<p>As someone who applied to grad, not med, school, my senior year, I kind of agree with cur. The timeline is a bit different–apply in December/Jan, interview Jan through Feb, and decide by mid-April, but many of the trade-offs are the same. I was literally gone for 5 weeks straight on interviews (visited 8 school plus another one in April plus did several phone interviews), never returning to my university city during that time (it cost about half as much to fly out of my home city airport as it would have to fly out of my university city airport, which is very small and limited and therefore quite expensive). </p>
<p>This was only workable with some serious frontloading and advanced planning on my part and some luck. I arranged my schedule so that I took one intersession class, which concluded shortly after interview season began and counted as a Spring semester course. My actual classes during that semesters were my 9 credit senior practicum, thesis credit, and research credit, and my boss/practicum supervisor and thesis advisor both served as recocommenders and thus were very supportive of me interviewing. I did some work remotely on manuscripts while traveling but worked more or less full time when I returned to finish my thesis and practicum hours and was also be very lucky that the seminar I was teaching that semester could be scheduled for a late start (again, my teaching supervisor was a recommender). Still, the process was exhausting, and starting the semester 5 weeks late was odd socially.</p>
<p>This also made for a really busy fall semester of my senior year where I was douing research, doing my practicum, working part-time as research assistant (at the same place I was doing my practicum, luckily), teaching two classes, TAing a third, finishing writing up on thesis and collecting data for a second, working on an independent research project with another university, doing yet more research through the department, holding a Panhellenic office, doing clinical volunteering, filling out applications and writing application essays, taking 21 credits, and trying to have a life. Looking back, it’s not surprising that my GPA for that semester, while not awful (3.45), was my lowest semester GPA in college!</p>
<p>ETA: Wow, I didn’t realize how much that was until I wrote it all out! </p>
<p>I don’t regret applying my senior year–it worked out well for me–but it definitely was stressful and required a lot of long-term planning and a good deal of serendipity and luck. OTOH, it’s probably good prep for grad school stress, though I expect grad school to be far more intense.</p>