Application Overview

MEDICAL SCHOOL APPLICATION OVERVIEW: 2023-2024 CYCLE

The medical school application process can be overwhelming, but the more you learn about it, the less intimidating it becomes and the more prepared YOU become to achieve your dreams of becoming a doctor. This article hopes to summarize the entire process and hopefully give you a solid grasp of what to expect and prepare for.

First things first: where do you start? The more you think about this question, the more you may stress yourself out. Some applicants prefer to start by brainstorming what to write for their personal statement, while others prefer to write notes about their work/activities. Wherever you choose to start, this overview will give you a big picture idea of the different components of the application process.

AMCAS APPLICATION

The American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) is what every applicant needs to apply to an allopathic medical school (M.D.). If you also want to apply to osteopathic schools (D.O.), you will need to utilize the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine Application Service (AACOMAS).

The AMCAS Application (also commonly called the “primary application”) opens the beginning of May but cannot be submitted until late May. The application is composed of the following sections: Identifying Information, Schools Attended, Biographic Information, Course Work, Work/Activities, Letters of Evaluation, Medical Schools, Essays, and Standardized Tests. You will also need to send an official transcript to AMCAS for each institution where you took college courses (you do not need your high school transcript, as your AP and IB credits will be recorded on your college transcript).

Pay careful attention to how AMCAS wants you to input your course information, because incorrectly inputting information will keep your primary application from being verified. For instance, the school year for AMCAS begins in the summer and ends in the spring. So, if you took a class the summer after your freshman year, you will classify that as a course taken during your Sophomore year even if you were still considered a freshman by your school.

The “Medical Schools” section is where you will select the schools you want your AMCAS application to be sent to. The same application will be sent to all of the schools you apply to. Applying to one medical school will cost $170, while each additional school you add will cost $41. If you find that you are unable to afford this cost, look into AAMC’s Fee Assistance Program that subsidizes the cost of applying to 20 medical schools.

The “2023 AMCAS Applicant Guide” (available as a PDF online) goes through the nitty-gritty specifics of each part of the application, so looking up sections you are not sure about can be very helpful in easing your nerves of inputting something incorrectly, especially when it is not clear what you should do.

SECONDARIES

After you submit your AMCAS primary application, take a moment to breathe and congratulate yourself on an incredible accomplishment. Now, you wait for your application to get verified and secondaries to start coming in. Most schools automatically send you a secondary application, but others will screen your primary application to see if they want to send you a secondary application. Secondary applications are specific to each school. So, if you applied to twenty schools with your primary application, you can potentially receive twenty secondary applications afterwards!

While you wait, you can get an idea of what secondary applications have asked in prior years by searching online databases that have collected and organized hundreds of secondary questions from various schools. Sometimes the schools change their secondary questions, sometimes they don’t. You may even find that some secondary questions are the same (or very similar) between schools you applied to, which will help you complete your secondaries quicker. 

As a general rule, you should attempt to submit secondaries within two weeks of receiving them. The earlier you submit your secondary, the earlier you will be complete at that school. Although this is optional, some schools will notify you that you must complete your secondary within X days of receiving it. Create a spreadsheet, calendar, or some other sort of organizational tool to help you keep track of deadlines. 

INTERVIEWS

Some schools will begin sending interviews in July, with the interview season continuing well into March of the next year. This means that after you have submitted your secondary, there is a chance that you will be waiting a very long time to receive an interview. Don’t be discouraged; at this point, you’ve done what you can and you just have to play the waiting game.

The interview season will require flexibility in terms of your schedule. Some schools have you schedule the interview yourself based on dates they make available to you, while others will simply state the date that your interview is on. If you are working or in school, promptly tell your supervisor, professor, or whomever it is you report to and make them aware of your situation. 

There are a few different types of interview formats, including traditional interviews where you talk one-on-one with someone, Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI) where you have different stations you go to that each have their own prompt/scenario, and group interviews where you interview with other applicants at the same time. The email sent to you by the school will most likely specify the style of interviews they hold, and you can often find more information online about that respective school.

FINAL DECISION

Once the waiting is over, you will usually get one of three decisions from the school: accepted, waitlisted, or rejected. If you get accepted, that’s it. You’re going to be a doctor! Celebrate, dance, cry, laugh, whatever. You did it! Now, if you receive multiple acceptances, you will most likely do more dancing, but you will also have to make a potentially very difficult decision deciding on the school you want to go to. 

Thankfully, you can hold multiple acceptances UNTIL April 15th. At that point, you will have to narrow your selections to no more than three programs. For example, if you receive an acceptance offer from Medical School X in December and accept it, and then receive another acceptance offer from Medical School Y in February, you may also accept it. At this point, you will have two acceptances and both Medical School X and Y will assume you will be attending their school and prepare you for enrollment. However, medical schools know how it works and understand you may decide on a different school and withdraw your acceptance (that is why they have waitlists). 

On April 30th, you will need to inform one medical school that you will be matriculating at their institution and withdraw your acceptances from the other programs. 

If you were waitlisted for a school, you may look up information about the school to see how many applicants they typically accept off the waitlist or any other sort of information that can help put your nerves at ease a bit. Depending on the school’s policies, consider sending in an update combined with a letter of intent if applicable.

Whether you are rejected or waitlisted, you should work on strengthening your application in case you need to reapply in the future. Many individuals do not get in on their first try, but that does not mean that you are not qualified to be a doctor. If the application cycle does not go as well as you expected, feel free to reach out to us and we can work with you to improve any potential weaknesses. 

Good Luck!