Making the most of your AMCAS: a friendly guide

So you’re done with your MCAT, finishing up your personal statement, and securing your letters of recommendation. After all that, the AMCAS application probably seems like a piece of cake! But be careful not to rest on your laurels! Because besides your personal statement, the “Work/Activities” section of the AMCAS is the only other place to make yourself shine! Before we get there, let’s go through a brief overview of the application.

AMCAS: your best friend for the next few months.

1. Identifying Information.

Pretty straightforward. The easiest part!

2. Schools Attended.

High school and colleges. This includes community college, even if you only took 1 or 2 classes there during high school.

3. Biographic Information

Tip: It’s okay (and probably better) to use your preferred address for the “permanent address” as well. Some schools have a policy of mailing things only to the “permanent address” entered in your AMCAS. The address doesn’t affect your background check or anything important like that, so just put where you want stuff mailed.

4. Course Work

Pay attention when entering your courses, because mistakes may delay the processing of your application. I suggest printing out your unofficial transcript so you can copy the courses exactly into the AMCAS. Again, don’t forget to include any community college classes from high school.

5. Work/Activities

AMCAS allows up to 15 experiences, but remember to choose QUALITY over QUANTITY.  You definitely don’t need to use 15 experiences.

Each experience needs to be categorized into ONE of the following:

• Paid Employment—Not Military

• Paid Employment—Military

• Community Service/Volunteer—Not Medical/Clinical

• Community Service/Volunteer—Medical/Clinical

• Research/Lab

• Teaching/Tutoring

• Honors/Awards/Recognition

• Conferences Attended

• Presentations/Posters

• Publications

• Extracurricular/Hobbies/Avocations

• Leadership—Not Listed Elsewhere

• Other

Hold on to your horses, because this is where the action happens! In addition to basic information such as dates, hours, contacts, etc., AMCAS allows up to 700 characters in the experience description. In addition, you can choose up to 3 experiences to mark as “Most Meaningful,” where you get an additional 1325 characters.

Now there are two ways that people choose to approach the descriptions. One way is to simply describe what you did, sorta like a resume (some people even use bullet points). The goal is to make it “short and sweet,” as to not waste any of the admissions committee’s time. This also allows you to save more meaningful explanations for secondary essays.

Example: Brother Bear Mentoring Program

• Served as a mentor and tutor for an orphaned cub
• Guided his acceptance into Alaska’s most prestigious salmon fishing academy

The other way is to write the descriptions as mini-essays - although it sounds short, 700 characters is enough to describe what you did AND what you gained from the experience. Your “most meaningful” experiences, with an extra 1325 characters, REALLY give you space for mini-essays.

Example: Brother Bear Mentoring Program

I served as a mentor and tutor to a young cub who had been orphaned since birth. He had no role models, and nobody had ever taught him to fish. When I first met him, he had never even seen a river. To teach him how to fish was a struggle at first, but neither of us ever gave up. As our relationship grew, I started discussing the possibility of attending fishing academy. I helped him apply to academies, but it was his determination that ultimately got him in. His resilience despite adversity still inspires me to this day.

(*sob* are you tearing up?)

I very much endorse this second method, for a few reasons:

• The blunt truth is that your activities themselves are not unique. Everyone does volunteering, tutoring, sports, leadership, etc. What makes your activities unique is what you personally gained from them.
• Most schools these days give automatic secondaries, but for the schools that don’t, your primary is your opportunity to show schools how awesome you are, so that they’ll send you a secondary invite.
• Many schools have secondaries that don’t require additional essays, or ask something like “What is a difficult situation you’ve been in and how did you handle it?” For such schools, your primary is your only place to show how much you gained from your activities. (for other schools, their secondaries will give you a chance to discuss your activities in further detail)

6. Letters of Evaluation

Letters can be submitted from your school’s letter service (usually from the career center), directly through AMCAS Letter Writer Application, or through Interfolio or VirtualEvals. I will do a future post on how to choose.

Tip: You can submit your AMCAS to all your schools without any letters of rec, and add them later, like when you’re submitting your secondaries. Also, AMCAS lets you choose which letters you want to send to each school.

If you’re still scrambling to get those letters, check out Rachel’s Comprehensive Guide to Letter of Recommendation.

7. Medical Schools

The fun part! Select away! Remember, you can always add more schools later, even after your AMCAS is verified. (But you can’t remove schools. You can, however, ignore their secondaries if you decide you no longer wish to apply)

8. Essays

Your beautiful, polished personal statement goes here. Be proud of it!

9. Standardized Tests

Your MCAT score should automatically appear here. (Rare scenario that would happen to me: My MCAT scores weren’t showing up in my AMCAS...turned out I had accidentally made 2 separate AAMC accounts - one for my MCAT and one for AMCAS. This took awhile for them to fix. So if this happens to you, call them ASAP!)

Phew...we’re all done! What a doozy. Time for a nap.

source: http://blog.nwf.org

<3 kathleen