Monday, September 7, 2009

Day 475: Secondary Issues

I have a quandary.

Most schools, once your application is complete, will send you a secondary application. This secondary application is comprised of essays upon essays about why they should choose you, et cetera, et cetera. Thus, I'm not too worried about receiving a secondary from a school.

My main concern, though, is whether or not I will receive a secondary from any UC (top-tier California state school). Because the UCs are state schools, with limited funding, they only offer secondaries to applicants they are interested in. If they just do a cursory view of my basic stats (GPA and MCAT), then I'm pretty much screwed. My first MCAT score is extremely low when compared to the UC-MCAT-average. If they just do a once-over, then there's no way they'll offer me a secondary (even though my application will say "Pending MCAT scores").

Now, the question is this, should I wait to receive my new scores and then send my application out? Or, should I just hope for the best and send them out now, so that I don't miss the deadline? There are many other issues at stake. For example, the service used to apply to medical schools (AMCAS) has to process your application. What this means is, they have to compare the grades you inputted into your application against your official transcripts. Then they determine your GPA. Because of the processing time (as long as 4-6 weeks during peak application time(s)), I could be okay if I submitted them today. I could also not if they processed it faster. I could also be screwed beyond belief if I missed the deadlines for, oh, all the schools.

What to do, what to do.

1 comments:

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Can you have them approve the app but not have them send it until you get your second set of scores back?