New MCAT score was released, but I already submitted secondaries

[happytofubear]

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Hi! I am new to SDN. I received my new MCAT score yesterday. I applied this cycle with my old MCAT score, and I added the "addl MCAT intent date" on my AMCAS application. I took the MCAT in August, and I submitted secondaries in late July and in August. Do I need to contact each school that I applied to about my new score or will AMCAS alert all of the schools about my new score? I would like to know how the process works. Thanks!

 

[DBC03]

Hi! I am new to SDN. I received my new MCAT score yesterday. I applied this cycle with my old MCAT score, and I added the "addl MCAT intent date" on my AMCAS application. I took the MCAT in August, and I submitted secondaries in late July and in August. Do I need to contact each school that I applied to about my new score or will AMCAS alert all of the schools about my new score? I would like to know how the process works. Thanks!

I believe they automatically receive the new scores from AMCAS. I hope it was an improvement 🙂

 

[PreMedMissteps]

You don't need to do a thing

 

[lpp06]

Schools will automatically receive your scores.

But I don't know what happens after they receive them, and it most likely varies by school.

Some schools may have held your application until your new score came in, at which point they will give your application to the initial reviewer.

Some schools may have already begun the review process since you had a valid score on record, in which case they may silently add the new score to your file, may alert the reviewer with the new score, or do something to make the new score known.

If you demonstrated an improvement, you may wish to reach out to schools with a short note to make sure they see it.

Maybe @LizzyM @gonnif or @gyngyn can weigh in on what is kosher here.

 

[kwu]

I was in the same situation. One school that I applied to held my application until they received my new MCAT score. They did not even send me a secondary application

 

[USERX]

I was in the same position and actually called AAMC and TMDSAS to make sure. They said the schools get a notification when a change on the application occurs. Some wait until your newest score comes in (Example: University of Washington) others don't even consider MCAT before sending a secondary (Example: Long School of Medicine), but all should be notified when the scores come in. That still makes me nervous tho because from my grad school application experience when my GRE came in later, not all school took me off the waitlist (which I was placed on due to lack of the score). I hope medical schools are different. If you haven't received an "In Review" email for a long time, I would maybe consider contacting the school.

 

[LizzyM]

That's a back office thing that I'm not very familiar with but I figure that applications with new MCAT scores are likely to be flagged as having something new and that will be a signal to send the application out for review. FYI: my school will not review applications that have a note that the MCAT is being taken again ... it will wait until the new scores come in. In one case, someone cancelled their MCAT date and just went with the old scores and then didn't get an interview until they called and asked what had happened... turned out it was in the "waiting for scores" pile. (this was a faculty offspring who was expecting a courtesy interview at the very least and surprised not to get one which is why the phone call happened.).