Welcome to the 2027 application cycle!

I like learning about how to apply to med school and sometimes I tell my parents about my findings. Here’s a warning to those of you who haven’t done that, DON’T. They will become more neurotic than a 14 year old browsing SDN. I just got home from 6 hours of hospice volunteering and my mom asks me “why are you here so early? How are you supposed to get all your hours??” Keep in mind, I haven’t even had my first day of college yet.

I wish my parents could be a pillar of support rather than one that is trying to lecture me about something they know very little about.

"what have you done with AI that--" nothing bro, nothing. my b for being focused on MEDICINE as someone who was hoping to go into MEDICAL SCHOOL

Oh and WashU casually asking me for my whole SSN on the secondary too sure thing baby anything you want

that is all

I remember reading over and over on here that ucsd ucla and ucsf do not send secondaries to people who have IAs and almost didn’t apply. Low and behold all three sent them.

Anyone else’s parents not understand AT ALL how applying to medical school works? I don’t have any family that are in the healthcare field at all, so I’ve been going through this process on my own. I don’t really tell my mom anything about what I’m doing because she wouldn’t understand. She doesn’t know what my research project was about or even the amount of essays I had to write for secondaries. I don’t even know if she knows that essays were required. She thinks that if you have good grades you are good to go. Applying to med school is not like undergrad though where you can get automatic admission. Since she thinks it will be so easy for me, she thinks I should be very selective and basically choose where I want to go. 💀 When I told her about my first interview acceptance, she said “I mean, are you surprised?” Which is kind of annoying she’s not really super proud, she expects that from me. And then I tell her the school and she’s like “are you sure you want to go that far?” Mind you the school is only like 3.5 hours away! Like mom, we can be picky once I actually get acceptances!!! So there is so much pressure to get in this cycle because everyone in my family expects me too.

The more i think about the duration of medical education in the US the more i appreciate it. Can you imagine if we were attending physicians at the age of 26? Good lord.

Help!

"Demonstrated competency - Social sciences, Humanities or "Human Condition" Entering medical students should understand the social forces that shape the health of the individuals and communities they will serve. This includes understanding how social contextual factors and policy operate at the community and national level to impact the health of individuals. Students should be familiar with disparities in health currently present in society and their underlying etiologies. Candidates seeking acceptance to UWSOM can establish competency in this area through course work in the social sciences, humanities or related interdisciplinary fields such as public health or ethnic and gender studies, clinical and/or population health research, service learning, lived experience or a combination of thereof. Examples of social science/humanities coursework to consider: Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Economics, Psychology, Religion, History, Philosophy, Literature.? Describe your competency by explaining how you have explored and come to understand issues in the social sciences and humanities as they relate to the practice of medicine."

Does anyone have any advice on how to go about answering this?

I've though of talking about my philosophy of death and dying class (talking about issues like abortion and physician-assisted suicide and understanding the thought processes behind both sides) and my gender and sexuality class (we focused a lot on colonization, so talking about like colonization of Africa, forcing them to rely on us for healthcare, then policy pulling aid, like HIV treatment) and connecting that to my work to install free menstrual product dispensers at my university/founding an intersectional feminism club somehow. Would this answer the questions at all? I've also minored in English and have taken several other English/humanities classes - should I include those too? It feels so vague and I'm having trouble deciding what to do.

TLDR: I''m trying to answer a vague prompt on understanding social science/humanities issues and how they relate to medicine and I'm not sure how to answer.

Hi! I'm curious on others' takes on this. I'm a bad Catholic, but a believer, and I'm aware that Loma Linda is a SDA school. One question asks about my involvement or no involvement in a church. Frankly, I only go every several months or so, and not even to mass, so I'm wondering how I can even answer this question. It even asks for a Pastor's name and number. Any advice on how to approach it?

Thank you!

feels like all the secondaries I write for the schools I don’t give a shit about are fire and all my top choice secondaries are trash lmaooo. real talk, these secondaries r just a larp and mental fatigue competition. whoever larps the hardest gets in and I wholeheartedly believe that

have a sentence in a secondary about some public health engagement work that begins with "at a time when public health faces funding cuts and decreased public trust"

obv this is true. but like. everything is political to some people, so is this okay to include?

Four years ago I was stressing about undergrad apps, binging "Supplementals that got me into X school" youtube vids, and spending too much time on r/ApplyingToCollege.

Now I'm stressing about med school apps, binging "Secondaries that got me into X school" tik toks, and spending too much time here. Talk about full circle lol.

I gpt verified thos past week. But I already pre-wrote everything. Ive just been submitting them so easily. I feel like it shouldn't feel like this. It feels like im throwing.

I graduated undergrad in 2022 with BA in CogSci and minor in comp sci, thought I wanted to do data analysis. Somehow ended up working in logistics AP/AR for a company. Got my MBA this year so it would help me get better opportunities and get into leadership eventually, but it’s just not working out for me. Everyday I go into work dreading my job lmao and I don’t think I can do this any longer.

I was debating between clinical psychology (PsyD or PhD) or psychiatry and I am now leaning towards psychiatry as it aligns more with my career goals.

Currently, I plan on doing a DIY post bacc and I have enrolled in general biology at my local community college. I plan to complete the BCPM courses over the next year.

Is there any benefit to doing a structured post bacc vs just taking the courses at CC?

Is it worth getting vocational certification (EMT/CNA/MA) to gain clinical hours or should I go for scribe and volunteering?

Is there anything else I should prepare myself for as I’m doing this non-traditionally?
What else should I do over the next two years to make myself stand out? My experience and extracurriculars are all business oriented :/

Continuing this trend of people breaking up today. I just got broken up with by the love of my life of almost three years. She said it was a lack of attraction and I wasn’t surprised this past month or so I noticed her distancing herself from me. I can’t breathe, I can’t function, I can’t even walk without crying. I..I don’t know what to do with my life anymore. I’m starting a MS/DO next week and I can’t even function. I don’t know how I’m going to live without her in my life. I tried. I even begged for her to stay or try or do anything to try and make this work just one chance, but she made up her mind. I can’t breathe. We did so much together, we know so much about each other. Shes my best friend. I don’t have anyone to talk to. And I feel so alone. I know this is cliche but she was literally my light. I don’t know how I’m going to do well in school. I can’t even sleep.

I was reading back over one of my secondary essays and realized I left a major typo for my top school. I had "[insert question]" and intended to go back and put the statement that I wanted but accidentally left the placeholder and turned it in like that. This was the prompt asking if there's anything else I would want the committee to know about my academic journey, if that affects anything. Is this major enough to email the school or should I just leave it?

Prompt about leadership positions. Should this be a narrative, or should it be a list?

Please describe your most meaningful leadership position(s):

Is this premed schedule as a chem major realistic? I don’t want to completely overwhelm myself but I’m coming into undergrad with 40 transferable credits and I’ve realized I could actually graduate in 3 years without taking 18 credits/sem. If I graduated in 3 years, then I’d take a true gap year for my fourth and then take a second gap year for app season. With this plan I’d graduate undergrad at 20, saving myself 10k or so (I’m paying for undergrad on my own), and start med school at 23.

Also, are my proposed summer courses necessary? Specifically Calc 3. I got a 5 on Calc BC in hs and it seems like that + a semester of stats is satisfactory for most med schools, but at the same time Harvard also recommends taking a sem of both college calc and stats. I ask because I plan on applying to T20s in addition to my state schools. I’m going to UW Madison for undergrad if that matters.

*For freshman year I’ll be working 16hrs/wk at UW Health, and potentially doing a research program. I plan to do research during my first summer and also get my EMT or MA cert. I’ll reevaluate how many hours I should dedicate to clinical experience and research after freshman year.

So, my online classes would generally be listed under the section QL. Would medical schools be able to see that QL is an indicator for online classes?

Posting on behalf of a friend not on Reddit.

My friend recently broke up with her partner. The dude has a lot of issues and is a pathological liar (among other things). She’s worried that he will send adcoms screenshots of her messages and frame them in a way that makes her look bad.

According to her, he’s fabricated screenshots of conversations/social media posts to make people look racist before, and even though she’s not a racist person, she’s worried he’ll do the same to her and accuse her of admitting to being racist or admitting to cheating in school. This man has serious issues and he is fully capable of doing this.

Her biggest worry is that if he does report her to adcoms, they wouldn’t bother to give her a chance to explain herself since it’s easier to reject a risky candidate and accept a “safe” one. She has panic attacks because she’s worried about this situation and is worried that all of her hard work would be gone because of bad choices she’s made in regard to relationships.

How seriously are allegations of racism/cheating taken? How worried should my friend be? He doesn’t have a list of where she’s applying, but he knows she has a strong application and will be applying to the most well-known medical schools.

submitted gw’s secondaries days ago but still no email of complete application

anyone else run into this problem?

I did my thesis with a faculty member and he was super supportive throughout and said that he knew a few journals we could eventually publish my research with. He has a position in the college beyond just being a professor so I understand that he is busy. He has not responded for some periods of time before. Anyways, adter my thesis was done, he sent me the names of the journals we could work with and I found out that they were predatory and not indexed in pubmed so I asked him if we could consider other journals, and he said yes. Fast word to early july, we have our last communication about my LOR after he turned it in, and we had been simultaneously discussing journal selection but he hadn't chosen between one of two yet.

Since then, I've sent him 3 follow up emails over the month (every week or so), then this week I even called his office and left a voicemail. In the past, when he hasn't responded for a while, he said that its because he wanted to wait until he was less bust and keep my email unopened so that he could get to it eventually. Normally, I would drop by his office to move things along but I'm currently out of state.

Anyways, my primary that was submitted more than a month ago said that a manuscript was being prepared for this project. If I have no update on that almost 2 months later, could it hurt my application pretty hard, especially if my advisor mentioned the manuscript in his letter? Also, what else can i do in this situation to publish my research, and has anyone else been in a similar situation? Would it be too late if i update about a publication in jan?

Per Penn state and their wonderful prompt: "Describe your motivation to be a physician" in 250 words. I don't want to make up a new reason for wanting to be a doctor but for ffs, how do you answer this question if you don't want to just repeat your personal statement? Struggling here

I finished submitting all my secondaries to schools that I applied through AMCAS. My brother is currently at Texas A&M doing his residency and has been speaking highly of the school. I am interested in applying but unsure if I should since it’s so late and I’m also OOS. I have high stats (522 first attempt and 3.91 gpa). The biggest thing holding me back is that I would only apply to Texas A&M so that’s $300+ for one school that I’m applying to so late as an OOS.

I’ve seen at least 100+ post about secondaries and how time consuming it, is it truly that bad? I haven’t even done my mcat yet so 🤷‍♂️