Applying to medical school

Suggested song: “Out of My League” – Fitz and the Tantrums

Hello, friends! I’ve been MIA, because… the title. I submitted my primaries last week and still have the secondaries left, but I’m just taking a break for a bit. I figured I’d compile a small list of tips for applying to medical school, because I made some mistakes, which complicated the process a bit, so hopefully you won’t do the same.

I did both the AMCAS and TMDSAS, so I’ll start with AMCAS, which was a lot easier to deal with.

AMCAS

– To be sure, send Transcript Request Forms [that AMCAS provides] to your college. I didn’t (because I used my school’s request form instead), but my transcripts were processed just fine anyway. However, that could be because I have a unique name. Better to be safe than sorry.

– For the work experience / activities section, you can choose up to 3 entries that were most meaningful to you… then you have to write about them. Consider them mini essays.

– Other than these meaningful activities, the personal statement (5300 characters) is your only major essay.

TMDSAS

– Pull out your high school transcript and dust it off. You’ll need your class size and class rank for TMDSAS! I didn’t have mine so I had to request it from my high school’s registrar. If you have to request it, do it ahead of time… ’cause I didn’t, and my high school was closed for a couple of weeks…

– You’ll also need your SAT and ACT individual and composite scores.

– Have contact information (either phone number or email) for each EC or work experience you’ve had.

– Know how many hours per week AND cumulative hours you spent on each EC or work experience, ’cause TMDSAS does ask you for it. I just did rough estimations, but if you have a record somewhere, that’s even better.

– TMDSAS has the personal statement (5000 characters) and 2 optional essays (2500 characters each).

Optional essay #1: “Briefly discuss any unique circumstances or life experiences that are relevant to your application which have not previously been presented.”

Optional essay #2: “Please describe any personal characteristics and/or important or

challenging experiences you have had that will contribute to the diversity (broadly defined) of or provide educational benefits to the student body.”

I’ve done a little research about whether people did these optional essays, because I previously found it difficult to think of something for the first one. I found that most did at least 1, and someone suggested that doing both would probably make you stand out, which I thought was a pretty good idea. However, don’t make it sound forced. If you really, really don’t have anything to say about it, don’t write anything, because you might just end up writing something that brings down the rest of your application. For the first one, I wrote about how – while working alongside my mom at her work – I witnessed some medical issues that low-income people have to face. For the second one, I wrote about blogging on this thing!

– You need to upload a photo of yourself. Make it a decent and appropriate one. I read this admissions board member’s account of how she has gotten pictures of applicants with red cups in hand and stuff. I just had my sister take a close-up of me in our front yard. Your picture has to be smaller than 100 KB. I just cut out a screenshot and then compressed it. You might have a better way to compress your file, but I am not super Mac-saavy…

– You need to sign in to AAMC and send your MCAT scores to TMDSAS. They won’t receive it otherwise. After you sign in on AAMC, go to the page that has your MCAT scores, and towards the bottom, click “Send all of my scores” and then choose TMDSAS.

– For TMDSAS, you can send in either your Health Committee Packet/Letter (which some schools don’t have) or individual letters. U of Rochester does have a HCL, but I chose to send in individual letters instead, because the letter writers know me much better. I emailed the Texas schools to see if they preferred the HCL or the individual letters, and at least 1 school told me that they’re equal to the admissions board. Another school simply told me that selecting letters is solely up to me.

– There’s a button that you click for “Chronology of Activities”, which organizes all of your activities into a timeline. DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL YOU’RE COMPLETELY DONE AND READY TO SUBMIT. I did this before adding in a couple of more activities and had to manually put them in. It’s not terrible to do, but it saves you more time if you do the chronology at the very, very, very end… I’m talkin’ right before submitting your app.

BOTH

– I didn’t have to do this, but my friends had to get additional transcripts. If you got credit from a community college or from a foreign university (when you studied abroad), GET THOSE TRANSCRIPTS ASAP BEFORE APPLYING so that you have those ready. Not only will you have to enter those grades into AMCAS/TMDSAS, you’ll also have to send those transcripts to them, too. You don’t want to have to do this last minute, because it’ll probably take a while.

– Make multiple revisions of your personal statement. Get tons of feedback. For real. You won’t regret it. I sent mine to people who know me best, including several friends who just got into med school, a non-medical friend who was an English major, and my sister.

– GET YOUR REC LETTERS AHEAD OF TIME. I’ve had mine since last fall, so they were ready to go by the time I applied. Check which letters your AMCAS schools would want, because you can designate which letters go to a particular AMCAS school. For TMDSAS, though, whatever set of letters you choose will go to ALL of the TMDSAS schools. (For example, you can’t send your biology professor’s letter to only UT-Houston but not UT-Sourthwestern. That letter, if chosen, will go to both schools.) IMPORTANT TIP: If you’re sending in your letters through Interfolio, just send ALL of your letters to AMCAS/TMDSAS so you can pick and choose later, because each delivery costs $6. There isn’t a point in making multiple deliveries [since applying to med school already costs a bunch of $$$$$], and it doesn’t matter if you end up uploading a letter onto AMCAS/TMDSAS and not use it.

– To send your letters from Interfolio to AMCAS/TMDSAS, go to your Interfolio page with all of the documents/letters. Click that giant red button that says “New Delivery” and type in either AMCAS or TMDSAS and click “Select”. Then follow the directions.

– Grades must be manually entered, so make sure you have a copy of your grades on hand. Classes must be classified as biology, chemistry, etc. and labeled with the course number (ex. BIO 110).

– SPEAKING OF COURSE CLASSIFICATION… I had an issue with this, because I didn’t take classes directly from the English department, but I did take Writing and Comparative Literature courses that would fulfill the English requirements (however, UTMB doesn’t take English credit outside of the English department… SIGH). I wasn’t sure whether or not to label them as “English” on AMCAS/TMDSAS, but yes, you do label them as English. For example, I took CLT 389 (a comparative lit course that I took for my Spanish major) but classified it as CLT 389 under English (instead of Foreign Language) on AMCAS/TMDSAS. The AMCAS/TMDSAS people will verify it later, and if the classification doesn’t fit, they’ll change it. Your application won’t be returned to you, so no worries! A friend told me that AMCAS made many changes to her application, so it’s not a big deal. Just don’t forge classifications. An art class won’t pass as an English class.

That’s all I can think of right now. Good luck with apps! Also, you can follow me on Twitter to keep up with posts.