<p>The applicant can also look up the secondary questions on SDN and prepare them before they even receive the secondary</p>
<p>Another reason to get everything done early is so that when you (finally) do get an interview invite all the “good dates” aren’t already taken. If you prefer a Monday or Friday interview date (because of travel/less loss of class time), you may find that all the Mon and Fri dates are already taken. Or all dates are taken except for those that are months away.</p>
<p>From my first post …with some additions…</p>
<p>The med school app Mulligan Thread…</p>
<p>While we are in the app process, I thought we’d list some of the things students would “do-over” if they could…so that next year’s applicants can learn from that.</p>
<p>Here’s some things that my son has learned…</p>
<p>1) Ask for LORs several MONTHS before you need them AND provide a deadline (even if it’s your own deadline). One prof was rather late submitting hers. Son had requested it 2 months before and when he learned that she hadn’t yet sent it, her response was, “I didn’t know that there was a deadline” (really??? oh my! This is from a prof who volunteered to write his LOR!)</p>
<p>2) Work on your Statement of Purpose (or whatever it’s called) over the Christmas holidays…at least get it to a good working rough draft. (It’s now past Christmas, so work on it before May!)</p>
<p>3) If your school offers a Med School App class, take it. Son regrets not taking that class since the students did their SOPs during that time and got good feedback. They also did some other meaningful things. The class was only 1 credit, but worth it.</p>
<p>3) If your school does Committee Interviews and/or Mock Interviews, schedule those as soon as you can. Do not delay getting your appointment. Because of the late LOR, my son’s Committee Interview couldn’t be scheduled until that was complete. By the time the prof did it, the Committee appts were backed-up. Luckily, with persistence, my son was able to snag an appt from a cancellation…but that was just luck!</p>
<p>4) The mantra “submit early” is golden. Son submitted in July and that was late. It’s amazing that some people think “late” is September. No. September (even August) is practically a death sentence. </p>
<p>5) do NOT retake the MCAT in the summer and let that delay your AMCAS verification. </p>
<p>After spending some time on that “other” premed site and reading thru various students’ results, it’s clear that even those with very good stats can find themselves with no interviews or no acceptances simply because they retook the MCAT in the summer and it delayed everything. </p>
<p>Another thing I’ve learned is that med schools don’t seem to mind MCAT retakes anymore (used to be a big “no no”), but don’t take it late and let that destroy your chances. That said, I have seen retake scores that are huge jumps and med schools seem to be less impressed by those.</p>
<p>Protect your GPA at all costs. Don’t think that if you spank the MCAT that med schools will overlook your 3.2 GPA.</p>
<p>I’ve seen kids from ivies and other top schools with lesser GPAs and good MCATs get no interviews or acceptances. So, they’re not getting a nudge for their schools’ names.</p>
<p>Go to more of your school’s pre-med society’s meetings. Ignore the random crap spouted by uninformed fellow premeds, but pay attention to what the guest speakers or the pre-med advisors have to say. However, be aware that your pre-med advisors may know a lot about the app process for med schools within about a 5 hour radius, but not know much about the process for schools that are several states away. Case in point, at my kid’s undergrad, it’s not unusual for student to submit to AMCAS in August and Sept. That’s fine for many of our nearby med schools. However, if you have your sights set on med schools that are elsewhere, that is considered “late” and you may find yourself with no OOS interviews if you submit that late.</p>
<p>In Texas, most of the first round of interviews complete by mid September. Someone I know got their first interview in 1st week of August.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My school has non-credit workshops. If you don’t attend then the pre-health professions office assumes you don’t want their help. Tough love, but it gets your attention. :D</p>
<p>If you wish to enter medical school in the fall of 2015:</p>
<p>1.) You should have a quick list of your extracurricular activities put together by November 2013.
2.) You should have a first draft of your essay put together during Christmas 2013.
3.) You should have a rough list of schools by March 2014.
4.) You should ask for letters of recommendation before April 2014, and ask them to send in their letters by June 1 2014.
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 2014, 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 2014 – 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. The general rule is to schedule the schools you might not wish to interview at later in the cycle, so that you have time to cancel them if need be.</p>
<p>BDM- if there were still little green “like” boxes, I would like your post. That is so helpful to people confused by the process, to have it spelled out simply and month by month.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This seems very late, esp. with PIs. You don’t really know where they’ll be. I already have several of mine “in the system”.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or, better yet, don’t apply to those schools in the first place. But my “slant” is that applying to too many schools is not in your best interest anyway, and many other awesomely successful people thinking applying to more is a good idea. (Anyone who’s been around here awhile may recall BDM imploring me to apply to more than the 13 schools I ended up applying to.)</p>
<p>Are LORs still handled via the secondary process? If so, I think April before is probably okay. If they’ve been merged into the primary timeline, then I agree that’s way too late and I’m obsolete.</p>
<p>Definitely ask for LORS in time to actually have them 'in hand" (interfolio, your school’s collector, etc) BEFORE the spring term is over. It is nearly impossible to get those profs to do anything once the term is over. DD had a couple of schools that had extra LOR type forms to complete, no luck getting that done in any sort of timely fashion, if ever.</p>
<p>Mike, when I applied in 2010, they were part of the secondary process. And somemom, 3/3 of the profs who were teaching in the spring told me that they would be thrilled to write my letter, but that I needed to ask them after the semester was over so they’d have time to write it. To applicants reading this thread–it’s OK if you can’t follow Mike’s guidelines to a T. I think he wrote out the ideal situation, but keep in mind that policies will vary by your school (or in my case, both by my school and by my professors)–and don’t freak out if it does!</p>
<p>(One of the profs who wrote a LOR for me is the de facto premed advisor at my UG. We regularly get together and talk about med school etc. I’ve shared with him my thoughts about the timeline, and how getting stuff in early is crucially important. As a result, he now writes some letters during the spring if the applicant is interested in applying to elite programs.)</p>