My Tips and Advice for AMCAS Application

Hello everyone. Congratulations on getting to this part of your journey, which is applying to medical school! It is pretty daunting and if you do not know anyone in your circle who applied previously, it can make it 10x scarier. Well good news, I am going to try to break it down it for you and give you tips for each part! If you have not already, go to DiverseMedicine.com. They have application bootcamps, people who can read your personal statement and activities section, and an overall positive aura there.

1. Identifying Information/ Schools Attended/ Biographic Information

These first three sections are pretty straightforward. For the School ID section in the Identifying Information, make sure to add your IDs for any institution that you added, whether it be a community college or a four-year university. Even if you were in high school when you attended the college, make sure to still add that.

For the Felonies and Misdemeanors sections, make sure you answer this part honestly because medical schools will eventually run background checks on their matriculants. If you were charged with a misdemeanor but it was dismissed, then you do not have to click on yes. For example, I speed in a school zone and got a ticket for that (truly a sad day for me) but the charges were lifted. My background check still shows that misdemeanor but because the charges were lifted, I ended up being fine. If the charges were not lifted that’s a different story.

2. Disadvantaged Status

This is apart of the Biographic Section but I decided to talk about this individually. For this part, you must use the space provided to talk about why you feel that you are a an applicant with a disadvantaged status. Here’s what they says qualifies you to write in that section:

For mine, I basically talked about my high school experience, how it was not safe, and how it was underfunded. Compared to schools in other parts of Columbus, my high school was definitely behind and I did not feel as prepared as my other college classmates. I also talked about being a first-generation student and coming from a low-income family. I honestly could have talked about much more, but that would have been a couple of pages!

There’s no singular way to write in this section but be honest and talk about the barriers you have faced that qualifies you as a disadvantaged status applicant. Comment below if you have any questions about this section.

3. CourseWork

This part of the application takes the longest in my opinion. First things first, make sure you send your transcripts to AMCAS. And I mean ALL transcripts. I remember I took a college course in high school and did meh in it and I had to upload that grade (which was a bummer). But if you do not put all the classes that you took, that’s technically lying and if they find out, they can revoke your application.

After you send your transcripts, buy copies of the same transcripts for yourself so that way you can fill out this section. AMCAS uses the transcript you give them and compares it to the grades you put in, which is why verification takes a while. So, if you have a copy of the transcript and put in the courses and grades correctly, you can get verified sooner.

On AMCAS, they have a video explaining how to put the grades in. For course number, make sure to put what your transcript says. For example, I almost put in 1610 for the course number when I was putting my grade in, but my transcript said CHEM 1610. So follow your transcript word for word, number for number. Comment below if you want me to explain even more.

4. Work/Activities

This section took me a while to complete, but I had an medical student named Lauren Kanzaki who looked over this section for me and read/edited it for me. There are 15 experiences you can fill up altogether for this section, but most people fill up to 9 so do not feel incompetent if you do not have 15. There are two types of experiences, a regular experience and your most meaningful one. From the regular experiences you choose 3 that are going to be your most meaningful. Advice: Choose three experiences that will be easiest for you to talk about during your interview and that you are passionate about. My most meaningful experiences did not involve research because I was not invested in it like my other experiences and that ended up fine. Do not feel like you have make a certain experience your most meaningful because it looks good.

Go to this reddit link that will help you with this section: https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/comments/5roswr/my_thoughts_on_how_to_write_the_activity_section/

Also check out the 15 core competencies that medical schools look for when evaluating an applicant. That will be helpful when filling out this section:

https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/article/core-competencies/

I decided to provide screenshots of a regular experience I had and a most meaningful one. There’s different character counts for both (I think 700 characters for regular and a larger number for most meaningful). You do not have to follow it in the way I did but it’s helpful to see how someone else filled it out.

Regular Experience:

Most Meaningful Experience:

5. LOR

This section deserves a whole other blog post on how to get letters of recommendation etc so be on the lookout for that. But for the type of people I recommend you should get letters from are:

1. Two science teachers
2. A non-science teacher
3. A physician
4. A Community Leader, A Student Organization Advisor, someone who can speak on your leadership
5. Principal Investigator for your Research
6. Your employer for a specific job. Health- related or non health related (I used my supervisor in the hospital lab I worked in and my boss as a Teacher’s Assistant)

It’s not necessary to get it from all of these people but it would definitely help you out a lot!

Also, I would invest in Interfolio Dossier. It’s around $40 but it’s worth it in my opinion. You can save all of the letters your recommenders write on that website as opposed to using AMCAS letter writer etc. Interfolio has instructions on how to send the letters over to the application site and it also makes sure your letter writer fulfills all their requirements. It’s also helpful if you are planning to apply to DO schools as well so definitely check out the website!

https://www.interfolio.com/dossier/

6. Personal Statement

This also deserves its own blog post. This was truly the hardest part of the AMCAS application in my honest opinion. I think I went through 6-7 drafts before I finally had something tangible. Some advice: make sure you actually answer the prompt and not go off on a tangent. Before writing the statement, keep a journal of experiences that made you want to pursue medicine. Your statement does not have to be linear, like I initially thought, but hit on key experiences and lessons that you have learned about yourself and why you want to become a physician. This is not supposed to be a resume, that’s what the activities section is for, but a reflection of yourself and the chance for the admissions committee to see who you truly are as a person. I definitely want to touch on this more as I learned so much about myself writing this so be on the lookout for that blogpost!

That’s all I have for now. Good luck future physicians, you are one step closer to your dreams!