By Carleen Eaton, M.D.

The committee has rendered its decision. You have completed your interview and, at last, you receive an e-mail or a letter from the school. Are you done with the worrying and agonizing? Are you finally in? Or is this a letter of denial, sending you back to wondering where you’ll be spending the next four years?  You look and realize that it is neither, instead, the word you see is: “waitlisted.”

In an earlier blog entry, I discussed letters of update and waitlist strategies. Now, let’s talk about how waitlists are structured and how the schools use the lists. Understanding waitlists can make getting through this uncertain time less stressful.

There are two general types of waitlists:

Ranked – In this situation, applicants who have been interviewed but were not accepted or denied post-interview, are ranked and placed on a list. As spots in the class become available, the school moves down the waitlist in order. The amount that schools divulge about these lists ranges from almost nothing, to telling you your exact number on the list and the number that they usually get  to in order to fill the class. In the latter situation, you will have a pretty good idea of your chances for admission, since you may be told, for example, that you are number 55 and that the school typically gets through number 75 to fill the class.  Often, schools don’t release information quite that specific, but they may give you a rough idea of where you are, such as “top half” or “middle third.”

Since the first category of waitlists is called “ranked,” through your premedical powers of deduction, you have probably already figured out that the other type is known as…

Unranked –With unranked lists, post-interview applicants who were neither immediately accepted nor denied are placed in a pool of applicants to be revisited when a spot opens up. Since there is no set order, that means that transcripts with your latest grades, updates about your activities and letters expressing your continued strong interest in the school are especially important, since they may help when the committee delves into the list to choose someone to fill an open spot.

Although it would certainly be ideal to have an acceptance in hand immediately, keep in mind that, until the day classes begin, a school may take someone off of the waitlist.  In the end, whether you are accepted ten months or two days before med school begins, you will emerge from medical school as an M.D.

By Carleen Eaton, M.D.

You thrive on deadlines. Fueled by coffee, with just hours remaining until your 20 page paper on “Medieval Jousts as a Foreshadowing Device in Early 17th Century French Literature” is due, you are intensely focused, pounding away full speed at the keyboard. While you can pull this off with a paper in school, this last minute approach is definitely not recommended for med school applications. The reason: rolling admissions.

With rolling admissions, the schools do not wait until all of the applications are in to review them; they review them as they come in. Following committee review, competitive applicants are offered interviews. Acceptances are offered as early as October 15. As slots fill up in the class, the process becomes increasingly competitive for the remaining applicants. By spring, some schools are interviewing for the wait list only. Therefore, applying late in the cycle can have a detrimental effect on your chances of admission.

So how early is early enough?  AAMCAS begins accepting applications on, or very close to, June 1. Ideally, you will have your primary application submitted by July 1.  Once it gets to late August, or especially September, some schools are already interviewing.

Now that you know when to apply, the question is how do you get your application submitted early? With some organization and discipline, you can get this done while still maintaining your grades and an outside life. Just watch out for these pitfalls:

1. Waiting too long to ask for letters of recommendation - LOR are the part of the process over which you have the least amount of control. You can volunteer in five hospitals, study non-stop for the MCAT and achieve a GPA worthy of summa cum laude, all through your own initiative and effort, but you can’t make a very busy professor write a LOR at the last minute. To avoid being stuck waiting for a needed letter, request your letters at least four weeks in advance.

2. Not reviewing copies of your transcripts – Request a copy of your transcript from your each college you have attended and read every word of them. I have encountered situations where applicants found errors on their transcripts that needed to be corrected before they could submit them. This can cause a delay of weeks or longer, depending on the error and the school.

3. Giving yourself too little time to write the personal statement – Writing about oneself is hard. It is even harder when you only have 5300 characters in which to do so, while also trying to explain exactly why you want to be a doctor. Plan to spend a month on this. That way, you can work on it, and then set it aside for a few days between drafts in order to generate ideas.

4. Not realizing that it takes many hours to fill out the application – The fact that the instruction book for the AMCAS application is over 100 pages says it all.

So, while getting into the flow state with your espresso and your laptop might work to crank out that history paper, don’t try it with the application. Start early, finish early and leave the adrenaline rush of hitting “submit” one minute before the deadline to someone else.

By Carleen Eaton, M.D.

The first question I am often asked when the topic of post bacs comes up is “What exactly is a post-bac program”? The source of this confusion is that “post-baccalaureate” (or “post-bac”) is an inexact term that refers to courses of study ranging from a class or two taken at a local university to a highly structured, full time program yielding a master’s degree.

There are several categories that these programs fall into:

1. Programs intended for applicants who have not completed the prerequisites for medical school. Students in these programs may include someone fresh from undergrad who was fully intent on becoming an art historian until their last year of college, when it was too late to squeeze in all the science classes they needed to apply to medical school. These programs also include applicants who have pursued careers in areas from landscape design to law and then found a new calling in the field of medicine. .

2. Programs intended for applicants who need to strengthen their academic records, but have already taken the premedical coursework. Many of these programs grant a master’s degree in subjects such as physiology, biomedical sciences or health sciences. These are often referred to as “Special Master’s Programs” or “SMPs.” What makes them special? Well, the fact that they are geared specifically towards premedical students, which means course offerings meant to help an applicant “show their stuff” to the committee, as well as other premedical type perks, such as MCAT preparation, premedical advising and guest speakers.

3. Classes taken independently through a college or university. The benefit is that this is a much cheaper option and doesn’t require a full time commitment or relocating. The downside is that they don’t carry the weight of a structured program, especially for those looking to improve their academic records. In a post-bac or SMP you will be balancing multiple, rigorous science classes at once, just as in medical school.

The length of programs ranges from 1-2 years. Shorter programs usually result in a certificate of completion, whereas those that last 18 months or more may result in a master’s degree. Applications typically open in January and close anywhere from March-June. Admissions are sometimes rolling, so apply early.

These programs can be ideal for applicants who need to take the prerequisite coursework for med school and want a structured way to accomplish that, or for someone who needs to demonstrate very clearly to the committee that their undergraduate record does not reflect their potential to succeed in medical school. However, an important point is that these programs are not the answer for an applicant who has a strong undergraduate GPA but a low MCAT score.  More coursework and more A’s will not compensate for a score that is not competitive; instead, the time and financial resources are better invested in preparing to retake the MCAT.

A great resource for information about these programs is the AAMC post-bac page at http://services.aamc.org/postbac/ Check this out as you begin your search for the program that will move you closer to your goal of admission to med school.