Traveling during the application cycle; 2 years out of school

[confusedr]

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Hello SDNers,
I need your advice. I am thinking of applying this June and I am also thinking of taking a 20 day trip to Europe. Assuming I submit my application, letters, transcripts on June 1st and MCAT scores before June 12 (that's when I will be getting my scores), what is a good time to go on the trip?
When do you start receiving secondaries and interviews?

Also, does anyone have any advice for me- I have out of school for a year and will an additional year if I'm applying this June.

Thank you very much!

 

[varsityblue]

Hello SDNers,
I need your advice. I am thinking of applying this June and I am also thinking of taking a 20 day trip to Europe. Assuming I submit my application, letters, transcripts on June 1st and MCAT scores before June 12 (that's when I will be getting my scores), what is a good time to go on the trip?
When do you start receiving secondaries and interviews?

Also, does anyone have any advice for me- I have out of school for a year and will an additional year if I'm applying this June.

Thank you very much!

That won't be a problem. It generally takes a few business days to get verified and then a few more weeks to receive secondaries. Interviews generally start around mid August and last until late February. Best wishes!🙂

 

[candav]

If you're applying that early, I'd suggest delaying your trip until later in the summer in order to finish your secondaries as early as possible. It seems to me that the most significant delays occur not at AMCAS verification, but rather at the individual schools, some of which take months to process your secondary. (See the Hopkins thread, in which people who submitted their secondaries in August/September were only recently marked as "complete.") Secondary questions remain pretty consistent from year to year, so it shouldn't be a problem to begin writing your essays before you actually receive the secondary.

 

[NYCMS2]

The best time for a 20 day trip? Immediately following submission of AMCAS in early June...for starters, you won't have any secondaries to fill out until late June at the earliest, and most of your secondaries won't be available until July anyway. My July was very busy doing secondaries, and I didn't submit my last secondary until the middle of August - I received 3 or 4 interview invitations in mid to late August, and those required my full attention (responding. making travel arrangements, etc). It would have been bad timing to be out of the country at any time during August.

Also, I recall being so burned out from the end of the semester and getting AMCAS finished and submitted on the first day that I vegged out until early July anyway - that 3 week to one month interval would have been the perfect time for a trip, looking back on it.

Be careful about the suggestions to go on a trip in late August - some schools start interviews then, and you may have a few straggler secondaries that aren't available until late Aug or early Sept...