The General Timeline of the Application Cycle
Updated December 28, 2020
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The application cycle can be daunting at first glance. There are so many components, and depending on when you apply, it can be difficult to give it the time and attention it requires. Familiarity with the general timeline can help you plan appropriately so you can better manage the workload. With that being said, there are several successful applicants (myself included) who eschewed the typical timeline. Your goal should be to ensure that the final product that you are putting out in front of an admissions committee is something that you are proud of. In most cases, the quality should take precedence over the “timeliness”.
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As a quick rundown, the application cycle is one that you start the summer before you intend to start medical school. So for example, if you’re hoping to start medical school in the summer of 2022, you would apply in the summer of 2021 and, in the perfect world, start preparing your writing as early as the winter of 2020.
Preparing (January to May)
By the winter before the cycle you intend to start applying, you should start thinking about a few things; namely MCAT, writing your Personal Statement and Work and Activities summaries, obtaining your Letters of Recommendation, and compiling your school list. The sooner you finish these, the less you’ll have to think about down the line and the sooner you can hit the submit button.
The Primary Application (May to June)
The primary application opens in May but is not open to submission until June. It would be best to have most of your application complete before this month so you can spend most of your time fine-tuning everything and perhaps even pre-writing your secondaries. It would also be best to register for the CASPer test so you can have it completed and scored before schools receive your secondaries. You will also want to order your transcripts so as not to delay the verification process that the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) uses.
The Secondary Application (June to September)
Something that isn’t very well understood by applicants is that there are a couple of gaps within the application process. One of them is how the primary application opens in May but you are unable to submit it until June. The second is that your primary application is “verified” by the application service and then held after verification until July. That means schools won’t receive your application and you will not receive secondary invites until July. If you are ahead of the schedule, I recommend that you use June to start/continue to work on pre-writing your secondaries. Once July hits, the consensus is to submit your secondaries within 2 weeks of receiving them. You should make sure to keep all deadlines in mind.
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Most schools will send you a secondary application almost immediately after they receive your primary application. This is because they don’t have someone reading your primary. They use a simple computer screening algorithm to check for things like a minimum MCAT score. However, there are some schools, like the University of California schools, that will manually screen each primary application and perform a holistic review before deciding on whether to send you a secondary.
Interviews (August to March)
The interviews are where schools mainly start to diverge. Some schools start interviewing early, like Tulane University. Other schools end interviews as early as January, like Columbia University. Some schools utilize a rolling admissions process, which means that as the application cycle comes to a close they have fewer interview dates and seats. And other schools might not utilize the rolling admissions process and instead choose to interview all chosen candidates from the pool of applicants first before starting to make decisions about any of them. To get details on school specifics in terms of interviews, such as style, pre-interview decisions, and post-interview decisions, you may benefit from scoping out sources like SDN (Student Doctor Network) and Reddit.
ayush kumar
Hometown: Elk Grove, CA
Medical School: University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine
Year: M1