The last application cycle in a nutshell

Here is a summary of the last application cycle, by the numbers:

• 32 - Schools to which I applied
• 27 - Schools from which I received a secondary
• 20 - Secondaries I submitted
• 2/2 - Interviews offered/interviews attended
• 2 - Waitlists
• 0 - Acceptances
• 2 - Rejections (both waitlists turned into rejections)
• 7/2 - AMCAS submitted
• 8/7 - AMCAS verified
• 8/17 - Earliest date my application was complete at a school
• 11/12 - Last date my application was complete at a school

All in all, I am very disappointed with how this process ended up for me.

That's the super condensed version. The drawn-out and analyzed version can be found here.

Done with writing

I just submitted the last of my secondary applications. Technically it's the second-to-last one because the dream school hasn't released theirs yet. But as of now, I have nothing looming over my head with regards to writing. And it feels fantastic!

In a nutshell, I applied to 27 schools, received 26 secondaries, and submitted 21 of them*. The five secondaries I didn't submit were mostly too long when compared to my chances of being accepted to those schools. So I put them aside and eventually decided not to fill them out at all.

Now that I'm done, I'm somewhat considering adding more schools since at this point I've written a response to nearly every prompt that could be asked. I currently only have one interview invite, which makes me nervous, so I feel the need to cast my net even wider than I already have.

But I have to remind myself that 21 schools is plenty enough and I should focus on other things such as preparing for my interview and looking for another job. So that's what I'll do after I relax a bit this weekend.

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*This includes the dream school that I haven't received or submitted yet. But they don't screen and I'm filling it out, so it goes in the stats.

Moving on

Both schools at which I'm waitlisted have begun their orientations at this point, so it's safe to say that I've been rejected and won't be starting school this fall.

Luckily, I have an interview I need to be preparing for that keeps my mind off this depressing subject.

I'm striking out with regards to new volunteer and employment opportunities. My medical scribe gig is not getting approved as quickly as anticipated so I don't know when that's going to start. Also, I'm not getting any interviews for the clinical research jobs I've applied for. I think I'm going to start randomly emailing professors looking for a job. It worked last time so maybe it'll be successful with medical research as well.

On the other hand, the tail end of this summer has been rather fun so I'm not in a huge hurry to get either of those things set up. It'd be nice to get them started sooner rather than later, though.

I got an interview invitation!!!

Yup, I'm that excited. I've been getting a little worried about the lack of responses from schools while other people have already been hearing back. But I don't need to worry anymore.

A really good school with really high matriculant statistics has just invited me to interview. This is awesome!

The funny thing is that this is the school that a resident railed on during my dream school Pre-Med Day talk a couple of years ago. Clearly he hated his time there. I'm actually pretty excited to visit.