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Is it too late to apply? Graduated last year. Details inside. PLEASE advise!!!
- Thread starter yourdudeness
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You will be late and it will be an iffy MCAT if you spend only one month studying for it. I'd say you have a chance since you have a good GPA and assuming you will get a strong MCAT and have good experiences. You should try and submit as soon as possible and prewrite secondaries. It'll be a really busy month but I think you can make it.
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Common consensus around here is that it takes about 3 months of dedicated studying in order to really nail the MCAT.
There are many, many steps in the application process and all of them take different amounts of time to get through. I am going to assume you have not started anything at all.
To complete the "Primary", make an account here https://services.aamc.org/AMCAS2_2013/
1. You want to "Submit" your application ASAP to begin the 6+ week "Verification" process.
2. "Verification" - In order to start the verification process you need to have a completed application on the AMCAS2013 website and pressed the submit button. This process takes a really long time (6+ weeks)
In order to get your application to "Submit" status, see below
3. Transcripts - You need these at AMCAS before you can submit. My advice is to fill out the AMCAS TONIGHT and get the request form to the registrar by tomorrow. While the transcripts are in the mail system you can fill out the essays and activities.
4. Essays/Activities: You need to fill these out as quick as possible while your transcripts are in the mail system (1-2 weeks)
Now fill out all the other pertaining information. And list at least 1 school to apply to. You can add schools later. Make sure the information about the expected recommendations and MCAT scores are correct (note these do not actually have to be at AMCAS yet for submission).
-----------If you followed the above steps you should be able to submit, and take a 6 week breather----------------------
5. Recommendations: This step also takes forever and you are probably reallllllllllly going to piss off people if you don't have these yet. If your undergrad school has a health professions advisor attempt to get a "Letter Packet" assembled. In my case I had recs sent to my undergrad advisor, who then sent 1 letter packet to AMCAS. This can take 1-2+ months depending on how loved you are.
Conclusion: Though you can "Submit" your primary for verification without your letter packet being received yet... you need to get this started now.
6. MCAT: Goodluck, you should try to aim for a 33+. I assume you have been studying but to maximize your yield in a month make sure you practice a lot. Test timing seems to be a big limiting factor for a lot of students, don't obsess about not knowing the right answer. As said above, you can "Submit" your primary for verification without the MCAT.
Overall Conclusion: Yeah its late but doable if you have a good MCAT. Your GPA looks good. You will need at least 2 weeks full time cramming for the MCAT (at least 7+ hours a day) which is hard with a full-time job. For high yield studying focus on practicing and reading up on the topics you miss. You should probably do a full review of all topics so you know at least where to reference material for review.
To complete the "Primary", make an account here https://services.aamc.org/AMCAS2_2013/
1. You want to "Submit" your application ASAP to begin the 6+ week "Verification" process.
2. "Verification" - In order to start the verification process you need to have a completed application on the AMCAS2013 website and pressed the submit button. This process takes a really long time (6+ weeks)
In order to get your application to "Submit" status, see below
3. Transcripts - You need these at AMCAS before you can submit. My advice is to fill out the AMCAS TONIGHT and get the request form to the registrar by tomorrow. While the transcripts are in the mail system you can fill out the essays and activities.
4. Essays/Activities: You need to fill these out as quick as possible while your transcripts are in the mail system (1-2 weeks)
Now fill out all the other pertaining information. And list at least 1 school to apply to. You can add schools later. Make sure the information about the expected recommendations and MCAT scores are correct (note these do not actually have to be at AMCAS yet for submission).
-----------If you followed the above steps you should be able to submit, and take a 6 week breather----------------------
5. Recommendations: This step also takes forever and you are probably reallllllllllly going to piss off people if you don't have these yet. If your undergrad school has a health professions advisor attempt to get a "Letter Packet" assembled. In my case I had recs sent to my undergrad advisor, who then sent 1 letter packet to AMCAS. This can take 1-2+ months depending on how loved you are.
Conclusion: Though you can "Submit" your primary for verification without your letter packet being received yet... you need to get this started now.
6. MCAT: Goodluck, you should try to aim for a 33+. I assume you have been studying but to maximize your yield in a month make sure you practice a lot. Test timing seems to be a big limiting factor for a lot of students, don't obsess about not knowing the right answer. As said above, you can "Submit" your primary for verification without the MCAT.
Overall Conclusion: Yeah its late but doable if you have a good MCAT. Your GPA looks good. You will need at least 2 weeks full time cramming for the MCAT (at least 7+ hours a day) which is hard with a full-time job. For high yield studying focus on practicing and reading up on the topics you miss. You should probably do a full review of all topics so you know at least where to reference material for review.
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Right, agreed. That would be ideal, but I definitely don't have 3 months if I want to try and apply this cycle.
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You can definitely pull it off in one month but it's going to be a pretty stressful month. You got a 3.8+ in undergrad so I think a lot of the science can come back to you pretty well.
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Thank you so much! This is exactly what I was looking for. I will get started right away. Might as well give it it a good go.
Damn you're giving it a go! 😱 I suppose there is a lot more advice to give.
MCAT studying:
There's a million ways to do this but you only have a little time. I am also non-trad so I was working full time when I was studying for the MCAT (got a 35Q on 4 weeks studying which is acceptable).
I used the "Cracking the MCAT" Kaplan book for general review. It has nice formula sheets.
After reviewing the Kaplan book and checking out the topics they listed for each general subject I started practicing using the AAMC tests. I bought and used all the tests available here, https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/mcat/preparing/85158/orderingpracticetests_mcat.html (this was the highest yield studying for me personally)
For studying you will probably refresh quickest on physical and biological sciences (PS, BS). I find the verbal reasoning (VR) section is more about exposing yourself and tuning your timing to the test appropriately. I practice/studied on all the practice exams (look at answers as you go along).
After that I redid the practice exams as fast as I could, and obviously you should get it 99% right unless you forgot something. This helped with my confidence/speed and in the actual sitting I found myself with ~10 mins extra time on both the PS and BS sections. VR is my weakness so I barely finished answering all 40 questions. Looking back, I need to improve my speed reading so that I quickly remember:
1. the major points being argued
2. the viewpoints around the argument and the author's main viewpoint/biases
3. the structure of the passage (to know where a question refers to quickly)
You are not penalized for wrong answers so every effort should be made to answer every question, even if you're just guessing. The MCAT test taking software is poorly designed so it takes a lot of time to go back and change/mark answers you passed over.
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Secondaries:
The essay questions for the secondaries are readily available here: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdisplay.php?f=688
You can start thinking/organizing your responses to the secondary questions after you finish the MCAT and wait the month for those scores to get back. Once your MCAT score is available I assume your primary should be submitted, verified and sent out already. (add the extra schools you want to apply to now) You will get the secondaries from the bulk of your schools. Some schools will allow you to view their online secondary applications (school specific applicant website) before the MCAT is received.
There are a lot of posts about secondaries so you can read those.
Also you need a lot of money to do this. =)
MCAT studying:
There's a million ways to do this but you only have a little time. I am also non-trad so I was working full time when I was studying for the MCAT (got a 35Q on 4 weeks studying which is acceptable).
I used the "Cracking the MCAT" Kaplan book for general review. It has nice formula sheets.
After reviewing the Kaplan book and checking out the topics they listed for each general subject I started practicing using the AAMC tests. I bought and used all the tests available here, https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/mcat/preparing/85158/orderingpracticetests_mcat.html (this was the highest yield studying for me personally)
For studying you will probably refresh quickest on physical and biological sciences (PS, BS). I find the verbal reasoning (VR) section is more about exposing yourself and tuning your timing to the test appropriately. I practice/studied on all the practice exams (look at answers as you go along).
After that I redid the practice exams as fast as I could, and obviously you should get it 99% right unless you forgot something. This helped with my confidence/speed and in the actual sitting I found myself with ~10 mins extra time on both the PS and BS sections. VR is my weakness so I barely finished answering all 40 questions. Looking back, I need to improve my speed reading so that I quickly remember:
1. the major points being argued
2. the viewpoints around the argument and the author's main viewpoint/biases
3. the structure of the passage (to know where a question refers to quickly)
You are not penalized for wrong answers so every effort should be made to answer every question, even if you're just guessing. The MCAT test taking software is poorly designed so it takes a lot of time to go back and change/mark answers you passed over.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secondaries:
The essay questions for the secondaries are readily available here: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdisplay.php?f=688
You can start thinking/organizing your responses to the secondary questions after you finish the MCAT and wait the month for those scores to get back. Once your MCAT score is available I assume your primary should be submitted, verified and sent out already. (add the extra schools you want to apply to now) You will get the secondaries from the bulk of your schools. Some schools will allow you to view their online secondary applications (school specific applicant website) before the MCAT is received.
There are a lot of posts about secondaries so you can read those.
Also you need a lot of money to do this. =)
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It will certainly be doable; frankly, you shouldn't need 3+ months to prepare for the MCAT (assuming you were very comfortable with your pre-reqs).
The real concern is when your file will be complete. The likelihood is that your file will be totally completed by early September, the earliest. Now, according to SDN, most schools begin looking at files around early August, so that puts you about a month behind the "earliest" completed applicants.
Is that late? Personally I feel that it borders late-normal/early-late (if you are basing to SDN standards), but in reality, I feel that you will simply be a normal applicant if your file is totally completed by early Sept. According to LizzyM, applicants are only really "late" if they hand their stuff in within 30 days of the official school deadlines.
The real concern is when your file will be complete. The likelihood is that your file will be totally completed by early September, the earliest. Now, according to SDN, most schools begin looking at files around early August, so that puts you about a month behind the "earliest" completed applicants.
Is that late? Personally I feel that it borders late-normal/early-late (if you are basing to SDN standards), but in reality, I feel that you will simply be a normal applicant if your file is totally completed by early Sept. According to LizzyM, applicants are only really "late" if they hand their stuff in within 30 days of the official school deadlines.
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I don't know about AMCAS, but right now TMDSAS is only 2-3 weeks to verify primary.
Your rate limiting step is the MCAT. If you take it a month from now (8/16 ..ish) you'll be ready to have secondaries in late September. Depending on how long it takes to get those secondaries, you can be complete by probably late September to early October.
You don't really need 3 months to study for the MCAT. If you put in a solid month of studying you can get a 33+. Of course that is assuming that you're solid in your verbal section, and you performed well in your science prereqs and remember most of the material.
You can still get in that timeframe, but it is going to put you at a disadvantage. If you rock the MCAT a 3.8 33+ will still get you in somewhere.
Your rate limiting step is the MCAT. If you take it a month from now (8/16 ..ish) you'll be ready to have secondaries in late September. Depending on how long it takes to get those secondaries, you can be complete by probably late September to early October.
You don't really need 3 months to study for the MCAT. If you put in a solid month of studying you can get a 33+. Of course that is assuming that you're solid in your verbal section, and you performed well in your science prereqs and remember most of the material.
You can still get in that timeframe, but it is going to put you at a disadvantage. If you rock the MCAT a 3.8 33+ will still get you in somewhere.
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