MedSchoolApplicant With Questions

[sv74]

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Hey so I've never been on this before so not sure how it works but I'm looking for some answers that I am hopeful people here can provide.

Background: Biomedical Engineering Undergrad with a 3.8/4.0 in the honors college. I took my first and only official MCAT June 20th (I've taken some practice ones) and submitted my application on June 7th thinking that I would get things going early. My letters of rec are all set my pre-med advisor is holding off on submitting them until my MCAT score comes in (which should be July 20th).

Question: Why am I receiving secondary applications already?/Am I supposed to be submitting these with the two week deadline even though schools won't be able to review my application without my score/letters?
[I'm afraid I will submit everything and my score won't be where I want it to be and I will have to withdraw all of this.]

 

[DrMikeP]

Hey so I've never been on this before so not sure how it works but I'm looking for some answers that I am hopeful people here can provide.

Background: Biomedical Engineering Undergrad with a 3.8/4.0 in the honors college. I took my first and only official MCAT June 20th (I've taken some practice ones) and submitted my application on June 7th thinking that I would get things going early. My letters of rec are all set my pre-med advisor is holding off on submitting them until my MCAT score comes in (which should be July 20th).

Question: Why am I receiving secondary applications already?/Am I supposed to be submitting these with the two week deadline even though schools won't be able to review my application without my score/letters?
[I'm afraid I will submit everything and my score won't be where I want it to be and I will have to withdraw all of this.]

Many schools auto send out secondaries as soon as the app comes in. It makes them money and it's easier than early filtering for some.

Remove the idea of withdraw of your application imo. You're committed now, as many schools consider you a reapplicant at this point and they will see you MCAT good or bad. Unless perhaps you are gunning for a certain top school and wouldn't want anything less, which is poor judgement if you applied to schools you wouldn't want to attend if accepted. You could ask individual schools if they consider you a reapplicant before or after secondaries, but then is that what you want for a first impression?

Schools vary in how fast they want secondaries returned. When your mcat comes in email and let schools know so they can update their files, as some don't automatically. Also you might get some auto rejections due to no MCAT score so be ready to fight with that.

Good luck

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

[sv74]

Many schools auto send out secondaries as soon as the app comes in. It makes them money and it's easier than early filtering for some.

Remove the idea of withdraw of your application imo. You're committed now, as many schools consider you a reapplicant at this point and they will see you MCAT good or bad. Unless perhaps you are gunning for a certain top school and wouldn't want anything less, which is poor judgement if you applied to schools you wouldn't want to attend if accepted. You could ask individual schools if they consider you a reapplicant before or after secondaries, but then is that what you want for a first impression?

Schools vary in how fast they want secondaries returned. When your mcat comes in email and let schools know so they can update their files, as some don't automatically. Also you might get some auto rejections due to no MCAT score so be ready to fight with that.

Good luck

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

My top school is UMass, I think my scores could be good enough to surpass it so I've applied to some higher up schools but I've just always had a good feeling about that school. I am still open minded towards other schools if I get a better offer or if UMass doesn't work out.
Thanks for the tips! I'm going into this with very little insight so all of that information is really helpful. I definitely didn't know to email schools and let them know so I will be sure to do that.

 

[Goro]

Indeed. Secondaries are often a tax on the hopelessly naïve, or the pathologically optimistic.

Many schools auto send out secondaries as soon as the app comes in. It makes them money and it's easier than early filtering for some.