Nearly ready to reapply

I'm nearly done with my AMCAS application, with just the personal statement left to edit. So that's going to be submitted early next week. I'm not taking any chances this time around so I'm getting everything in as soon as possible (application submission opens on Tuesday).

I still have to decide on my list of schools because it's not going to be the same as last year. To send your application in to get verified*, you only need to specify one school at first and then you can add others later. So I'm going with the dream school for now, and if I still haven't been accepted off of the waitlist by late June, then I'll add the others.

Anywhos, after hating the second school at which I interviewed, I've reconsidered my criteria for choosing medical schools. Some have been cut, while others have been added. Since I wrote a lot of secondary essays last year, I can reuse most of the content from them this time around, with some editing and adding of sentences.

So new schools that I'm iffy about (not entirely excited about applying there, but there's something that makes me want to send in my application) have to have at least some overlap with the answers I've already written otherwise they get cut. I can't write too many brand new essays, as I found out last year, so I'm keeping the number to a minimum while still applying broadly.

Speaking of writing, once this AMCAS is submitted I'm going to start working on the secondaries** in anticipation of getting slammed with requests come early July. I need to get them in within a week of receiving the prompts otherwise I'll have the same results as this cycle, which were not so hot.

So in a week, the real writing begins.

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*For AMCAS you have to have all of your grades "verified" by the medical school admissions people. They make sure you've entered them correctly on the application and correct anything they feel is wrong. This takes anywhere from one day to 6+ weeks, depending on when you submit your application. Obviously, the earlier, the better, so I'm going to submit mine on the first day to get verified quickly and then I'll add other schools when I make up my mind about them.

Also, this application doesn't get passed on to medical schools until the last week of June, so I have time between now and then to add more schools to my list. Adding other schools doesn't slow down your application, nor does it require another verification. Even though I only have to fill out one primary application that goes to most schools, I have to pay for each school individually. So in order to save money on the off-chance that I get accepted off of the waitlist, I'm only going to pay for one school for now in order to get verified and add others when/if it becomes clear that I really do have to go through another application cycle.

**There's a sub-forum on SDN that has prompts for each school from previous cycles. Most schools don't change these prompts so I can pre-write my secondary answers before I even get invited to do so. Obviously, sometimes these change, but for the most part they remain the same year-to-year. So if I do have to completely rewrite my answers, there's only one or two additional essays required instead of the 25 I would normally have coming at me at once.