Walking You Through the Med School Application Timeline | Premed Workshop

I want to do a general overview of the application cycle because a lot of students get very confused about primary applications secondary application what all that means timelines and all of that [Music] one of the best things that you can be doing in preparation for your application cycle whether you are applying this year next year or two years from now or three years from now whenever you are applying is to start thinking of these moments in your journey whether that's what planted the seed to kind of exposure to health care and thinking about being in health care whether it is a story around being a leader a story around failure a story around working in a group a story around your strengths your weaknesses whatever it may be the more that you can start thinking in stories the better your application cycle will go the better your application will tell your story the better your interview will show who you are start journaling if you're not now start journaling everything that you're doing whether your scribing volunteering whatever you're doing start journaling so when you're done for the day or the morning if you're working overnight whatever it is open up a notebook open up day one app on a on a device whatever it may be and and just obviously track your hours and and contact information all that stuff you need for your application but also ask the question what did this mean to me why was this memorable for me what a lot of you do is go I folded sheets I got water for mrs. Smith and it's all it's just a list of things you did and not the emotions behind what it was that you did and why it matter to you I want to do a general overview of the application cycle because a lot of students get very confused about primary applications secondary application what all that means timelines and all of that so beginning of May is open season for the application cycle and that is the day where you should immediately start doing a few things and that is create your account you can't request your transcripts until you open up the application because the transcript request form that you will print out from the application service will have a unique number on there for you that has to go with it or also get lost in the matrix and there's another that you start doing if you're not using inter folio and that's starting to request letters of recommendations being uploaded so each application service has the ability to upload letters of evaluation directly to the application service or you can use a site like inter folio where the the writer submits at once the inter folio and then inner folio sends it out to everyone if you're using inner folio which I typically recommend because then you can start requesting letters now and not need to worry about putting pressure on the letter writers to submit it at a specific time you can you can start uploading now to inter folio and then when you're ready to submit it to your application service you can do that alright so transcripts ello ours again directly uploaded and that is about it as soon as it opens so once it opens you go and create an account you put in all your information you put in your all of your classes you can start filling in your extracurriculars your personal statements etc you can submit your do anywhere in here but as soon as June rolls around and the last couple years it's been the end of May actually May 31st I think was this last year you could submit your MD application with rolling admissions which most schools do in the States you submit your application they review your application they invite you for an interview they accept you earlier than the person who submits it after you so the earlier your application is in the earlier that they can review your application that earlier they can invite you for an interview that earlier that you can be accepted rolling admissions is very important because medical schools only have a certain number of slots for interviews so they say at the beginning of the year okay we're interviewing these twenty dates whatever that is for each school and every dates we have twenty spots right we're gonna interview 400 people this year we are gonna have twenty days as soon as those days are filled up that's it we're done and so if you apply and your application is finalized the day after they just filled that 400 seat you're Sol rolling admissions you have to look at a complete application your application is complete when you've submitted your primary you've submitted your secondaries or just paid the school money if they don't have any secondaries you've completed Casper if the school wants Casper your lor s are all in and your MCAT score is in and you don't have a pending score all of that will then typically trigger the school to say okay Johnny's application is complete it can be reviewed now okay so a lot of people will get here they'll submit it go hey I'm done and then the secondary is just sit and sit and sit and sit you know I'm gonna take the MCAT in September and I don't want to do any secondaries because I'm gonna take the MCAT in September so I want to focus on studying they take their MCAT and then they start working on their secondaries and by the time they're done with all their secondaries they've been sitting on them for a while the medical schools are like oh I guess you don't really care about us we're not gonna care about you once you submit your applications mid-june historically the do apps go out to the schools so you can submit your do application at the beginning of May but the first wave of applications historically hasn't gone out until the first the the middle of June and then same thing for the MD applications so you have late June is the first wave of MD applications go out to schools and so if you are on top of things you can theoretically fill out your do application first right you can be done in April have have your personal statement done all of your extracurricular descriptions done you could be done with everything and twiddling your thumbs which is amazing open up your do application fill it out double check it triple check it submit it early May then start working on your empty application submitted early June and then start working on your secondary applications so secondary applications start coming in around here and tell that first wave goes out the schools don't know who you are don't know that you've applied don't know anything about you so when you submit your application what you're doing is you're getting in line should be verified with the application you're filling in all of your grades from your transcripts and so when you're requesting these official transcripts you want to request unofficial ones sent directly to you as well and you're going off of those transcripts and you are filling in on the application service all the classes you've taken if your transcripts have classes removed because your school does grade replacement add them into your application because the school the medical schools want every single class so secondaries come out between submission here and submission here your prewriting secondaries if you apply to 20 schools let's assume every school has a secondary that they send you with for say prompts that's a lot of essays you're gonna be writing so if you can do that beforehand that's great if you guys don't know the resources on my website secondary apps comm will take you directly to my secondary essay database it's a just a free resource on the website that is kept up to date from you guys when you guys get your secondary essays this coming year if it's different than the previous year that you saw on the website you just submit the changes to us we update the site for the next group of students early decision is basically going to one medical school and saying I love you I want to marry you you're the only person for me will you marry me you cannot apply to any other medical school during that courting process and so you are doing all of these things for one school only and the school has to have early decision not every school allows the early decision a lot of schools will want you to contact the admissions office and have a conversation with them and sometime they'll sometimes they'll do like a pre-interview with you to see if you're even qualified enough to be an early applicant it's nice if the school does that because if you're not qualified to be an early early decision applicant then it will increase your chances of getting in a Medical School because during this process you're only applying to one school and you're losing out on the rolling admissions to the other schools and so early decision decision comes out at the latest at the end of September and so at the end of September you find out early decision if you were accepted or not and if you aren't then you can apply to other medical schools the only time I typically recommend early decision is especially for non trads if you have really strong roots in the community if you have really strong ties to the Medical School and usually if you have strong stats as well applying early decision doesn't make it easier stat wise for you so just keep that in mind do acceptance is can start coming out as soon as they interview you so if you go on a do interview two days later you could get a phone call saying congratulations you've been accepted to medical school MD acceptances our October 15th historically every year and so a lot of people if you're on social media you'll see students Jay say I was accepted I was accepted and people who only apply to MD are like I'm so confused how are you accepted I thought it was October 15 so that's that's typically where those students are getting those acceptances are to do schools expect to spend if you're applying to 20 or so schools expect to spend upwards of four to five thousand dollars with application fees secondary fees MCAT prep travel costs right all the food and lodging and everything are there scholarships that can help with applying so probably not a scholarship there was the F ap so the financial assistance program the deal application is very stingy they only let they only cover the cost of one school so the do application I think is 170 or hundred eighty-five dollars and that includes one school f AP if you qualify for it will waive that fee for one school the MD application if you qualify through the WMC through f-84f ap and if you just google like double a.mcf ap requirements depending on family size and where you live and all this stuff there's a there's a threshold that you have to meet it's I think three times the poverty limit based on family size the double AMC I'm not sure about the do application the WMC requires your parents information even if you're a non tried if you're married you have kids you know they want your parents information there are ways to waive that if you need to but it's hard the MD application if you qualify for FA P will cover up to 20 medical schools so it's the cost of the application which is a hundred and seventy ish dollars and then typically it's another forty or so dollars for each school that you add the F ap will cover the first twenty schools which is cool it was fifteen they increased it to twenty last year I think outside of that I have my kind of scholarship that I do twice a year pre-med scholarship comm it's an essay scholarship essay contest but that's all that I know of how do I get letters of rec if I haven't established a relationship with the teachers you're gonna have to ask the people who will write the letters that are required from the schools that you're applying to so every Medical School will have different requirements for letters of recommendations and so you need to make sure that you meet those requirements now some of you may be part of a school that has a committee where a committee letter will be written for you typically that'll meet the needs of everything but the the general rule of thumb that I like to talk about is to science and one non science letter so if you don't have that relationship it's hard to get a good letter of recommendation sometimes you just have to get what you can get and go from there ideally you're getting letters from people when you ask them can you write me a strong letter recommendation if you have people in your past that may meet the requirement of a science letter and on science letter or whatever that may be who you think can write you a really strong letter of recommendation I would reconnect with those people now and say hey write I'm applying medical school in a few months I would love for you because of XYZ for you to write me a letter of recommendation when the application cycle opens up I'd love to reconnect with you to let you know what I've been up to can you do that should I reuse letters of rec I generally recommends to get new letters to write a new personal statement to continue to explore getting extracurriculars shadowing getting clinical experience all that stuff because you don't know what it is about your application that's missing what what it is in your application that schools didn't like and maybe one of your letters just didn't resonate well if you know for sure like oh like dr. Smith's letters killer I definitely want dr. Smith to write me another letter of recommendation go for it so when you're writing your personal statement your goal is to is to tell your story of why you're doing this that story is is your seed and so you tell that story in a paragraph and then you tell another story of a time where you're like okay I was in a position where I didn't know anything and I want to help I think I want to help write this why it's a seed it's it's planting this kind of I think I may want to explore this so then you talk about a time where you started exploring it and you're like oh yeah like this is getting real this is what I want I want more please it doesn't have to be a timeline you can start with us with a watering of the seed and go back to a seed and go back to a watering of the seed there's no specific timeline needed what you just want to make sure you're getting across is kind of where in your life this stuff is happening if you have any sort of huge red flags in your application you may want to talk about them in your personal statement and if you need to do that do it very very very briefly in a sentence or two I want to know why you want to be a physician period end of story and how many of you are in here twelve something yeah I don't know I want to know why and what experience you've had and why they've impacted you you all may have the same experiences right at some point we are very limited with what you can do as a pre-med and therefore pre-meds are going to EMT their scribing they're volunteering at hospice they're volunteering in the emergency department there's only a certain set of things that you can do to get the clinical experience you need to prove to yourself that this is what you want and so your stories at a superficial level may all sound very similar but it's it's how you are telling the story and how you are reflecting on that story as to why it impacted you that separates every one of you for those of you applying to do schools it changed last year that the do application now allows fifty three hundred characters for the personal statement it's not changed in the book yet it still says 4500 characters my assumption is that the do gods got together and said hey how do we get more students applying to do schools let's make it easier for them there's just copy and paste their personal statement from their MD application alright so now it's fifty three hundred characters I don't think you need to write a do specific personal statement the goal of the do application and personal statement is still why do you want to be a doctor how do you balance school and life experience I think the line should always be on the side of being a student and a person because that is at the end of the day what is going to help separate you from everyone else where the line gets drawn for most students is where your time is being taken up to bunch by these other things and they could be healthcare related things as well that your grades are starting to slip that your MCAT prep is starting to slip that you're too busy to finish your personal statement your extracurriculars your secondaries that your being part of the the intramural softball team is taking up too much time that you have zero shadowing hours in the last six months and yet you're sitting here going I want to be a doctor this is all I've ever wanted to do right when your words start separating from your actions that's where the line gets a little fuzzy how important is shadowing what a shadowing do for you yeah what it actually is right not what you see on TV not what you see from that small snippet of being a volunteer whatever that may be and I tell the same thing to piays to nurses to NPS you still need to shadow a physician because you work with them super closely and you see everything that he or she does at the bedside but as soon as they walk away you don't know what's going on and maybe you don't like that you're like oh crap why well why am I going to be a doctor this is not very fun the goal of shadowing and getting clinical experience is not for the medical schools and as soon as you can realize that it's not for the medical schools that it's for you then you're like okay that makes it better you feel better doing it it's to prove to yourself that you're gonna spend the next four years of your life going through Medical School getting a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt because you want to the worst thing that can happen is getting a couple years into this process and going oh crap like I don't like taking care of patients I just thought I did I told myself I did because I really I've always held onto this core belief that I wanted to be a doctor but I don't can volunteering countless clinical experience it's good good question clinical experience has nothing to do with paid or volunteering clinical experiences clinical experience whether you're getting paid or not is one better than the other no clinical experiences clinical experience on the application you'll mark it as paid or or not paid but it doesn't matter how do you compile miscellaneous volunteering yeah so it's very similar to any student athletes or worse you know yeah so usually as a student-athlete or if you were in a sorority or fraternity usually there are lots of those experiences that are potential right as a student-athlete you're really not community doing tons of volunteer things getting just showing a face and it's a very similar thing where it's like oh there's all these random things that we did how do we kind of aggregate that and I think potentially under one experience where you put firefighter volunteering

Channel: Medical School HQ

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Keywords: premed, med school timeline, medical school timeline, med school application timeline, medical school application timeline, applying to medical school, applying to med school, applying to medical school timeline, med school, medical school, pre-med, pre med, med school admissions, medical school admissions, premed workshop, medical school hq, dr. ryan gray, ryan gray, meded media, medical school headquarters, amcas, aacomas, med school application, medical school application

Id: gFg0PX2iSiA

Length: 23min 2sec (1382 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020