<p>I am a second year student, planning to graduate a year early. But I would also like to get a honors from MCB, which would require me to stay for one more semester. Does graduating early from college show medical schools that you may be more competitive? Does it increase your chance of being accepted?</p>
<p>Honestly, everything I've seen tells me it's a negative, and a fairly major one. Don't ask me to explain -- I could make something up, but I really don't know. I've just so rarely seen it work out well. We used to tell students it was because they'd only present 2 years worth of coursework -- so a year off would fix everything. But from what I've seen since then, that doesn't actually seem to fix the problem completely.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply, but I have one more quick question. I'm really interested in research, and getting a honors requires a lot of time contribution. But at the same time, I would also like to continue volunteering in the hospital. (I'm also taking 4 upper division science classes next semester). Do you think I'm trying to do too much at once, or should I consider this a normal routine for a pre-med student?</p>
<p>Really depends on you and your own time management. It probably would have been too much for me, but I'm not a particularly spectacular student.</p>
<p>Say I'll just graduate in 4 years from college. But I'm also planning to apply to medical school next year (end of junior year). So I'll only have three years worth of "things" to put down in the application. If I do more activities during my fourth year, do these things count or is there any way I could add items to my application later on? Thank you so much!</p>
<p>You list them. You can even write essays about them, but it's usually better to write about something you've already experienced.</p>
<p>what...BDM...are you serious? you list activities you HAVEN'T done on your AMCAS activities?</p>
<p>i have been filling out my amcas right now. i'm going to be volunteering at a new hospital starting this fall and possibly doing new research, as well. i should list these on my amcas?? are you sure? haha i thought you use these things as a way to send updates to the schools later on in the process...?</p>
<p>I should have clarified. Any activity in which you are presently enrolled -- even if it hasn't quite commenced yet -- is fair game for AMCAS, I think. For example, if you have a TA job lined up for the following fall and you're sending in your applications three months before, that's fair game to list on AMCAS. (So are, for that matter, the courses that you're taking that fall -- I'm sure that these should be included.) My own application included the summer research job that had just barely started, for example.</p>
<p>Anything which you're merely "planning to do" is not something I would list -- in my judgment, you'd want some kind of official arrangement set up before I'd feel comfortable listing it on AMCAS.</p>
<p>You can list things that have "barely started" but you won't be able to list things that begin in the future, even if you are enrolled. The AMCAS system will not let you use a start date that is in the future. </p>
<p>You can list courses that start in the fall, however.</p>
<p>My premed advisor said that you can "cheat" a little by using the date you got accepted to the program as your "start" date... just be sure to specify in the text though that you'll be starting in earnest later.</p>
<p>This at least applies to this summer's activities... soon enough that you could feasibly say you've "begun" the activity. I think it might be stretching it to include next Fall's activities</p>
<p>^^ Forget me. It's been a long time since I filled out an AMCAS application. Sorry about the mistake.</p>
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My premed advisor said that you can "cheat" a little by using the date you got accepted to the program as your "start" date... just be sure to specify in the text though that you'll be starting in earnest later.</p>
<p>This at least applies to this summer's activities... soon enough that you could feasibly say you've "begun" the activity. I think it might be stretching it to include next Fall's activities
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<p>It would be stretching big-time to include the fall's activities if you're submitting in June. Those belong on update letters. I did wait until 1 week after my NIH fellowship started to submit my AMCAS so that I could ethically get the activity onto my primary.</p>