I’m Waitlisted. Should I Prepare to Apply Next Cycle?

Session 133

Our student today is waitlisted at 5 schools but may not know if she will get a spot until up to maybe June. Should she retake her MCAT and prepare to apply again?

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[00:21] Question of the Day

“I’m in a unique and tough position. So I have applied this cycle and I’m waitlisted for five medical schools right now after applying. And my biggest thing, in my opinion, and I’ve been told by other medical schools is my MCAT score.

And so, I’m wondering when would be an appropriate time to potentially start resetting because I think that’s my biggest thing on my application that I can improve on?

I know I could be accepted as late as June or July. So I don’t want to just sit here and not study or I don’t know. So I just wanted your advice.”

[01:05] Her MCAT is Probably Good Enough

If you had five interviews, then your MCAT score is not a problem. Now, your MCAT score may be a problem for the schools that you didn’t get an interview at. But for the schools where you interviewed, they obviously liked your MCAT score enough.

Now, maybe post-interview, you didn’t go well enough. And they were hoping maybe your MCAT score was better. So there’s a two-prong approach.

But first off, your MCAT score is probably good enough. It can be better.

Our student explains she took it in 2019 and got a 506. And then she took it again in 2020 and got a 505. She says she was scoring substantially higher on the practice test. Not that it matters but she admits she was shocked by her actual score.

'Your number one goal should be doing better on the MCAT and not taking another MCAT really quickly to potentially come on a waitlist.'Click To Tweet

And so, our student clarifies that she’s doing it for the next application cycle. She doesn’t want to be naive about it.

[03:24] The Catch 22

There’s a catch 22 for a lot of students as to whether to spend the money to register or to spend it on a different prep material. Only to come off the waitlist two months later, and all of that money would be wasted. So I would rather you waste money but be prepared just in case.

“The best case scenario is you get off a waitlist two minutes before you hit Submit on registering for another exam.”Click To Tweet

Again, the best case scenario is you get in. But assuming this application cycle is a wash, you just need to be head down. What’s next? And if you think it’s your MCAT score, great. Obviously a 506 is not a wonderful MCAT score. It’s not horrible. But it’s not great. It’s not going to open a ton of doors for you. And so definitely, putting full focus on that MCAT score would be great.

[05:11] How Her Interviews Went

But if you had five interviews and you didn’t get in, then there’s obviously something in your application that didn’t do well.

In preparing for the interview, our student read The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Interview. Taking all the advice from the book, she says she got complimented on her interviewing skills. So she thinks the interview went really well. And in some of the schools that she interviewed with, they told her it’s rolling admissions but they wait until they have interviewed all the applicants, and then they make a decision.

She was also able to do a follow-up with Zoom to talk about why she got waitlisted and they said the only thing they could point out is her MCAT.

[07:31] What You Could Do Differently on the MCAT Prep

My question for this student is as she moves forward with the next application cycle, what is she going to do differently with her MCAT? Because she got a 505. So she has got to do something different this time to get 510 and above.

Our student says she used the Kaplan course the first time but admits it wasn’t her favorite. She studied her senior year of college with a full schedule and all that.

The second time around, she did the same thing. She also used other prep materials including Next Step (now Blueprint MCAT).

At the end of the day, the question is – does she need course content? Does she need to learn amino acids one more time and in a different way?

And maybe instead of a Blueprint course, you’re just more focused on the Blueprint full-length exams. Where you spend a couple $100 on their 10-pack of full length exams, where you can take their full length exams, you get the analytics on the back-end to see from a strategy standpoint.

For instance, you would see that for the 20% of the questions you missed, you actually got them right the first time before you changed your answer. And it’s because you have second guessed yourself.

Or you could also probably see that 80% of the questions you missed in this particular section are around this one specific topic. Now, you know which area you need to refresh.

Then maybe you also don’t need a full course where a large percentage of that course is content-related. You probably just need to focus on test skills and taking practice exams.

There’s a way to think about it in that sense as well. And so, those Blueprint analytics are really good on the back-end for that kind of stuff.

Blueprint also has the new live online course where you get office hours. They go over the content with over 40 hours of lectures where you do all of the content review before the lecture. And then they teach you how this set of content is implemented on the MCAT.

“That's where a lot of students lack – the analysis and critical thinking.”Click To Tweet

The MCAT always asks it in this one specific way that I can never kind of translate that in my head. And Blueprint’s live online course can now do that for you and with you.

[12:26] Looking at Other Aspects of Her Application

Our student says she has a ton of clinical experience. And this is her second time applying. The first time she applied, she got zero interviews. She was so naive that she barely had any clinical experience. Add the fact that she didn’t get that much help from her premed advisors.

The second time around, she did some scribing and a ton of shadowing. She had sent two updates to schools but the other three of them didn’t take updates. Additionally, she also did research and volunteering once a week. And so, she feels at loss as to what else to do.

Now, it sounds like our student has really put in the work. And so, maybe it’s really the MCAT that’s the problem here.

Fingers crossed that the waitlist moves, and she gets off of that. It could be so late. But the silver lining potentially with COVID is because a lot of stuff is virtual now, you could get off of a waitlist a week into school and not really miss a ton because I can do it all online.

[15:32] Should You Use the Same Activity Descriptions as Last Year’s?

Q: Is it frowned upon to use the same descriptions for the activities as last year?

A: It’s hard, especially for activities like research and undergrad that you haven’t done in forever.

For the most part, tweak as much as you can. But at the end of the day the question is – if you say it just a little bit differently, will it connect with the right person? And that all of a sudden, that’s what gets you maybe a different interview next cycle. That’s the topic of conversation during your next interview, and so you never want to miss opportunities like that.

Lastly, check out The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Application Process because it has a bunch of advice and thoughts and examples of descriptions.

So many students just focus on the list of everything they’ve done and here’s why it’s going to make them a good physician. But that doesn’t really help them connect with who you are.