
Getting into medical school is exceedingly challenging. Well over forty thousand prospective applicants enter into the application cycle each year with less than fifty percent obtaining admission. Success calls for a lot more than scholastic and extracurricular expertise and experience. It takes finding out the actual requirements of the various admissions committees, having good recommendations, and authoring impressive essays which get their attention.
Although the specific application system doesn’t open up until June of the calendar year before matriculation, the actual medical school admissions process actually starts the very day you enter college or university. It does not matter if you are applying during your junior year of college or even a few years subsequent to graduating, the committees will start by evaluating your scholastic and extracurricular experience starting as far back as freshman year! Normally, high school situations don’t seem to be applicable except when there are extraordinary circumstances. This is particularly the case if you can show experience in the medical field during your high school years. If this is the case, then you would address it in your personal statement.
You should commence with the main application form the January prior to when you plan your matriculation. Yes, this is in fact 21 months before you actually start medical school! Plan to spend January to April scheduling, planning, and taking the Medical College Admissions Test, securing recommendations, and requesting transcripts from all schools which you have taken courses (you must include all grades for all courses). May and June are all about writing the actual American Medical College Application Service application, which is the primary application. The AMCAS includes a work/activities segment as well as the notorious personal statement. As soon as you’ve completed the AMCAS application form, July to September is devoted to secondary applications (otherwise called secondaries). Secondary applications are a grueling aspect of the admissions process wherein individual schools send their own application asking for between zero to ten supplemental essays on subjects covering anything from diversity towards the greatest error in judgement you’ve ever made (yes, that’s an actual question). Medical school admissions interviews take place from October through January. February is a time of limbo during which not much happens. While various medical school admission’s committees (particularly those which have a rolling admissions), will inform you regarding your acceptance, wait list, or rejection standing prior to the spring, you typically won’t hear something until about March or April. By May fifteenth, every applicant who has been given an acceptance offer from two or more schools will have to decide on specifically where he or she wishes to attend and withdraw applications from all other schools. The admissions process basically ends on the first day of school when you put on that white lab coat and officially become a Doctor.