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.

Cheering people's withdrawals

Throughout this application cycle, I've blocked all my friends who are applying to medical school from my Facebook feed. It would just frustrate me to hear about their progress while nothing was happening with me.

During a moment of Facebook weakness, I found out that one of the people with whom I did my post-baccalaureate had been accepted to my dream school and another awesome school elsewhere. Ever since my second waitlist decision came, I've been going to his profile to see which school he'd chosen. Today, he announced that he's matriculating at the other awesome school.

I threw my hands into the air and cheered. Literally.

While I'm happy that he's happy with his decision, I'm more stoked that he won't be attending my dream school. Now I need a few hundred more people to withdraw so they might actually take me off the waitlist.

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.