<p>I'm a rising sophmore, and seriously considering studying abroad for a semester. I really want to go to England or Scotland, University of Edinburgh seems like it would be amazing. However, i'm a little worried about going through with it as a premed.</p>
<p>I plan on doing physics summer after soph. year, so all of my premed reqs. would be complete, but there is still the MCAT and other med school matters of concern. I was thinking of doing it the first semester of junior year, and putting off the MCAT until spring of junior year. Anybody have any experience with going abroad, or know anyone that has? Do you think the timing that i've mapped out will work out? Any suggestions?</p>
<p>thanks.</p>
<p>Study abroad is fine, it just requires advanced planning (as you're doing). I don't like summer courses. Timing as you've described would work just fine, provided that "spring" of junior year does not drag into summer after junior year.</p>
<p>Well ideally i would take the MCAT in April, and obviously i would study and plan to only take it once. However, i'm sure alot of students say this and still end up having to take it multiple times.</p>
<p>Why exactly do you dislike summer courses? Unfortunately there is no room for physics during my sophmore year, and i've been told that you should not complete premed reqs. while abroad. So that basically leaves me with the summer between soph and junior year to take physics.</p>
<p>It depends on the study abroad program. I studied abroad in London as a sophomore, but my school runs its own study abroad programs, so there was continuity between the courses.</p>
<p>Just know that spilling past May will start to delay your application, which is a very, very bad thing.</p>
<p>And I dislike summer courses because they interfere with more important goals. Schools have nine months of the year for you to demonstrate your academic abilities. Summers are for research, volunteering, and clinical experience.</p>
<p>hmm, well i think that personally, i'm willing to risk the MCAT delay for a good experience abroad.</p>
<p>the biggest challenge now is telling my mom that i want to leave the country for a semester...
=</p>
<p>would you be at a big disadvantage to have MCAT scores by mid july of junior year? the reason is that I feel if i take it in june i could do a lot better on the mcat with this extra month of focused studying after the semester ends.</p>
<p>Why can't you wait an extra year like Norcalguy? It leaves more time to refine your resume, and I guess it wouldn't hurt a lot.</p>
<p>I don't think you can advise someone to sacrifice a year of their life so frivolously. If you took an entire year off simply so you can take the MCAT in July instead of June, what are you going to do in the other 11 months? </p>
<p>I took a year off because I wanted to engage in a substantial research project full-time and to experience living on my own for a while. Unfortunately, too many people take a year off to improve their application, meaning they were forced to take a year off.</p>
<p>Yes, that would be a serious problem. Obviously a higher score on the MCAT is a serious help, too, so you have to weigh your risk.</p>
<p>If your MCAT score isn't in until mid-July, you have to realize that medical schools are giving out secondaries right away. I had nearly 20 secondaries on my plate -- most of them taken care of already -- by July 15, and interviews began flying promptly.</p>
<p>My first interview came on August 15. My first admission was decided by September 4, although they couldn't tell me until October 15. Some schools give away 2/3 of their spots on this very first day. Admissions committee officers will tell you routinely that standards are much lower for admissions early on in the process -- spots are less scarce, so marginal candidates aren't fighting over them. You can imagine that six weeks -- six weeks! -- worth of delay is a big, big deal in that context.</p>
<p>More importantly, I'm not sure how this works, but if they won't let you file AMCAS until you have at least one MCAT score, then that delay will also compound with a further processing delay. Processing takes about four days if you submit very early, and about four weeks if you wait until mid-July to start that process. So a six week delay becomes a ten week delay. This is a big, big deal.</p>
<p>i see- thanks for the response. Is it looked down upon to take the mcat multiple times? like if i took it in april and did bad, would it be dumb to take it again in june or july?</p>
<p>Yes. It's not so much that the second test is bad in and of itself -- although obviously it's not great -- it's that many students come on here expecting that the second one will erase the first one when they are both very much considered.</p>
<p>One kid came on here complaining that his 34 got rejected. He blamed race, but eventually let it slip that he had a previous exam where he scored a 24. All your tests are considered, so one bad test will always bring you down.</p>
<p>Whether you want to retake or not depends on how much of an improvement you could expect.</p>
<p>Does anyone know which UK universities have good biology/chem prorgams in particular?</p>
<p>And not to sound superficial, but cool medieval-looking colleges are always a plus.</p>