Travelling during application cycle.

[misterrr]

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Pre-interview, Good, ok, or bad idea?

If and when interview invites roll in, is it possible to delay it til I get back? I have no idea if I should be booking a round-trip ticket with fixed dates or 2 one-way tickets in case I need to make a specific non-flexible interview date........

It's purely optional, but I will be going overseas. Possibly for a month til mid- to late-July?

Edit: I am planning to apply as early as possible. DATs completed, and assuming I received LORs on time.

 

[UCSFx2017]

Some schools are lenient, others are not.

 

[jeffity]

Pre-interview, Good, ok, or bad idea?

If and when interview invites roll in, is it possible to delay it til I get back? I have no idea if I should be booking a round-trip ticket with fixed dates or 2 one-way tickets in case I need to make a specific non-flexible interview date........

It's purely optional, but I will be going overseas. Possibly for a month til mid- to late-July?

Edit: I am planning to apply as early as possible. DATs completed, and assuming I received LORs on time.

Priorities.

Okay, maybe not so harsh. Will you have constant access to the net? Any phone service? Assuming you have all your junk in early, there isn't much activity at that time as far as invites at that time.. The trouble is the secondaries. You want a fast turnaround on those. Quality and fast. That's up to you if you think you can handle that while on vacation. This little vacation won't kill your chances; it's just not an optimal time. I'd never ask them for a later date for such a reason.

 

[misterrr]

Priorities.

Okay, maybe not so harsh. Will you have constant access to the net? Any phone service? Assuming you have all your junk in early, there isn't much activity at that time as far as invites at that time.. The trouble is the secondaries. You want a fast turnaround on those. Quality and fast. That's up to you if you think you can handle that while on vacation. This little vacation won't kill your chances; it's just not an optimal time. I'd never ask them for a later date for such a reason.

Sigh,,,,,,,guess I will be skipping out on yet another summer,,,,,The travel fanatic in me is slowly withering🙁🙁

 

[misterrr]

When do invites generally start going out anyway for each cycle?

 

[chingaling]

I don't see why this is an issue, as long as you check your email/AADSAS portal daily. If you get an interview, depending on the school, you will either have a range of potential dates they offer you or a specific date that you can reschedule to a more convenient time. Since your vacation is in the summer, you have plenty of time to schedule an interview.

 

[UCSFx2017]

When do invites generally start going out anyway for each cycle?

Earliest I've seen was like late July-August for CWRU.

 

[nikond600]

.

 

[misterrr]

I don't see why this is an issue, as long as you check your email/AADSAS portal daily. If you get an interview, depending on the school, you will either have a range of potential dates they offer you or a specific date that you can reschedule to a more convenient time. Since your vacation is in the summer, you have plenty of time to schedule an interview.

It's my first time applying to dental schools so I have no idea how the interview invite process works. So there ARE schools that offer range of dates...hmm...

Worst case scenario, I won't hesitate to fly back for an interview lol. I mean priorities are priorities I guess

 

[jeffity]

When do invites generally start going out anyway for each cycle?

Breeze through the July dates in the interview/acceptance thread. I think only a handful are giving invites mid-late July. Case and the Midwesterns are early birds. But secondaires will start to flow shortly after. You don't necessarily need to have secondaries back the next day. You just don't want them sitting for 2 weeks and then another few days after you come back. Again, not the end of the world, especially if you consider yourself competitive. I wouldn't completely rule out travel just yet. Just stuff to consider.

If you were going late August/September, then it would be a different story. I'm sure plenty of pre-dents travel over summer.

 

[misterrr]

Breeze through the July dates in the interview/acceptance thread. I think only a handful are giving invites mid-late July. Case and the Midwesterns are early birds. But secondaires will start to flow shortly after. You don't necessarily need to have secondaries back the next day. You just don't want them sitting for 2 weeks and then another few days after you come back. Again, not the end of the world, especially if you consider yourself competitive. I wouldn't completely rule out travel just yet. Just stuff to consider.

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly are "secondaries"?

 

[jeffity]

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly are "secondaries"?

Primary Application: AADSAS. This goes as one uniform application to all the schools you indicate. They all get the same info.

Secondary Application: School-specific and issued to you directly from the school and you will return it to the school. Nothing to do with AADSAS. Not all schools have a secondary application. Many do. You will usually be notified by email for these. Some schools will ask/invite you to fill one out while others expect you to submit them on your own accord without being asked. Many of them involve short essays or long answers (like a paragraph or a few). The best part is that they all pretty much involved a fee as well. This fee is separate from the fees you pay AADSAS and will be paid directly to the school. Your application will sit at the school until these fees are paid. Some schools have a secondary and a fee. Some have just a fee.

So internet access for email and checking AADSAS is key. Lots of schools don't even start looking at applications until later. So you're okay there. It's the ones who start sending them out in July. But again, this isn't a huge deal. If something urgent comes up, you're willing to come home. I doubt anything will be that urgent in July.

 

[LuckyTangerines]

You will be perfectly fine. Did it this past summer until late July and a good amount of my friends were overseas up until mid-August and still managed.

You have a good plan, make sure you send in all your transcripts for verification the very first day for AADSAS. You don't actually need to submit your primary application the first day since the transcript has to get processed and the first batch for mailing the primary app isn't until a couple weeks after AADSAS opens. So you have this two week window to have your letter writers to upload their LOR for you and for you to press submit button and to pay the primary application fees before the first mailing goes out.

Once that's done, enjoy your vacation. You'll probably get email notifications of schools receiving your application early July. Depending on some schools, interview invites will roll around mid-July but these will be for interviews in mid to late August at the earliest. As for secondaries, I received them at the end of July and August.

Hopefully this gives you a rough timeline for you.

 

[ATG20]

Sigh,,,,,,,guess I will be skipping out on yet another summer,,,,,The travel fanatic in me is slowly withering🙁🙁

I would have been in Seoul so connection wise I would have had no problems but like you said, the turnaround time might be an issue :/

Interviews generally don't start until Sep. My earliest was the second week of Sep and my file was finished in June. Invites start in August, and they usually give you 4 or so dates, spanning two weeks. As long as you're able to complete and submit your secondaries over the web abroad, there's no reason to skip traveling.