Medical school hopefuls are getting ready to work on those applications. This can be a hectic time as you try to stay on top of everything. Here are ten tips to help you hit the ground running: Get cozy with the AMCAS/AACOMAS. These two services – the American Medical Colleges Application Service (AMCAS) and the…
AMCAS Tips
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How to Decide if You Should Retake Courses in Preparation for Applying to Medical School
The American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) has applicants manually enter all coursework and grades into the AMCAS application. You may wonder why they have you complete this seemingly repetitive and arduous section, given that they collect official copies of all transcripts. It allows them to create a standardized GPA calculation from which to compare…
Med School Admissions Veteran Shares Her Experience: How to Get In [Episode 314]
Accepted admissions consultant Cydney Foote sheds light on the medical school application process [Show Summary] Are you not quite ready to submit your AMCAS application? Don’t panic. We’ve got the advice you need to polish off your personal statement, MMEs, and activity descriptions. Listen to the podcast for answers to “How many schools should you…
4 Things to Do Before Submitting Your AMCAS Application
The AMCAS system may be open for several months, but it’s to your advantage to apply earlier rather than later so that med schools can consider your application when they have more seats available to fill. On the other hand, you don’t want to submit your application before it’s truly ready to be sent in….
Your Med School Personal Statement Roadmap
You’ve heard it again and again – the personal statement is one of the most important parts of your med school application. However, we know that admonition doesn’t make it any easier to write! But even though personal statements can definitely be challenging, they don’t need to be overwhelming! From our extensive experience coaching applicants…
Activity Descriptions for Med School: 4 Questions That Will Make Yours Awesome
Having worked in admissions for over a decade, I have probably read thousands of activity descriptions for medical school and related healthcare fields by now. While this part of the application may not seem very important, it can actually be the component that makes or breaks your chance of acceptance. It can be quite damaging…
5 Dont’s for Your Medical School Personal Statement
The personal statement is the only place in the AMCAS, AACOMAS and TMDSAS primary applications where you get to present yourself directly to the admissions committee. Here, you can persuade them to give you an interview, or – if you’re not careful – unknowingly reveal red flags that undermine your entire application. Since it plays…
What You Need to Know Before You Fill Out Your AMCAS Application
Our webinar, Create a Winning AMCAS Application, was a huge success. If you missed it, don’t worry – you still have a chance to see why applicants consider Accepted’s webinars among our most beneficial resources! The full webinar is now available to view on-demand, and for free. Check it out. Watch the webinar:
What to Include in the AMCAS Work and Activities Section
Your AMCAS application is a lot like a plate at a barbecue. A lot of attention is given to the “meat” of your application – but it’s what you write about in the activities section that adds flavor and variety to the “meat” of your profile. You have a limit of 15 activities that you…
Applying to Medical School: Selecting Extracurricular Activities
When considering your goal of attending medical school, you need to choose extracurricular activities that you will enjoy and that will also help you highlight the characteristics that med schools are seeking. 3 strategies for choosing the right extracurriculars Below we will provide you with strategies for finding and selecting activities that will set your…
How to Choose the Best Experiences for Your AMCAS Application
This is a repost of a popular article from our series Journeys with Joshua. It’s that time of year when premeds across the world are gathering everything they need to put on their AMCAS application. In this article, I’ll walk through one facet (one of the largest) of this dainty little application, the experiences section. I will outline what…
Can You Submit Your AMCAS Application BEFORE Taking the MCAT?
It’s risky to apply to med school before taking or retaking the MCAT for a few reasons: 1. Applying to med school is expensive and time intensive. It’s hard to know where you might be a competitive applicant if you don’t know how your scores compare to other students at a school. Your practice scores…
What NOT to Do in the Activities Section of Your Medical School Application
Don’t underestimate the importance of the activities section! Let’s take a look at some of the biggest mistakes to avoid in your activities section so you can make sure that you’re doing it right: Mistake #1: Providing less than 15 activities Simply submitting an application with less than the required 15 activities can lead to…
The Medical School Application “Deadline”
In just a few days, many of you will want to submit your medical school application. You’ve probably heard that you need to submit on the first day possible – May 31st, this year – if you want your best shot. But just how true is that? Medical School Admissions Myth vs. Reality It is…
Is Your AMCAS Application Ready?
After years of premed preparation, it’s now just a week until the AMCAS opens, and then you’ll be taking a huge step in your med school journey: submitting your AMCAS application. (Deep breath!) It’s exciting, but also stressful: you know the competition is intense, so your application needs to represent you as effectively as possible….
What NOT to Do on the Medical School Coursework Section
This part of the medical school application can be time consuming since you will have to enter in the title, units, and grade as well as classification for every college level class you’ve ever taken. It’s easy to make mistakes here since there are so many to list. Besides entering in the basic information about…
Ace the AMCAS Essay: 5 Effective Techniques to Improve Your Writing
In this blog series, you’ll get succinct, practical tips on how you can optimize your AMCAS application for acceptance to top medical schools. So far in this series we’ve talked about the WHO, WHY, WHAT, and HOW of creating an exemplary AMCAS essay. Now we’re going to offer some bonus tips that will help elevate your…
Ace the AMCAS Essay: How Should You Structure Your Essay?
In this blog series, you’ll get succinct, practical tips on how you can optimize your AMCAS application for acceptance to top medical schools. In this post we’re not going to talk about the actual writing and editing (we’ll save those technical elements for another time), but we are going to suggest HOW to structure your essay….
Ace the AMCAS Essay: What Should You Include in Your Essay?
In this blog series, you’ll get succinct, practical tips on how you can optimize your AMCAS application for acceptance to top medical schools. As I discussed in the first post of this series, your AMCAS essay serves as your introduction to the med school admissions board. In this way, your essay much more resembles a human interest…
Ace the AMCAS Essay: Why Do We Have Personal Statements?
![Do the essays in your med school applications serve as mere padding for the rest of your application? Or do they have some higher purpose? I’d like to propose three important reasons WHY the med schools request essays in addition to the all the stats and data that you provide in other sections of your application. The purpose of the AMCAS essay is to… 1. Provide a window into who you are. Not just into your grades and scores and impressive awards and experiences, but into the real you. Your AMCAS essay gives you an opportunity for the admissions community to meet you beyond the hard facts. This is your chance to introduce yourself. 2. Add insight and value to your application. Your AMCAS essay will allow you to delve deeper into specific experiences and to discuss your motivation and the lessons you learned. Be careful not to merely repeat info found on other parts of your application; instead, build and add to it with an insightful essay. 3. Demonstrate writing ability. Strong writing skills are indicative of strong communication skills, which are critical in the medical world. Let the adcom readers see that you know how to get your point across. To sum up, your essays shouldn’t pad your application with meaningless filler material, but should serve as a different kind of PAD – Provide a window, Add value, and Demonstrate writing skills. Include these elements in your AMCAS essay, and you’ll be one step closer to creating a captivating piece of writing and capturing a spot in your dream med school! “Why Do We Have Personal Statements?” is taken from the Accepted guide, Ace the AMCAS Essay. To download the complete guide, Click here. [xyz-ihs snippet="MED---WBR---Ace-the-AMCAS"] Related Resources: • 3 Essential Components of a Personal Statement • Med School Personal Statements: 10 Do’s and Don’ts • What Not to Do in a Personal Statement](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/q_lossy,ret_img,w_1024/https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ace-the-AMCAS-why-do-we-have-personal-statements-1024x512.jpg)
In this blog series, you’ll get succinct, practical tips on how you can optimize your AMCAS essay for acceptance to top medical schools. Do the essays in your med school applications serve as mere padding for the rest of your application? Or do they have some higher purpose? I’d like to propose three important reasons WHY…
