Message From AMCAS

[Carleton College kid]

There are two items about the application we want to bring to your
>attention this evening.
>
>1) The first is a bug that has been reported by several applicants in the
>section of the application for designating medical schools. After
>successfully designating a number of medical schools for receipt of the
>application, and paying, certifying and submitting the application, a few
>students have noticed that 3-4 school designations were dropped from their
>application. However, the fee remained constant, reflecting the number of
>schools originally designated.
>
>This bug has been reported to our developers for corrective action. We
>will let you know as soon as corrective code is posted and will provide
>applicants with a status update on this issue on Wednesday.
>
>2) The second item has to do with the section of the application in which
>applicants enter coursework and are prompted first to enter the school,
>year and term. They experience confusion when distinguishing between
>calendar year and academic year entries. We encourage you to cut and
>paste the following instructions (which we e-mail frequently to
>applicants):
>
>When entering coursework:
>
>*Enter the calendar year in which you attempted the course in the calendar
>year field; then select the term.
>
>AMCAS assumes the academic year begins with the summer term and ends with
>the spring term. For example, the 1998 academic year begins with Summer
>1998, and continues through Fall 1998, Winter 1998/99, and Spring 1999.
>For each of these terms, "98" is the appropriate AMCAS academic year.
>
>AMCAS assumes further that for schools on the quarter system [or
>Trimesters, as Carleton - CTR], the winter quarter begins in the calendar
>month of December. If a school winter quarter actually starts in January,
>the applicant should enter the calendar year as though the quarter starts
>in December. For example, if a school's winter quarter began in January,
>1999, the applicant should select calendar December, 1998 in order to
>effect inclusion of that winter quarter in the proper academic year of
>1998.
>
>*The AMCAS application will automatically convert calendar year entries to
>the appropriate AMCAS academic year to be included on the Academic Record
>portion of the application.
>
>Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
>
>Nancy Tillinghast, AMCAS Director
>[email protected]

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[dtreese]

Friggin AMCAS!! "Assume January is December because we are too ******ed to deal with reality." Grumble, mumble, curse, gnash **$&^&@^@^^&***

 

[sandflea]

okay, wait a minute. AMCAS needs to get its story straight. i called them THREE TIMES to ask them that quarter system coursework question, and i was told NOT to manipulate the way i entered my winter terms (which begin in january, not december, at my college) in order to make it look right--i was supposed to enter everything exactly the way they occur in real life. so, as instructed, i went ahead and submitted my app with every single winter term off by a year. no one *ever* told me that the application assumed that winter term started in december--in fact, i explicitly asked this question.

this pisses me off. how am i supposed to know who to believe?!

 

[Carleton College kid]

Can I get a refund?

 

[kspillman]

Hey CCK, thanks for posting this. Since I spent 2 hours trying to get the right year with the right term, I can now spend 2 more hours putting spring of 99 when its really spring of 2000. I wasn't really feeling this amcas bashing vibe until just now.
KIM

 

[kris]

Originally posted by kspillman:
•Hey CCK, thanks for posting this. Since I spent 2 hours trying to get the right year with the right term, I can now spend 2 more hours putting spring of 99 when its really spring of 2000. I wasn't really feeling this amcas bashing vibe until just now.
KIM•

Whoa again! I believe it said to enter the CALENDAR year, and then the AMCAS year would be adjusted. Kim, I think you did it right the first time!

So I believe you should go ahead and enter Spring 2000, and then the AMCAS year printed out(because it will do the conversion FOR you) will then read Spring 1999. That is to say, you started a SCHOOL year in the Fall of 1999, so that SCHOOL year continued into the Spring of 2000, but will be called by AMCAS "Spring 1999", read: spring of the 1999 school year.

Bottom line: it seems most folks on a regular semester system just enter the term and year exactly as it was on your calendar. The AMCAS system makes the silly adjustment.

Please, someone either verify or refute this!

I'm sending you all my best vibes. I just can't tell you how much I sympathize.

I feel your pain,
--kris

 

[sandflea]

that's right. it's pretty straightforward for a semester system. the discrepancy arises in quarter system colleges, because apparently the app considers winter term to begin in december and not january after winter break. i don't know of a *single* school on the quarter system that does it that way. this whole academic/calendar year conversion thing has caused more trouble and confusion than it's probably worth.

 

[kspillman]

kris, thanks for the message but I went through a lot of trouble to make the system use the correct years. It's hard to explain but I saw it changing the dates and I thought this was another bug of some sort so I tried different things until the year was correct. So it looks like I will be doing it again after all.
Thanks anyways.
KIM

 

[mdhopeful]

everyone chill out. just enter everything the best way you can. if amcas changes the dates, do not worry. if you find that you made an error and have already submitted and been charged, do not try to change it. when filling out my amcas i called many times to clarify their confusing instructions. finally, amcas said that if you have a course on your transcript that is entered, they will find it and verify it, even if it is entered in the wrong semester/year. good luck.