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 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…
6 Tips to Improve Your AMCAS Application Activities Section
It’s almost summer, and for me that means barbecues on the deck, specifically with the company of friends. I was recently enjoying a cook-out at one friend’s home in particular, and gracious as my hosts were, I felt a bit daunted by the huge piece of steak that filled my plate, accompanied by a small…
What NOT to Do in a Statement of Disadvantage
If you have experienced any form of social, economic, or educational disadvantage at any time in your life, you can apply to medical school as a disadvantaged applicant. When you specify that you are applying as disadvantaged, you will have a new section to complete in your application. AMCAS will request information about your family…
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…
Medical 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…
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….
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…
4 Things To Do Before Submitting Your AMCAS Application
While the AMCAS process is open for several months, 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. With an ongoing process, how can you tell when your application is ready to submit? Here are four things we…
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 exciting resources! The full webinar is now available to view on-demand, and for free. Check it out.
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://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…
Ace the AMCAS Essay: Who Should Write Your Essays?
In this blog series, you’ll get succinct, practical tips on how you can optimize your AMCAS essay for acceptance to top medical schools. Who Should Write Your AMCAS Essay? The obvious answer here is that YOU should (and if anyone else does for you, then you can expect to be found out and rejected). But…
Lack of Substance: Med School Application Essay Flaw #1
Watch what you write! In this blog series, we’ll examine the 5 fatal flaws that you should avoid when writing your med school application essays. In our first post, we’ll discuss how to avoid writing a personal statement that lacks substance. Writing about nothing will bore your readers. If your personal statement or secondary essay…
What to Include in the AMCAS Activities Section
You have a limit of fifteen activities that you can include in the activities section of the AMCAS application. It will hurt your application if you have less than fifteen activities. The types of activities that you include, the length of time you participated, and how you describe them all have an impact on how…
