You’ve taken the prerequisite courses, kicked booty on the MCAT, volunteered everywhere under the sun and written a stellar entrance essay. Now it’s time to bring it all together on a medical school application. Luckily, most medical schools in North America accept the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) application, which means you can fill out just one application for multiple schools, and do it all on a centralized, electronic application.
Instructions
1. You will be able to access the AMCAS application in late April, so get your stuff together before then if you would like to start medical school the following fall. Write your essay(s) ahead of time.
2. Be prepared to spend some time. The AMCAS application is detailed and it takes some time to fill out. Still, it takes a lot less time than if you chose to fill out an application for every school you apply to. (The average number of schools an applicant applies to is 11, but I’ve known people who applied to as many as 30.)
3. Go to the application site and register. Find it here: http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/
4. Download the application worksheet. It will list all the information you will need to have on hand to fill out your application.
5. Fill out the following sections: biographical information (basic demographics), postsecondary experiences (pertinent volunteer, research and extracurricular experiences), essay(s), schools attended (in detail with dates), transcript requests and coursework (and, yes, AMCAS requires a detailed listing of all coursework in addition to the transcripts).
6. When you complete the final submission, you must “certify” the application to verify its accuracy. The final certification is like an electronic signature and means you are ready to submit it to the medical schools you indicated. If you would like to edit it after that, you will have to follow a special procedure to do so. In other words, to make any changes, you must re-certify and resubmit your application.
7. There are some schools (including all of the Canadian schools) that do not participate in the AMCAS system. You will have to write or call them for an application and fill each out individually.
8. Sit back and wait for those secondary applications!
Tags: AMCAS application, medical school, medical schools, some time, will have, would like