AMCAS, Round 2

AMCAS (the medical school application) opened up on Wednesday and since I currently don't hold any acceptances to a medical school, I've begun filling it out to be ready to submit on June 4th as a reapplicant.

For the most part, it's so much easier than last time around. All the fields are pre-filled with last year's information, including my personal statement. I'm going to do some editing on that so it won't be identical, but it's kind of great that I don't have to add in any of my grades again. I'm old; I've attended a lot of schools and taken a fair amount of classes.

There are only two major differences between this year's application and last year's:

1. A more specific estimation of my parents' income growing up is required. Last year the upper cut-off was low enough so I didn't need to be specific because we were above it. But this year there are categories of income in increments of $25,000 that go up to half a million or something ridiculous like that. So the parents have had to go through their finances to figure out a good average since their salary varied widely from my birth to my adulthood.


2. The activities section now asks for total hours per activity instead of hours per week. For some things like clinical volunteering or shadowing, this method is preferable to give the admissions committee a good sum of hours. But for other activities like sports or jobs, it doesn't really work out because it's highly inaccurate to approximate 10 years of playing rugby.
   
   Also, the upper limit for total hours is 999 per activity so anything over 1000 cannot be entered accurately. I've started putting in the hours per week in the activity description if I haven't exhausted the character limit, which kind of makes up for that deficiency.

So that's that. The deadline for applicants from last cycle to decide on a single school and thus withdraw from all other schools they've been accepted to is quickly approaching (May 15th) so there should be "significant" waitlist movement in the coming weeks. And that means I can start getting anxious about checking my email really soon.

Since I wrote the really long "I love you" update letter to my dream school at the end of March, I'm going to go for a simple "Remember that I still love you" email this time around. If I still don't hear anything by early/mid-June, I'll send them another love letter but right now I can't think of anything of substance to add to that letter. So it'll have to wait.

Also, I've started planning my summer as if I was matriculating in the fall, at least with my big trip that involves international air travel. I've been saying that I'd visit my family abroad (I'm foreign) for the past four years and each summer something has come up so that I haven't been able to make it. This year I've promised myself that nothing is going to get in the way of my visit so even though July is not the best time for them, it is the only guaranteed month I'll be able to go regardless of what happens with school.

Everything else summer-wise, like music festivals and races, can be booked/bought in June/July when I have a better idea of what the next year will bring for me. Overall, I've come to terms with having to wing most of my summer activities, which is not ideal but such is life.