I am taking the MCAT august 6th and my school pre med committee will need my score to put together my recommendation letter. If I get my score back in early september and it takes my school 1 to 2 weeks to compose the rec letter will my app be too late to be competitive in the process?
Taking the MCAT in August....too late to be competitive?
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I took the last MCAT last year and I still got in, my letters didn't get sent until October, and I still had 5 interviews. I turned my primary in early but had to wait on everything else, but it seemed to make no difference. I didnt dither on my secondaries through, average turn around time for me was 1 day. Hope this helps and good luck with your MCAT.
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I also took the mcat in august and got my letters in mid october. I got 4 interviews, some very late, I think I would have done significantly better had I applied earlier. I've been accepted but I don't have as many options as I would have had, and if my application were weaker I might not have had any options at all. I would strongly advise you against this approach. If you're thinking about this now you still have the opportunity to take the MCAT earlier, I would recommend you do so.
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I echo this. If you can take it sooner. Do it. Make it happen. Otherwise, consider applying the next cycle.
If you have a 'knock-em-dead' application and you don't care about later interviews, go for it, you might be just fine.
If you do apply this cycle, and take the MCAT late, make sure you submit your complete primary (sans MCAT...there's a place for 'expected MCAT') waaaaay before August (like beginning of June) as soon as the schools get your MCAT scores they'll send you a secondary (or some schools will send you theirs before then). Be sure to return these secondaries before the MCAT scores arrive, or soon thereafter as you're already behind on time. Remember, by the time they look at your application they might already be interviewing the first batch of applicants.
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this. i posted that it really depends on the school. for my in state they dont send out secondaries until august 1st so me retaking mcat early aug wont be much of an issue. it prob will take me a while to do the secondary so my entire app should be complete mid aug- early sept irregardless when i retake my mcat. Do make sure you have everything else ready early though (primary, transcript, rec letters etc)
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I took an early August MCAT last year and did not submit my primary until after I received my score in September because I was not sure how well I did. I received 9 interviews and have been accepted. That said, I think I would have been much more successful had I applied early. I also had to attend 8 interviews in the span of 6 weeks, which was pretty rough. I would say take it earlier if you can, but it's not the be-all-end-all if you take it in August.
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applying earlier is correlated with better success. the people posting in here who applied later were probably highly desirable candidates for whatever reason, and even then would likely have racked up more interviews had they applied earlier. If you think your application is a pretty standard one (eg 3.6/31, legitimate ECs/research/LORs but nothing spectacular, not a URM) then yes that August date is too late.
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I know one person that didn't take the MCAT until August of last year and she had one interview and one acceptance.
One of my good friends this year applied fairly late (didn't submit until August - similar to the position you'd be in) and only got one interview didn't accepted. This was to a Texas school and he's a Texas resident. His MCAT was a little low, but his app was otherwise desirable beyond that.
Point of the story: apply if you have the time and money, but I wouldn't expect much.
One of my good friends this year applied fairly late (didn't submit until August - similar to the position you'd be in) and only got one interview didn't accepted. This was to a Texas school and he's a Texas resident. His MCAT was a little low, but his app was otherwise desirable beyond that.
Point of the story: apply if you have the time and money, but I wouldn't expect much.
