<p>some of my older friends took the MCAT August before their senior year and went directly to med school after graduation. i would love to follow this plan, as i will have all my requirements out of the way by then with time to study, but other posts suggest this is a pretty bad idea. why so?</p>
<p>Because it severely delays your medical school applications, and rolling schools start giving away spots almost immediately.</p>
<p>Also it doesn't give people a chance to take the MCAT a second time if they need to (at least not without delaying your application cycle by a year).</p>
<p>This is a fine strategy if you're confident you'll score well on the MCAT (33 or higher), are a resident of a state in which there is a significant in-state advantage, your GPA is not an issue, and your "soft" factors are excellent, and you're applying to schools at which you believe you would be competitive at even if you only had an MCAT of a 30, and you're not particularly worried about where you go to medical school but more about just getting into one.</p>
<p>Any of those you aren't extremely sure of, then you'll be putting yourself behind the 8 ball in a big way. </p>
<p>As someone who followed this strategy, I can't be wholly against it, but just know it's less than ideal. If I were you, the absolute latest I'd take the MCAT would be the July admins - and the earlier dates would be better. You'll need to make sure that your AMCAS is in order and ready to be sent within the week of taking the MCAT, and you've already had all your transcripts in. AMCAS will do the background work of processing your application, but they won't finalize the processing or send it to schools until your MCAT comes back. So you don't want anything that will delay that processing so make your ducks are all in a row.</p>
<p>In this day and age (when the MCAT is offered 22 times a year), there's no excuse to be taking the MCAT in August.</p>
<p>I have the application timeline posted by BMD last year. It is very helpful in planning. I am in a dilemma regarding medical school applications timing and I would like to get your suggestions. I am a junior now and will be applying for the class of 2013. I just found out that the project I worked on last year summer and fall (during my leave of absence from college) has been selected as a pilot project in another part of the world. I have been given grant and 4 other students to work with this summer. I would need atleast 8 weeks for this project and I am trying to fit the schedule with my medical school apps </p>
<p>I talked to my pre-med advisor at scool and she recommended the following timeline</p>
<p>(1) Have all the app ready by May 31st - I was planning on that anyways
(2) Leave for project work on June 1st
(3) Submit the application on June 15th when I have the grades from this semester
(4) Work on the project till July 27th
(4) Come back to the US on July 28th
(5) Work on secondaries July 28 - Auguat 15 and submit them by August 15th</p>
<p>Do you know how soon the secondaries come out and is there anyway I can prepare for some of the questions now ?</p>
<p>I know that many schools put their secondaries even before they read the common app. </p>
<p>Note : The place where I am going is very rural and I doubt that I will have internet access.</p>
<p>BDM can give his experiences with secondary turn around, but my initial thought is that given your project (which should be an impressive feather in your cap) and your lack of internet access during the time you're working on it, you might actually be better off on just waiting until you come back to a place with guaranteed internet access. I don't think you want to be a in a situation where you can't communicate with the schools in a timely fashion.</p>
<p>Perhaps your best option is prepare your application as expected, leave for your trip, and then send it only when you've established that you have reliable and timely internet access. You'd need to be able to check at least twice per week in my estimation. If you don't have internet access then it might be better to hold off on sending it in.</p>
<p>On SDN, you can find a lot of the secondary questions from previous years. Generally, they don't change from year to year. I suggest finishing some of your secondary essays before you go abroad for the summer because July28-August15th probably won't be enough time to finish all of the secondaries you will get (depending on how many schools you plan on applying to). Secondaries generally start coming out in late June and will continue until mid-August, with most coming out in July. Make sure you get your letters of rec sent quickly since they'll need your secondaries AND your LOR's before schools will review your app. </p>
<p>The other option is, as BRM noted, to submit your primary after you come back. I wouldn't recommend this since, due to the MCAT being offered so many times, most people are now submitting early. Just the verification of your AMCAS alone will probably take at least a month by this point which means you really wouldn't be able to submit the primary until September. This will make you ridiculously late. Your summer experience will get across to schools when a) you interview and b) you write about it in update letters.</p>
<p>can anyone post the application timeline BDM posted last year? it would be really helpful.</p>
<p>Definitely submit your AMCAS ASAP; you will probably miss a couple secondary deadlines (Northwestern comes to mind) but... oh well. Better than waiting until August, I think.</p>
<p>First, AMCAS becomes progressively slower as the window wears on, meaning that sending in your application two weeks later might actually result in a delay of four weeks.</p>
<p>Second, schools often give away as many as a third of their spots on October 15. So your chances have just been decreased by 33% if your interview is after that. And they continue to offer acceptances progressively. Needless to say, if you actually send in AMCAS by the November 30th deadline, you'll be interviewing for a spot on the waitlist at best.</p>
<p>Third, schools will wait until your MCAT score is in before considering your application and possibly offering you an interview. This is why anything after the April MCAT was a very bad idea, back in the day.</p>
<p>If you want to enter medical school in the fall of 2009:</p>
<p>1.) You should have a quick list of your extracurricular activities put together by November 2007.
2.) You should have a first draft of your essay put together during Christmas 2007.
3.) You should have a rough list of schools by March 2008.
4.) You should ask for letters of recommendation before April 2008, and ask them to send in their letters by June 1 2008.
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 2008, 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 2008 -- 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.</p>
<p>You will probably be okay for Northwestern since its secondary doesn't come out until August (my due date for this year's secondary was August 17th). If you email them w/ an explanation, I'm sure they'll make an exception for you. My school missed their LOR due date but it didn't affect the processing of my application (and I didn't even warn or notify them).</p>
<p>BDM BMD ...sorry - skinny fingers ;)</p>
<p>Thanks for your feedback. Please keep them coming</p>
<p>so it seems like one has to study for the MCAT while in school taking classes, which isn't really ideal. i was planning on dedicating my summer to MCAT studying (no distractions, no other classes to worry about), but my school works on trimesters and ill be in school this summer (it's called sophomore summer). </p>
<p>is it really difficult to study for the MCAT while in school, taking other rigorous courses?</p>
<p>'Swhat everybody used to do until the new MCATs came online a year ago.</p>
<p>I just looked through SDN and it was helpful to look at the secondaries. It looks like most of the secondaries go out around June 20th. Do you think it is wiser if I push the travel to end of July ?</p>
<p>In the absence of any information about what this "travel" might be, there's no way to advise you.</p>
<p>We will be implementing a project in Oaxaca Mexico. We need to be there on the grounds for at least 6 weeks and post project work can be done when we return. Also, most of the preliminary work will be done (remotely) during this semester. Our time is flexible. I am still working on other details (stay, internet access etc) with the sponsoring organization. I would like to go after all my secondaries are sent out but I am not sure if most colleges send out by the end of June.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Many secondaries will come out in July, sometimes fairly late in the month. If staying for only six weeks on the ground won't harm the project terribly, I would actually leave on June 1, submit AMCAS soon after (remotely, presumably) and then return on July 12 (or so) and get to work on secondaries then.</p>
<p>Thank you very much</p>