Is having all of your secondary essays submitted and completed by August 20th considered late if you are aiming for T20s?

[slimshady 22]

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I was wondering if submitting all of your secondary essays and being completed by August 20th considered late if you are aiming for T20s. Also, will medical schools send you their secondary applications without MCAT and recommendation letters if you submitted the primary application? For example, if I took my MCAT on July 17th, I'll receive my results on August 17th. And if I submitted my primary application on like June 20th and get verified by July 20th, will medical schools send me their secondary applications or should I wait until my MCAT scores and recommendation letters are in on August 17th before they send me their secondary applications?

 

[KnightDoc]

I was wondering if submitting all of your secondary essays and being completed by August 20th considered late if you are aiming for T20s. Also, will medical schools send you their secondary applications without MCAT and recommendation letters if you submitted the primary application? For example, if I took my MCAT on July 17th, I'll receive my results on August 17th. And if I submitted my primary application on like June 20th and get verified by July 20th, will medical schools send me their secondary applications or should I wait until my MCAT scores and recommendation letters are in on August 17th before they send me their secondary applications?

"Considered late"? No. Later than literally thousands of people who will be complete before then? Yes.

Schools that send secondaries to everyone will send them to you without a score. No one looks at LORs before sending secondaries, but many schools do look at MCATs and GPAs before doing so.

You also need to realize that schools spread out sending secondaries to smooth out their workflow, so your assumption that you will be complete by 8/20 at schools that will not look at you until they receive a MCAT score is a bad one. You could literally be waiting weeks after 8/17 before you even receive secondaries from some schools.

Bottom line - taking the MCAT on 7/17 is not really early for the current cycle. It's not necessarily late, but it's not early. You might not be complete at some schools until after Labor Day if they use the MCAT as a screen and they don't even have the score until 8/17.

 

[Goro]

I was wondering if submitting all of your secondary essays and being completed by August 20th considered late if you are aiming for T20s. Also, will medical schools send you their secondary applications without MCAT and recommendation letters if you submitted the primary application? For example, if I took my MCAT on July 17th, I'll receive my results on August 17th. And if I submitted my primary application on like June 20th and get verified by July 20th, will medical schools send me their secondary applications or should I wait until my MCAT scores and recommendation letters are in on August 17th before they send me their secondary applications?

No

Applying without an MCAT score is a recipe for disaster.

Aiming for T20s (of which there are at least 30 schools) is a recipe for hubris.

Also keep in mind that secondaries are often a tax on the hopelessly naive, if not pathologically clueless.