Session 71 Our poster this week is wondering if applying late is going to hurt his chances of getting into an MD school and if he should just focus on DO schools. Should you “give up” applying to MD schools just because you’re taking the MCAT at a later date? [01:15] OldPreMeds Question of the Week: "I'm beginning to realize that I might have to give up on MD and focus on DO only. I'm taking O. Chem 2 and Philosophy this summer and will have all prereqs completed except the Biochem and Bio3 for those schools that require it. Although I wanted to take O. Chem at another place, I had to take it at this community college because of timing. The problem is that this community college is one of those "Harvard on a hill" types. Science classes and labs are loaded up with busy work and homework. I'm starting to realize that the bulk of my MCAT prep will have to happen after the semester ends, which means June and July and MCAT July 28. That would push my application into mid-September and my understanding from that other site (SDN) is that mid-September is quite late for MD but on time for DO. So what to do? Give up hopes of MD, stick with the DO cycle only? Apply MD and hope for a miracle? I don't have a problem with DO per se as my ultimate goal is Family Medicine or Internal Medicine. The only issue I have with DO is that most schools have you move after second year and then again after third year. There are few schools that allow both clinical years that would be completed in the same town and those would be the ones I would target. I would not want to apply to schools such as PNWU (Pacific Northwestern University). I don't want to be moving between Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Idaho every three months for rotations. My number one choice is UC San Diego but that's going to be a tough one unless my MCAT score rocks. My estimated Science GPA is 3.63. I am an over-represented minority, will have mediocre ECs and LORs., and don't have any kind of amazing life story.” [03:29] Is August Too Late to Apply? The poster here is an over-represented minority and interested in UC San Diego but is taking a late MCAT. July 28 MCAT is late and it's not terrible. Well, it's kind of bad. Looking at the date, you're going to get the score back or the school is going to get the score back on Tuesday, August 29. That would be end of August which means it's going to be a late August date. I recently talked to a premed advisor at a local school who reached out to fifteen medical schools talking about sending committee letters and if a late August committee letter would still be okay. Out of the 15 schools, 12-13 said it was okay and they'd still consider it early while 2-3 of them preferred mid-August. Although this is a small sample size, it goes to show you that a lot of schools out there are still ramping up their admissions in August and September. [05:05] The Normal Application Time Frame Remember the normal time frame is to submit in June. Schools get your primary application. For AACOMAS application, schools will start to get it early June this year, while AMCAS application will not get it until late June. They send you secondaries and you fill those out, assuming that schools start to receive secondary applications starting mid-July. Applications start to get looked at and then interview invites start to go out. Following that, they would start accepting people after the interviews. [05:50] Early Application and Rolling Admissions Think about where you are in line. If you're going to take a late MCAT, you still need to apply early. Have those transcripts verified early because the biggest hangup in the application is this manual process done by people. So you need to get in line to get your transcripts verified. Get those applications out and start to fill out those secondaries and have the MCAT as the only thing that the school is waiting for. Hence, there is no reason to "give up" on MD. Just apply and see. I wouldn't NOT apply to