sat0ri]

I would agree with the second half...maybe even bump up the time.
I found transcripts to be straightforward and quick...maybe an hour, max (and I have 2 schools and a lot of credits due to postbacc work)

How do you put in postbacc work? I spent a few years at a CC and a few years at univeristy. I'm not sure how to classify which credits are freshmen vs. sophmore etc. Would I just do first 30 are freshman, second 30 cr hrs are sophmore etc?

 

[mehc012]

How do you put in postbacc work? I spent a few years at a CC and a few years at univeristy. I'm not sure how to classify which credits are freshmen vs. sophmore etc. Would I just do first 30 are freshman, second 30 cr hrs are sophmore etc?

High School (HS) College-level coursework taken while in high school Freshman (FR) 0-35 semester hours Sophomore (SO) 36-65 semester hours Junior (JR) 66-95 semester hours Senior (SR) 96+ semester hours

Postbacc was easy...it's just anything you took after getting your bachelor's degree.

 

[WedgeDawg]

I took about a month to write my Personal Statement. I took a couple days to write about my activities. I took a day or two to fill out information/input schools/input transcript. I took 3 weeks to write all of my secondaries, doing about 3 essays/day.

 

[Premixis]

I wrote and edited my PS over the course of a few months, my activities over the course of a week, and filled out the coursework and grades over the course of a few hours. After all that was said and done, the secondary grind took me a few days per school, with breaks when I received more than three of them in the span of a few hours 😱.

 

[deleted158872]

a lot.
i don't even understand why AAMC and AACOMAS make us relist each grade into the system while they have our transcripts, they can just scan the transcripts in. ugh...

 

[familyaerospace]

Yeah how is it taking people so long?

AMCAS saves the settings for you so when you "add another course", you don't even have to change the semester every time.

If you are concentrating, it should take no more than 1-2 hours. Even if you have like 300 credits, it should take you like 2.5-3 hours.

Maybe we're doing it wrong?

Well let's see I took those 300 credits worth of credits over 16 years at multiple institutions. The last 100 were all one credit officially even though each would have transferred in as 3 each so really I had closer to 500 credits. Almost everything was in a different department because my majors were not a standard pre-med major. Even if something was in the same department it still might or might not count in the same category. My graduate degree was all like that plus some of those credits were considered post bacc and others graduate school level. I was also enrolled in two schools at the same time for a while, part time (6 credits) in one and over full time in the other.

My Israeli course load was worse unless you happened to know where Kabbalah courses go? Or Halacha? Is that Religion or Law? Is "Lonely Man of Faith" Philosophy? Literature? Religion? Or any of the other weird courses I had. Not to mention their semester schedule is not even close to the semester we keep, since in one academic year they have fall, mini, winter, pesach, spring, mini, summer, and Elul. That is 8 "semesters" (Zmanim) per year. And some of the courses last multiple semesters but only go on the transcript once.

If you could have done all my courses in 3 hours, my hat is off to you sir. I might or might not had called myself an idiot for taking such courses. I almost had a breakdown just entering the courses all while my partner said "told you so"

 

[seizurecrow]

I hate writing, so here's a conservative estimate:

it took forever.