need to change email address for amcas...best way to do this?

[chickensandwich]

I'm an idiot and used my school email address for AMCAs. I got an email this week that my email will expire mid-March. So my issue is that more than half of my schools have sent me secondaries already, but some haven't yet, and I'm not sure when it would be easiest to inform everyone of the email change. I figure I could:

1) change it on AMCAs now, put the new email on all my secondaries (I have a lot where the prompts are done but not submitted yet due to a LOR that's going in this week). With this, I'm worried about the schools that have yet to send a secondary/rejection and whether it'd be confusing for them, but if they sent it to the wrong email, it'd still be ok since I still have access to that.

2) wait to change it on AMCAs until I get all secondaries/rejections, put the new email on all my secondaries. I'm worried this will be confusing for the schools that will receive a secondary with a new email when they refer to my primary with the old email.

3) wait until late feb/early march to change anything. hopefully by this time, I will have heard from most schools either way and can save my effort to only update those schools where my status is pending. The only reason this one worries me is because if there does turn out to be a mix-up, this is when the more important news tends to come. I do figure that most places send a physical letter with both acceptances and rejections, so even if I missed the email, at least I'd have that?

What do you all think? Thanks.

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[LAman10]

I'm an idiot and used my school email address for AMCAs. I got an email this week that my email will expire mid-March. So my issue is that more than half of my schools have sent me secondaries already, but some haven't yet, and I'm not sure when it would be easiest to inform everyone of the email change. I figure I could:

1) change it on AMCAs now, put the new email on all my secondaries (I have a lot where the prompts are done but not submitted yet due to a LOR that's going in this week). With this, I'm worried about the schools that have yet to send a secondary/rejection and whether it'd be confusing for them, but if they sent it to the wrong email, it'd still be ok since I still have access to that.

2) wait to change it on AMCAs until I get all secondaries/rejections, put the new email on all my secondaries. I'm worried this will be confusing for the schools that will receive a secondary with a new email when they refer to my primary with the old email.

3) wait until late feb/early march to change anything. hopefully by this time, I will have heard from most schools either way and can save my effort to only update those schools where my status is pending. The only reason this one worries me is because if there does turn out to be a mix-up, this is when the more important news tends to come. I do figure that most places send a physical letter with both acceptances and rejections, so even if I missed the email, at least I'd have that?

What do you all think? Thanks.

I was in the same situation. Just go ahead and change it in AMCAS, recertify, and resubmit. The way I understand it is that schools access your AMCAS data on a periodic basis and update their systems. Some schools update their systems daily, others do it weekly. When you update your AMCAS, most schools will start sending correspondence to your new address, but if they haven't updated their systems, they'll continue sending to your school address until they get updated. Either way, you'll be receiving all the emails, but they'll just be coming to both inboxes for a little while. Better to do it earlier than later though.

 

[YouToo]

Have you considered asking the school for an extension of the deletion date so that you can fill out applications?

 

[dbeast]

Need to bump this thread... I'm in the same situation and the school won't extend my email privileges. All my secondaries are in with my old email address on them. Ruh roh...

Any suggestions?

 

[gravitywave]

the advice laman10 gave in this thread last year is still the right way to go about it.

 

[dbeast]

[Warning: obligatory neurotic premed comment]

It's all good if I change the AMCAS email even after I sent in secondaries that include the expired one?

Sorry, just got the damn deactivation message today so it has kinda shaken things up.

 

[gravitywave]

believe me, i understand how nervewracking it can be.

just trust me when i tell you that in the spring, when you are sitting on waitlists, every piece of communication you get from schools will softly remind you to keep your contact info current via AMCAS. no one ever asked me to resubmit a secondary 🙂