why does it take so long for amcas to process your primaires?
Started by havil
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They are verifying transcripts.
They don't do criminal background checks.
They don't do criminal background checks.
Information for common questions like this can be found in the applicant guide and other materials provided on the AMCAS site by the AAMC. There are also some convenient stickies for the cycle that address many of these topics.
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They have tens of thousands of apps to deal with
I never questioned it but come to think of it it is a much.
I’m by far not the biggest AI believer out there, but the transcript verification could definitely be done automatically right? It’s just matching grades in an application to grades in a transcript. I get that it’s pretty high stakes but then just have a human verify the stuff the algorithm isn’t 99.9999% sure about.
I’m by far not the biggest AI believer out there, but the transcript verification could definitely be done automatically right? It’s just matching grades in an application to grades in a transcript. I get that it’s pretty high stakes but then just have a human verify the stuff the algorithm isn’t 99.9999% sure about.
Actually I take that back, given 50,000 applicants and an average turnaround time of 15 days (I think that’s fair), thats about 3,000 applications a day. That’s pretty great given they probably don’t have hundreds of full-time employees doing this non-stop.
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Yes, 50,000 applications with, I'd guess, more than 70,000 transcripts to match to a specific applicant and check against the application itself. I suspect that many of the workers move on to other degree programs later in the cycle or work on a temp basis. Is the school name correct, the grade, the name of the course, the term in which it was taken, the classification of the course as BCPM or not? Most students have taken 30-40 classes or more. Rinse and repeat.
It doesn't take so long at the start, but since everyone is applying/submitting early, the workload is heavy to parse out.
my university doesnt give out letters or GPAs, instead they give out percentages.
They have a conversion table at the back that says which % range converts to what letter
So for example, a 90-100% is a A+
from my understanding, amcas will have to look at each grade, use the table to convert them to letters, then convert the letters to GPA (A+/A is 4.0, A- is 3.7, etc etc)
for example imagine if i have a 92% on a course
so 92%-->A+-->4.0
will this mean that my transcript will take longer to be verified? if so how much longer : (
They have a conversion table at the back that says which % range converts to what letter
So for example, a 90-100% is a A+
from my understanding, amcas will have to look at each grade, use the table to convert them to letters, then convert the letters to GPA (A+/A is 4.0, A- is 3.7, etc etc)
for example imagine if i have a 92% on a course
so 92%-->A+-->4.0
will this mean that my transcript will take longer to be verified? if so how much longer : (
The AMCAS tracker can give you an estimate of the time it will take for your application to get verified:
amcas-tracker.hpsa.org
AMCAS Tracker 2026-27
Track AMCAS transcript receipt and application verification timing with current-cycle status, historical cycle comparisons, and anonymous student-submitted data.
Perhaps.
Some.
Your primary will be verified when it's verified. In the meantime try channeling your energy into pre-writing secondaries, honing interview skills, and/or continuing extracurricular activities.
You're fine. Don't worry about it. It's not a narrative transcript (gives no grades at all, but evaluative descriptions).
It also requires someone to figure out how the school assigns credits to units, and then convert those to standardized credit hours. That may be a simple conversion starting from quarter or trimester going to semester, or it may be a more complex conversion. They're usually listed in the transcript, but require someone to read and interpret it.
It also requires some context in how to classify a course / see if it's classified correctly by content.
I'm actually impressed that AMCAS is able to hand-verify so many applications so quickly. Each transcript review seems like a slog.
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