The Application Process
From Student Doctor Network Wiki
The Application Process
The application process is broken into three parts: the primary, the secondary, and the interview. The information presented in this chapter is geared towards students applying to allopathic medical programs (M.D.-granting schools). The differences for applying to osteopathic (D.O.-granting) schools are mentioned briefly.
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The Primary Application (AMCAS, AACOMAS, and TMDSAS)
To cut down on duplicating essay questions and sending transcripts to every university to which you apply, all of the country’s allopathic medical schools came together to form the Association of American Medical Colleges. This organization controls every part of the application process, from administrating the MCAT, collecting personal statements and transcripts, disseminating your application to medical schools, and regulating acceptances and waitlists. The primary application—also called the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS)—is offered through the AAMC’s website. The registration fee for the primary application is $160. You will be charged an additional $30 for every school you decide to send your application to. As you can see, applying to medical school can be very expensive.
On or about May 1 the AAMC will make the primary application available online. It will contain a variety of questions about your ethnicity, parents’ occupations, where you have attended college, any institutional actions taken against you, any felony convictions, if you consider yourself disadvantaged or have faced any hardships, and what languages you speak.
Next, you will have to enter (by hand) every class you have ever taken in college. This part of the application is the most tedious because AMCAS’ webpage is horribly slow about responding to changes you enter. You will list every course and grade you have ever received. You will also be required to mail your official transcripts to AAMC for verification once you are finished. AMCAS will then take your grades and compute a GPA for you. Don’t be alarmed if this GPA is different than your university’s. AMCAS tries to level the playing field between applicants so that one qwerky college with a unique grading style does not promote or penalize its students. Along with the overall GPA, you will be given a science and non-science GPA, based on your science and humanities/social studies courses, respectively. The science GPA is considered more important to admissions committees for the reason that humanities courses are often very easy, giving liberal arts majors an unfair advantage over science and engineering students.
You should complete the grades section as quickly as possible. Since AMCAS must receive your transcripts and verify your scores, some time will pass before you can complete your application. Therefore, finish the coursework section first and mail your transcripts immediately.
After you finish entering the grades, you’ll then be asked to enter up to 15 extracurriculars, publications, awards, and employment experiences you have encountered since entering college. Each entry will need to contain information about the number of hours every week that you spent on the project, as well as a short, 1,325 character (about 150 words) description of the activity and its impact on you. Appendix B - Workbook contains a workbook to help you keep your activities organized. Advice on how to complete the activities section can be found at AMCAS - Activites.
Finally, and what some people would consider most importantly, you will write your personal statement. It will be your one and only chance to show an admissions committee who you really are. AMCAS puts a limit of 5,300 characters (about 900 words) on the essay. In this short amount of space you will be required to show why you want to become a doctor and why a medical school should admit you. Tips and examples of personal statements can be found on our AMCAS - Personal Statement page.
The deadline for the AMCAS’ submission is Oct 15. I strongly recommend that you get you application in earlier than this date.
AACOMAS
Osteopathic schools are linked through the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM). Like the AAMC, it offers a centralized application service—this time called AACOM’s Application Service (AACOMAS). Students file one electronic application and then AACOMAS verifies and distributes the information to each of the colleges designated by the applicant. The service costs $155 to register and to submit your application to the first school, with $25–$35 extra charged per additional school.
The procedure for filling out the AACOMAS closely resembes the AMCAS process that I described above. The only difference is that the personal statement is limited to 3000 characters (including spaces). The AACOM recommends that applicants mention any summer study programs—such as a Health Careers Opportunity Program—that they might have participated in.
TMDSAS
The University of Texas system, although consisting of entirely allopathic colleges, uses a different application service from AMCAS called the Texas Medical & Dental Schools Application Service (TMDAS). If you want to apply to a public medical school in Texas, you must use the TMDsAS. The procedure for applying is similar to that of the AMCAS.
Secondary Application
After a medical school has had a chance to read your primary application, the admissions committee may decide to send you a secondary application. While the AMCAS is a general form used by everyone, the secondaries are specific to each university. This portion of the application cycle involves two parts: submitting your letters of recommendation as requested by the schools, and writing additional essays.
Section 1.3 tells how to go about getting the recommendation letters. If your school does not have a pre-med office that takes care of assembling the letters, you can try a service such as InterFolio. For a fee, this company will collect your reviewers’ letters and then send copies to all of the medical schools that you designate. I have no experience with InterFolio and therefore cannot comment on its efficacy.
The second half of the application, the essays, can be quite time-consuming. Every school will ask unique questions with little redundancy between universities. Most colleges ask, “Tell us something unique about you,” “Why do you want to come here?” or “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” When I applied to medical school, some of the more interesting questions I received were can be found on the Secondary Applications page.
Just as there are numerous essay topics, there are just as many ways that medical schools require you to submit the secondary. Some require you to type your answers into an editable PDF and then print and mail the result. Others use on-line forms that are more cumbersome than the AMCAS webpage. Still others want hand-written responses like the old days of college applications. The good news is that occasionally two schools will ask the same question such as, “What medical specialty do you see yourself practicing and why?” Only then can you use the same essay for two universities. Be careful, though. Every year Yale receives responses with, “I love Columbia because . . . ” You should proofread your secondaries with the same zeal that you did with your personal statement.
As far as actually writing your essays, use the same tips given earlier. Just think of the secondaries as miniature personal statements. Medical schools still consider these applications to be just as important as the primary.
While the AAMC charges $30 per school for the primary, each university will asses its own fee for the secondary. Some schools are free, while others may run as high as $100 just so someone will read your 200 word response to “Why do you want to attend here?” As you can see, the application process is very expensive. Applying to ten universities may cost as much as $1000 in fees alone.
Finally, while the sheer number of essays that you will need to write can be burdensome, you should plan to complete each secondary within two weeks of receiving it. Like the primary, the earlier you submit it to the schools, the better your chance is at getting accepted.
Pictures
Secondary applications typically request a picture to go along with your essays. I really don’t know why the picture is required. One school claimed that the photo was used for security reasons—to make sure that the person interviewing was the same person who filed the secondary and is the same person who took the MCAT. Most schools want a 2” x 2” passport-style picture.
In the old days of applying, people had to go to a drug store and shell out $30 for passport pictures. Thanks to digital cameras, however, you can take care of the photo request all from your home computer. Here are some tips to get a good portrait - Secondary Applications.
Interviews
The last step in the admissions process is the interview. An invitation to interview is very exciting because so few people get to this stage. At most schools, 1/3 of interviewees get accepted. While this final part is important, do not be deluded into thinking that the interview is the be all and end all. In fact, many schools already have their minds made up whether to accept you or waitlist you. As one interviewer said, “We just want to make sure you speak in complete sentences and don’t drool.” If anything, the interview only helps people who are borderline and can do a phenomenal enough job to get onto the acceptance list.
All medical schools require a site visit for the interview. Visiting the campus is beneficial so that you can see exactly what to look forward to over the next four years. While the reviews posted on the Student Doctor Network give an idea of what to expect, the best way to get a feel for the university is by taking a tour and seeing first hand what is available.
Before You Go
Preparing for the interview generally takes more work than the interview itself. First, sign up for a frequent flyer program. You will have to do a lot of travelling over the next few months. You might as well get some rewards for all of the money that you are about to spend on plane tickets and hotels.
Second, read the feedback postings on the Student Doctor Network. At this website, applicants who have already visited the school give their impressions of the campus, how to travel there, and example questions that they were asked during the interview. Third, set up a mock interview with your school’s pre-medical advising office—the best way to prepare is by sitting through practice sessions. Fourth, read over your AMCAS application and your secondary essays. Since interviews are typically held many months after you apply, you may be asked a question about something that you do not remember very well. For example, someone may ask, “What was it like on the ship?” if you indicated that your best travel experience was taking a cruise during Spring Break.
Usually students are left on their own to make travel arrangements to get to campus. While the Student Doctor Network is helpful for making hotel recommendations, your best option for flights is to check travelocity.com (or your favorite website), airtran.com, southwest.com, and jetblue.com. The majority of universities hold interviews early in the morning. Therefore, you will be required to fly in the day before and spend the night in the city—which is a good thing in itself. You should look around the city as well to make sure that you would be happy in that location for four years.
Some schools will also make hotel recommendations. If you call these places and say that you are interviewing with the medical college, you may receive a discount. Although the majority of applicants stay in hotel rooms, many schools offer lodging with current medical students. In addition to a free sleep over, these host students are a great resource for learning more about the school. In addition, a few will even take you out to see the city and meet with other current students. Many also offer advice on the interview that you are about to undergo.
The Interview Day
Since every school has a different setup, I cannot tell you what to expect everywhere. Some universities have one interview scheduled with a faculty member, others give additional interviews with current 4th-year students. Sometimes the interviewer sits on the admissions committee and wields a lot of power. Other times the interviewer is a volunteer who writes another letter of recommendation. At some schools, you will be interviewed with a group of two other students; or you may even face a panel of interviewers. Whatever happens, when you meet your interviewers, you should shake hands with your thumb pointed towards the ceiling, shaking firmly but not bone-crushingly hard. You should sit straight up in your chair with your hands on your lap and feet flat on the floor, make eye contact the whole time, and match the mood and speaking rate of your interviewer. If he/she is serious, you should be serious, too. If he/she is funny, feel free to tell jokes.
Some schools are open-file, meaning that the interviewer has access to your application and, in some cases, even your letters of recommendation. Open-file interviews typically focus on clarifying questions about your AMCAS. Closed-file interviews—where the interviewer knows nothing but your name—can be frustrating because many of the questions are already answered in the AMCAS and secondary; the day gets lost on information that can be checked before your arrival. During a closed-file interview, students usually repeat the material that they have already supplied to the university.
Read what to expect on The Interview Day with advice on how to prepare for what you may encounter.
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