What is the applying to one school trick?

[magician7772222]

I understand how it works I think but I still don't get the benefit of it and feel stupid. From what I understand its for people who took the MCAT right before the cycle so they pick a throw away school and submit their primary to it? But what is the point of doing that? Why not wait until you get your score back or just submit to all of the schools you plan on applying to with the pending score? Also is this trick for MD only or does it apply for DO schools too?

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[Goro]

You apply to one school to start the verification process. This allows you time to finish other areas of your application, including taking the MCAT

 

[Goro]

And yes, it works for do schools too

 

[LloydChristmasMD]

Your app won’t have to go through the verification period, and you don’t run the risk of them seeing the app with a bad MCAT in the event you decide to retake and reapply. (Though they will see the old MCAT eventually)

 

[Gh0stInAJar]

You need to choose at least one school minimum in order for AMCAS to start the verification process. If you waited for your MCAT score to come back to start the verification process, you may be delaying your application a bit. (Ex: getting your scores back in July, then waiting a few weeks for the verification to complete by August, and THEN receive secondaries in August and submitting in August versus: already verified, get scores back in July, submit apps to rest of the schools, get secondaries and submit secondaries in July cause you pre-wrote them).

In addition if these applicants don't know their MCAT score yet, they may not want to waste sending applications to schools that are out of range.