<p>What was the best and worst advice your Pre-med advisor gave?</p>
<p>And...what advice should s/he have given that would have been more helpful/time-saving/cost-saving/etc?</p>
<p>My advisor was great – probably the best anywhere – but by far, everything else that she did pales in comparison to her heavy emphasis on the timetable. She was aggressive about getting us out early, something we wouldn’t have been likely to do without her constant oversight.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Do mean that during your junior year, she made sure you were ready to get your apps out by summer? or what?</p>
<p>I’m also looking for various “heads up” advice that you think a pre-med advisor should have told you, but didn’t.</p>
<p>Now an old post, but:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/4265178-post16.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/4265178-post16.html</a></p>
<p>^^^^ Good list, sounds like a good plan.</p>
<p>BDM’s post from that link…</p>
<p>If you want to enter medical school in the fall of 2008:</p>
<p>1.) You should have a quick list of your extracurricular activities put together by November 2006.
2.) You should have a first draft of your essay put together during Christmas 2006.
3.) You should have a rough list of schools by March 2007.
4.) You should ask for letters of recommendation before April 2007, and ask them to send in their letters by June 1 2007.
5.) You should be finalizing your essay.
6.) E-mail an older student to get as many secondary essay topics as possible.
7.) During May 2007, you should open up an AMCAS account. This will be quite easy if you’ve already taken the MCAT, which I hope you have.
8.) Ideally you’d have an MCAT score by June 2007 – not a test, a score. July is probably okay as well, but it would make me uncomfortable.
9.) On June 8 – NOT JUNE 1st – you should send in your primary application. This includes a list of schools, a list of EC’s, your grades, a TRANSCRIPT REQUEST, and your essay.
10.) On June 15, many schools with “Open” secondaries (non-screening) will open up their secondaries. You should look carefully through the website of every school you applied to to see if the application is open yet.
11.) You should take no more than two weeks to fill out any secondary. Otherwise they accumulate. Rumors – which I find credible – also say that schools use secondaries as an indication of your interest.
12.) Schools will start to send you secondaries, as well. The two-week rule stands.
13.) If there’s ever a point where you find you have nothing to do, start writing secondary essays ahead of time!</p>
<p>14.) You should be completely done with all primaries and secondaries by the time school starts.</p>
<p>Interview timing is a mess and we won’t deal with it here. </p>
<p>Re: #6</p>
<p>Are the secondary essay prompts similar year to year for each school?</p>
<p>Yes, essay prompts are generally similar. The scary land of student doctor network posts them for each school, so you can get a start there if you want.</p>
<p>I think some of the greatest advice I got from my advisor was to not be afraid to shoot for the stars, which sounds cliche but was really true in my case. I was pretty hesitant to apply to elite programs (a 30 MCAT was a big ego killer) because I tend to think I’m just another run of the mill applicant, but I think he saw that I had some really unique things on my application and it would be well worth the effort. So far, he’s been right.</p>
<p>As for worst, I’d say the lack of advice from my official premed advisor. IMHO the entire department just really dropped the ball–perhaps that’s part of being at a big state school. I chose to rely on: aforementioned advisor, docs I shadowed (each for 2yrs), and CC. I didn’t solicit advice from other sources because I didn’t want to get totally bogged down. As far as I can tell, it’s gone well so far.</p>
<p>Another thing I just picked up on (actually, that echoed some of my high school experiences) was that it’s going to be really tough for schools to think that you’re an awesome applicant if you don’t think you’re an awesome applicant and/or if you don’t write persuasively and well in a concise but thought out manner. If you do something great, say it. If you’ve learned something profound, mention it. If you’ve fixed this problem for this many people as a result of something you did, by all means, talk about it. Take plenty of time with your secondaries; for me, that meant waiting to write them until the “time was right” and I knew exactly what I wanted to say and could get into a writing groove. Applying to medical school is one huge feat, and for many people it is the culmination of years of hard work. Time to suck it up and go to bat for yourself–if you’re not your greatest advocate, who’s going to be?</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, this is somewhat unrealistic and out of the applicant’s control. Schools with a premed committee have all sort of different dates to send their composite letter and probably very few of them do it by June. In fact, it seems like august and even september are the norm. </p>
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<p>Yes, pretty much so.</p>
<p>Because almost 80% of premeds from my undergrad take a year off before applying to med school, my premed advisor was a little “surprised” that I was applying straight at the end of my junior year. When he asked why, I said “because I am ready”. This made me feel a little insecure for a while, and it was probably the reason I applied to 20 schools instead of the 10-12 number that my premed committee usually recommends.</p>
<p>D’s pre-med advisor was great. She has only praises for him and committee at her UG. It does not mean that she has listen 100%. She was strong about her own criteria choosing Med. Schools and while she has listen to advisor she only included schools that met her own criteria. She also was done applying earlier than lots of others and has receved several acceptances right after that magical midnite in a middle of October. It was trully magical and unforgettable and we partially credit her UG pre-med advising for that.</p>
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<p>I think that timing is the norm at my D’s school. What effect will that have on her? Do schools send secondaries if the committee letter is not in, and what does the late commitee letter have on interview invites?</p>
<p>I was not impressed with DD big state school advisors early on, each term she was assigned someone different and their advice conflicted, mainly about class schedule. My summary of the experience at a UC id don’t be afraid to break the mold, some advisers use a cookie cutter approach, that may or may not work for you. Do it your way.</p>
<p>My school works like this:
- collect as many recommendations you want, at least 3 (I had 8) and have them sent to the honors college [March-June]
- once all are received, schedule a 1h interview with the dean of the honors college and your honors college advisor [first week of August]
- participate in said interivew to give the dean more material for his section of your composite letter (he doesn’t know everyone that well, but he does know me very well) [mid-August]
- dean + advisor write composite letter with quotes from other letters, and attach the other letters to it too. Then it’s off to interfolio or AMCAS or whatever to be distributed to your med schools [end of August]</p>
<p>This timeline isn’t very flexible at my school. The earliest you can schedule your interview is the first week of August–I believe this is because they’re busy with kids applying to EDP programs until then.</p>
<p>I submitted AMCAS the first week of July, my rec letters in mid-August, and had finished secondaries by mid-September (except Duke, waited until mid-November for that one). Still haven’t heard from most of the schools I applied to (Boston, Creighton, Drexel, Harvard, Loyola, SLU, Tufts, UVA)–perhaps in part because of my “late” rec letters.</p>
<p>If I were doing it all over again, I’d politely insist that my committee interview take place in June and I probably wouldn’t stop until they agreed. For whatever reason, it seems like many advisors just don’t get it that the timing of this process is like, everything, and that a few months really does make a big difference. I wouldn’t wait until August for my letters unless I had to retake the MCAT in August and thus was applying later than I originally intended.</p>
<p>Just my $0.02</p>