Session 131

She has prepared everything she needs to submit her application early, but now she can’t get her spring grades until much later. Should she proceed without them?

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[00:24] Question of the Day

“I’m using a committee letter for my university. I’m getting ready to apply to medical schools this cycle, and my university told me that the letter isn’t going to be ready until mid-June. Apparently, this is something that they routinely do where they don’t have the letters ready until after an opening day. And something else that is new this semester is that we are ending our spring later than normal. Because of the pandemic, they decided not to start our spring semester until February. I’m not even going to have my spring transcript until possibly later in June at the earliest. 

I had really busted myself to try and get everything ready to submit as close to opening day as possible. I took my MCAT in January. I’m finished with my personal statement, all my activity descriptions, and got all my letters of recommendation. But I’m not going to be able to actually submit until mid-June. Is there any way that I could submit my primary application without the committee letter and my spring transcripts?”

[01:49] Applying Mid-June is Fine

For one, your application submission has nothing to do with letters of recommendation. You can submit your primary application without having your committee letter turned in.

On the medical school side of things, they are looking for primary, secondary, the MCAT score, and letters of recommendations to determine whether or not your application is complete. Hence, there’s no issue there and so applying in mid-June is perfectly fine. It’s definitely early enough in terms of the whole process.

Now, the spring grades may be a problem if you need them to show academic capability. That means if you are relying on those spring grades to show a continued upward trend. Maybe you struggled early on, but now, your trend over the last several semesters has been going up. And so, you may need those semester grades to have one more semester under your belt as close to a 4.0 as possible.

For AMCAS, if you need that, then you’ll have to wait. For AACOMAS and TMDSAS, what has historically been the process is you need those spring grades to submit your application.

But with the pandemic, they may change this cycle. They may see that a lot of schools have pushed back semesters and/or quarters, and those grades are going to be a while to come in. Or they may be okay with submitting your application a little later.

[03:41] What Happens If Your Grades Aren’t In by Mid-June

Don’t stress out about not being able to submit over a couple weeks from the opening day of submissions because it’s not going to hurt your grades. It’s not going to hurt your chances of getting into medical school.

Now, if the grades weren’t coming back until the end of July, then that may be a little bit unacceptable. 

But mid-June through the end of June is completely fine. You’ve done the hard work, lean on that. Accept that there are just some things you can’t control and this is one of them. You’re just going to have to submit a little bit later. If you’re only applying to AMCAS and you don’t need the semester’s grades in, then submit your application, and just put those as future courses you’re taking.

[05:08] What About the Committee Letter?

When you submit to AMCAS, AAMC isn’t waiting to make sure that you have all of your letters of recommendation in before they verify and review every application.

Now, once medical schools get your primary application, they will then send a secondary application to you. You fill out the secondary application and write those extra essays. Then submit that to the school. Then they’ll see if you’ve turned in your primary, secondary, MCAT score, and whatever letters you put on the AMCAS. If we don’t have the letters, it’s not a problem – they will wait for that.

Medical schools don’t care if you have it in or not. Do not wait for that committee letter to submit your application if that’s the only thing you’re waiting for.

Again, don’t worry about the committee letter. Get the committee letter, but don’t worry about it not being done before submitting your application. Those are two very separate processes that don’t rely on each other.

[06:37] Are Spring Grades Required?

For AACOMAS and TMDSAS, they require your spring grades in, assuming you’re still in school, and those added to the transcripts for verification purposes.

For AMCAS, it’s not required. And they’re only needed for students who need to overcome poor GPAs. But if you have a 4.0 GPA, and this next spring semester is just going to be another 4.0, then you don’t need those grades. You’re already a great student.

Our student says she went from a 3.64 to maybe a 3.65. In that case, she has to do some self-reflection. 

Here are the possible scenarios:

If your grades are 2.0, 2.0, 4.0, 4.0, then you’re going to want to turn in that last semester to show that continued improvement.

If your grades are 3.6 across the board, then another 3.6 probably isn’t going to help you. And so, go ahead and submit.

That being said, waiting until mid-June or end of June isn’t going to kill you. Historically, even if you submit June 1, medical schools aren’t seeing applications until about the third week of June. We may see the same thing this year.

[11:33] Choosing Schools You’re Going to Apply To

The fun part of this process is doing a lot of research into the schools. Figure out each individual school’s mission, vision, types of students, and whether you think you’re going to fit and be a great student.

[12:10] Her Review on the Blueprint MCAT Course

For her MCAT prep, she actually used Blueprint MCAT’s free resources, specifically their diagnostic and their full-length exam. She likes it considering it’s a low commitment right off the bat, especially for students who might not have as much money to spend on resources.

She also loves having access to their analytics when you get back your diagnostic or one of your full-length exams, which is something she didn’t experience with Kaplan’s full-length.

But with Blueprint, she not only has information about how many she got wrong. But she would also know how many times she changed the answer from right to wrong and how many from wrong to right. There’s also data on how many people got the question wrong.

She liked it so much that she purchased a few additional full-lengths after using the free ones, seeing how it was a wise investment. Now, she’s happy the MCAT process is fortunately over and thankful that Blueprint MCAT was a part of it.

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