Reading everyone’s posts made me feel that DS is a month behind on the application process. He took MCAT early June so still waiting for his score. He started to work on his primary after taking MCAT and finally submitted it this week!
Because he didn’t know his score, he only listed his State Med School on the application.
Is this timeline considered late and impacting his chances?
D got her first secondary today, too. Where’s that corkscrew?
Hi @4beardolls. I remember you from when our kids were getting accepted/incoming freshmen at Vandy. Can you believe they are in their last year of undergrad? Where has the time gone?
Sorry I can’t answer your questions, but best of luck to your DS!
Your son isn’t late yet. (Applying after Labor Day is late.) If he took his MCAT in early June, he’ll be getting his score back either next week or (more likely) the week after. He’s already submitted his primary to AMCAS for verification, so he’s in queue for that. I don’t know backlogged AMCAS is this year, but you can try checking SDN to see when his primary might get verified. But don’t worry about the verification lag too much. AMCAS won’t transmit his primary without a MCAT score anyway. Once his score is in and his primary is verified–he’s good to go. He can add schools to his list anytime. His app will get transmitted to individual schools within a week of being added.
If he wants to get a jump on things, he can check SDN school-specific threads for second prompts for the schools he’s thinking of applying to (all his state schools for a minimum) and do some secondary pre-writing.
One thing to remember in this process–applications do not get reviewed in the order they are received. And no file is reviewed until all parts have been received (primary app, secondary app, fee, LORs). High value apps always migrate to the top of the review pile while more average apps get a lower priority.
Take a breath! This is a very long & drawn out process. It’s a whole lot of hurry up and wait. (Oh, and you can start indulging in adult beverages any time now…)
@Belle315, indeed time flies when kids are in college. Congratulations to your D and hope you found the corkscrew in time!
@WayOutWestMom, thank you so much for the detailed explanation about the timeline - it makes me feel a little better.
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14 of 92 coming from their UG.
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For one year? That’s very high considering the UG isn’t the same at the private med school. Not the same state, is that right?
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Because he didn’t know his score, he only listed his State Med School on the application.
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I can understand not including a lot of reaches, just in case score isn’t as high as desired, but I think I would have had him apply to all the schools he’d apply to whether his score is “good enough” or “high”…just to be able to get working on secondaries.
@mom2collegekids , are you referring to my post? If so, yes the med school is at the same place as the UG. I’m not sure where I got the 92 class size as most have been around 82 or so. And yes, that percentage of med school students from their UG has remained similar, in the years my kid was there.
ETA, I think the confusion is that the discussion was about students from an UG going to their same institution med school, not that my daughter’s UG sent 14 to her med school. That would be ludicrous, lol.
Most medical schools measure the number of seats given to undergrad students from their own school as a percentage of the class size in med school. When my daughter was considering undergrad, I was very happy to see Stanford admit about 25% or almost 25 seats given to their own students. Unfortunately, by the time of her graduation, this had dropped quite a bit, down to almost 12 or 15 seats, mostly attributed to change in management and school rank.
D got a secondary today that has an optional essay question. The problem is, it’s the ONLY essay on the secondary. The rest is just filling in pertinent information.
She wants me to ask all you wise ones if this optional essay is, in fact, really optional. She isn’t trying to get out of doing it, but it is an essay related to diversity, and due to the wording of this particular question, she feels she would have a hard time making herself seem truly diverse.
There is no such thing as optional in competitive admission application. You have to do all the optionals and more if you can.
Really!? My first son didn’t fill any of the optional essays. I think, expect for Harvard, he at least got an interview at every school where he didn’t fill the optional essay. Harvard’s optional was something like, “Do you have anything else to say?”
Thank you for the feedback.
@artloversplus, this was D’s initial thought as well, but this essay asks about how she would bring “cultural diversity” to the school. This is a state school. She is a middle class WASP just like the majority of the state. So, it just seems like the essay is giving those who do not fit into this majority an opportunity to communicate this.
@kal123, D is, generally speaking, not filling out the optional “What else do you want to say?” essays. However, this essay is a bit different, which is why she was uncertain about how to proceed.
@WayOutWestMom, @mom2collegekids, or anyone else have any advice?
Write the essay.
Diversity is a question that will be included as part of just about every secondary she will receive.
Diversity doesn’t necessarily mean ethnic or racial diversity, but rather “what makes you unique?” and “what kind of perspective will you bring with you to the class?”
My daughters are both middle class white girls, but their diversity essays including the fact they grew up in a largely rural, minority majority state (where Indian means someone who is Native American and not from the Indian subcontinent) and attended minority majority public schools. They both talked about being avid outdoors persons (white water raft guides, backpackers, rock climbers) and the fact they had both spent a great deal of time in remote rural locations and small communities. Plus D2 mentioned she made really kickass green chile chicken enchiladas.
Thanks, @WayOutWestMom .
She/we get that diversity comes in many forms, and your daughters’ examples are helpful.
This essay asks how the applicant is suited/equipped to practice medicine in a multi-cultural setting, which she is interpreting as multi-racial/ethnic, but perhaps she needs to think a little deeper.
I guess your s is such a strong candidate that he can afford to ignore that optional essay. Not every premed is Harvard quality.
There are schools out there which stress that optional means truly optional. However, my view is that it is optional only if you have no time or no real answer to fill it without making it too contrived.
Diversity is really an important topic for medical schools. If good answers can’t be built to address one’s contributions or what they bring to show diversity to a medical school it would be really hard to fill some apps where the question is mandatory. Diversity is the sum of your life experiences and not really the skin color.
One hurdle down. DS received his MCAT score and surprised us by exceeding all of his practice test scores by a great margin!
With this stat known, he needs to start working on the school list. He has the usual buckets of high, mid, low schools and of course his State Schools. But he wants to put more schools on the list.
How does one find out about the med school preferences? Goal is to identify schools that he has a better chance.
My D approached diversity essays in a similar fashion to Wowmom’s Ds. My D, like yours, would not bring diversity to a Med school class based on her socioeconomic status or ethnicity, and it would come across as inauthentic to try to say she would in an essay. An applicant can demonstrate that they can practice in multicultural settings by having been a part of multicultural settings prior to med school - attending a diverse public high school/ college, tutoring students at a low income school, volunteering at a free clinic, etc.
MSAR lists the average stats of accepted applicants. That’s a decent place to begin.
Next, different schools have different missions. He needs to fit the mission of the program. If he has little or no research experience, he’s wasting his time & money applying to research-intensive schools. If a med school has a mission to serve a particular population or geographic regions, he needs to be able to demonstrate an affiliation with the population or area. If he has a strong interest in certain area–like neuro-imaging, he can research med schools that have a national centers for that interest.
He should be cautious about applying to schools where his stats are significantly above the average (other than his in-state publics)–med schools practice yield protection.
DS continues to churn through this process…working on secondary apps now…surprisingly, this morning he received his first official interview invite :x