Frequently Asked Questions & Tips
What do I do if I am not accepted into medical school this year?
Good question. Hopefully you are asking this question early, well before the results of your application will be known. Have plans, just in case.
Your plans, of course, would depend upon:
- likely reasons for not being accepted (some of which you can predict beforehand).
- other goals you might have for the short or long term.
- constraints that might apply (for example, needing to live in a particular city, needing to earn an income, needing to remain a full-time student, etc.).
Your "Plan B" (and Plans C, D, etc.) ideally should be multipurpose:
- they should further prepare you for medical school, if you still want to become a physician.
- they should also further prepare you for other professions.
- they should be compatible with your personality, interests, financial needs, etc.
- they should not be rushed.
Regarding the last point above: sometimes students are deterred from considering programs (graduate school, Peace Corps, etc.) that take two years. They want only a one-year gap between earning a bachelor’s degree and starting medical school. However, because the application process takes more than a year, seeking to enter medical school after only a one-year gap usually means that their second applications will differ little from the original applications they submitted after their junior year, other than including final senior year grades. Now sometimes having the senior year grades and perhaps a better MCAT scores obtained during the senior year will be sufficient. But many students will need to actually do something after earning the bachelor’s degree, and the results from that might have to be documented on their medical school applications. Thus, following one "gap" year there might need to be a second "glide" year, if only to allow for the application process. So, two-year programs might be just as attractive (and not extend the time) compared to one-year programs, especially if the first of the two years includes important coursework needed in the academic record.
A wide variety of activities are done by students who eventually succeed in gaining admission to medical school one or more years after earning a bachelor’s degree. For some students, as far as medical school admission is concerned, all that’s needed are higher MCAT scores, so the student is free to do whatever she/he wishes as long as it’s compatible with preparing to score higher on the MCAT. For other students, more science courses and/or higher grades in those courses are needed. For others, more experience in health care is needed. For others, more volunteer service of some kind, perhaps not even related to medicine, is needed. Here are some common options:
- Working in a clinical setting, either at a hospital or physician's office or extended care facility, can provide great satisfaction as well as learning opportunities.
- Working in health care consulting firms or associations can also provide great experience.
- Employment in a research laboratory, or enrollment in a traditional research thesis-based master’s degree program, might be a great option. Such master’s degree programs, by the way, usually offer tuition remission in exchange for doing research and/or serving as a teaching fellow.
- Some master’s programs, such as Creighton’s clinical anatomy program, are not research-based and might not provide tuition remission, but might still prepare one very well for medical school (as well as for teaching anatomy!).
- Post-baccalaureate programs of various types are described in another section. These have the advantage of being explicitly designed for those seeking to enter medical school after completing the program, but sometimes the disadvantage of not serving any other purpose very well.
Explore various options before the end of your senior year. Take the GRE exam by the end of your first senior-year (fall) semester if going on to graduate school is a likely option. Be ready to apply for alternatives right away should you get the sense that going straight on to medical school might not happen.
If it turns out that you are not accepted to matriculate in any medical school the August following your May graduation, do everything possible to find out why you were not accepted. Medical school admissions offices can be very helpful sources of information. Are there skills or subject areas in which they think you are weak? Are they concerned about your MCATs, your grades, your motivation, your maturity, or your perception of what being a physician really entails? Did you simply apply too late? Should you have applied to different schools?
Work with prehealth advisors and the Career Center to identify the best options, update your resume, and be ready to embark on something after earning your bachelor’s degree that will be intrinsically rewarding to you. Be true to yourself, always, and remember that there are many, many ways to serve people, both within health care and outside of health care. Remember, about half of all entering medical students start medical school one or more years after they earned their bachelor’s degree, some of necessity, others by choice. Enjoy the journey!
How do I categorize PMED on my AMCAS application?
According to AMCAS, students should categorize each PMED course as a "Pass/Fail course with no credit involved." Enter the Transcript Grade as "SA", check the "Pass/Fail" checkbox, and set the credit hours to zero and categorize the course as OTHR ("other") as far as subject matter.
How do I use Creighton's Letter of Recommendation Service?
If you wish to use the Creighton Letters of Recommendation service for application to health sciences schools (of which medical school is one), when you complete the request form online (see the "Applying" area of our Pre-Health Advising site at http://www.creighton.edu/premed which includes a link to the online form) your recommenders will receive an email message giving them a link and instructions for completing the recommendation. Once all of the letters are in, the Advising Resource Center staff will put together the letter packet or campus letter (which includes the letter packet), and uploads it to the application service (such as AMCAS) and schools of your choice.
When filling out the LOR part of the AMCAS, do I just have a committee letter or do I list each individual persn who wrote me a letter?
If you are getting a PMED letter added to your package of faculty letters, then indeed it is a committee letter. And, as I understand it, you might be allowed to list only one contact name for the committee letter. That's fine. If you are not getting a PMED letter, then the package of letters assembled by Mr. Kokensparger in the Advising Resource Center is considered a letter packet. The authors of the individual letters can also be listed if you want, but still under the one "letter". Whether a committee letter (packet plus PMED letter) or a letter packet (without PMED letter), either way, AMCAS counts it as one "letter". Mr. Brian Kokensparger would be the primary contact for both the Committee Letter and Letter Packet. His contact information is as follows: Brian Kokensparger, Academic Resource Specialist, Dean's Office, College of Arts & Sciences, ARC, Hixson-Lied G06, Omaha, Nebraska, USA; Phone: 402-280-3595; E-mail: BrianKokensparger@creighton.edu.
On the AMCAS, when picking which letters to send, do I just put the committee letter or do I need to click on every one, because I want all of the LOR to go to every school?
For each "letter" (actually a set of letters, in the cases of packets or committee letters), you can select which school(s) receive it.
On the AMCAS, when putting in my activities, do I enter each individual shadowing opportunity separately or as a whole?
Regarding listing shadowing, while each case is different, I suggest combining when possible. If the shadowing was done at an institution where you also either did research, worked at a job, or provided volunteer service, then I suggest combining the shadowing with your listing of the research, job, or service done at that same location. In cases where shadowing was the only activity in which you were involved at a particular location, then at least combine the various physicians that were at that location, and consider combining multiple locations if it's workable. The trick, however, is the need for a single contact person. you could pick one physician among the group. I suspect actual inquiries made to the contact person by AMCAS will be very rare. In any case, all the contact person would probably be asked to do (for example) is verify the existence of the clinics listed in a particular shadowing item. Give the physician's regular office phone number (not emergency, home, or cell number!). The receptionist who answers the phone would likely be able to provide any information AMCAS might want.
How do I list foreign courses on medical school or similar applications?
The first thing to note is that no transcripts from truly foreign institutions are required, but the courses do need to be listed in applications.
Graduate and professional schools often distinguish between three classifications: 1) Overseas Campus of a U.S. University (in which case a transcript with American-style grades is expected because the courses were actually offered by a U.S. institution), 2) Study Abroad Sponsored by a U.S. University (in which case the transcript from the sponsoring university must list the courses as transfer credit, but not necessarily with grades, and no transcript from the foreign institution is required), and 3) Independent Foreign Coursework (in which case there might not even be any U.S. transcript showing the courses, let alone course grades, but if one or more of the applicant's U.S. transcripts do show the courses as transfer credit, then the applicant chooses one of those transcripts to guide listing of the courses in the application).
Students sometimes wonder about the Glasgow program. My opinion is that it fits the Sponsored Study Abroad classification, i.e. #2 in my list of three above. No doubt several additional Creighton-sponsored programs would be in this category as well.
Here's a section from the AMCAS 2012 Instruction Manual:
Study Abroad Course Work:
Courses attempted through a study abroad program sponsored by a U.S. or Canadian institution must be entered.
Include the foreign institution and the sponsoring U.S. or Canadian institution in Schools Attended.
Request a transcript exception for the foreign institution. Indicate the U.S. or Canadian institution on whose transcript credits will appear.
List study abroad curse work under the foreign college at which it was attempted, exactly as it appears on the sponsoring U.S. or Canadian institution's transcript.
Do not enter the course work twice.
If the sponsoring U.S. or Canadian institution provides letter grades (e.g., A, B, C, etc.) and credit hours convertible to semester hours for each course on their transcript or on an official letter attached to their transcript:
- Enter all required course data.
- AMCAS will include this course work in AMCAS GPAs.
If the sponsoring U.S. or Candian institution does not provide letter grades other than Pass/Fail:
- Indicate "Pass/Fail" as the Special Course Type and provide all other required course data, entering the transcript grade exactly as it appears on the official transcript of the U.S. or Canadian sponsoring institution.
- AMCAS will not include this course work in AMCAS GPAs; however, AMCAS will include this course work in cumulative Pass/Fail - Pass and Pass/Fail - Fail credit hour totals.
Dr. Austerberry's Tip #1
In regards to completing the AMCAS, I recommend: https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/amcas/amcasresources/ as one place to get a lot of questions answered.
Dr. Austerberry's Tip #2
Yesterday I met with a student and we worked on his list of 15 Work/Activities items. It's like a jigsaw puzzle! We eventually went into a conference room with a large white board so we could keep track of everything visually. It helped. We wrote the numbers 1-15 on the board (spaced generously apart to provide room for adding information) and we also listed the activities (there were more than 15!) and started filling each of the 15 "bins". Each of the 15 items must have a single Experience Type chosen from a drop-down menu. Many decisions had to be made, including which of the 15 items would be designated as Most Meaningful.
Amazingly, there is no Experience Type choice called "Shadowing". Fortunately, there are some pretty broad choices, such as: "Extracurricular/Hobbies/Avocations" in fact, if you log into AMCAS 2012 using "amcasguest" as both username and password, in the Wor/Activities section the first example is "Shadowing Multiple MD's" and its Experience Type is categorized as "Extracurricular/Hobbies/Avocations". I think the Experience Type "Other" would work just as well for shadowing.
Multiple ways of arranging the list, differing in minor and arbitrary alternatives, would have been possible. The main thing is, we tried hard to avoid creating something that would have been inaccurate, confusing, or incomplete in any way.
Many activities are multidimensional; one program, for example, could involve a combination of research, leadership, service, shadowing, conference, presentation, publication, etc.! Some special coursework even involves extracurricular activities; should those be described in the Work/Activities section? It depends upon whether the title of the course, as listed in the Coursework section, conveys sufficient information.
Creighton's Freshman Leadership Porgram (FLP) is a good example of a multidimensional program. Each student who did FLP might have a somewhat different experience, so not all FLP participants will end up listing their FLP-related experience in the same way.
While FLP certainly involves leadership, it also involves multiple kinds of service performed in multiple locations at multiple times. And, FLP-related service can overlap or blend into other service. AMCAS attempts to deal with some of the complexity by providing an Experience Type called "Leadership - not Listed Elsewhere" (rather than simply "Leadership"). They know that leadership can be a part of various jobs or other activities that should be categorized as "Paid Employment" or "Community Service/Volunteer" or "Intercollegiate Athletics," etc.
None of this particular applicant's activities had to be left out because he was able to judiciously combine some; I think that should be true for everyone. Try hard not to leave things out merely because of the15-item limit! For example, eventually we recognized that some of the applicant's "Community Service/Volunteer - not Medical/Clinical" could be combined into one item because certain of his different activities were all done at Creighton and all shared a common theme of welcoming younger students and helping them navigate new challenges (Admissions Tours, Welcome Week, Greek Recruitment). Of course, the challenge is, who should be listed as the contact person? Admissions, Welcome Week, Greek Life - each probably has its own supervisor! Choose the lowest-ranking (most directly involved) staff member you can who oversaw the activity or activities (which is simple when the item consists of just one activity!) When an item includes multiple activities, feel free to go up the chain of command until you reach an office that oversees everything (or most everything) included in a particular activity item. The Division of Student Life encompasses quite a lot at Creighton.
Here's something else that might help: http://www.creighton.edu/fileadmin/user/president/docs/Organization.pdf.
The same information is given chart form at: http://www.creighton.edu/fileadmin/user/president/docs/Organization_Chart.pdf.
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