Welcome everyone. I'm really excited to see you all. This is a big day, at least for me. I'm really excited to jump into a conversation about filling out your primary applications to medical and dental school. So for those of you who don't know me yet, hopefully we'll get to know each other over the course of their application cycle. I'm Dr. Chelsea Rule. You're welcome to just call me Chelsea. Doctor Rule is fine too, but I'm pretty casual. I'm Director of the Health Careers advising program here at Cornell. And this is the central pre-health advising office and Cornell career services. There are a number of health careers advisors located around campus and there is some majors minus the central office. So I worked with absolutely any Cornellian whether you're a current student or a graduated. So that's my role. And a big part of my role is to do events like this one where we talk about the logistics, the nitty-gritty detail of how you fill out applications. I'm going to have a lot more talks throughout the year to help you as you go through this process. We'll talk about that. But tonight, we're going to focus on AMCAS, ADSAS, ACOMAS and TMDSAS for primaries supported by the HCEC so medical and dental schools will make tonight. I want to go through what we're going to talk about first and a little bit of logistics, housekeeping things, and then we'll jump in. So first, I'm going to concentrate on a little bit of an application cycle. Overview of many of your pre-submitted questions were about timing, what's going on this year. And so we'll cover that first. And then we're going to really get into some of the details of the application services. And specifically, this talk is about how you fill out your primary applications as a Cornell applicant. So you have a unique educational considerations, have the HCEC letter, you have some specifics to Cornell. So if you attended any other kind of info sessions or it looks through applicant guides, That's fantastic. Encourage you to do so. This is going to just concentrate on that Cornell specifics. We will walk through most of every screen and AMCAS and talk about how those differ and ADSAS, ACOMAS and TMDSAS So why this is going to be long. And we'll also talk about resources to help support you as you fill these application out. So really important note, we're doing really an AMCAS day over two days this year. And so what we're gonna do is part one tonight is with me and director of Health Care as advertising. Part 2 is tomorrow at the same time with Doug Lockwood who manages the HCEC, that committee letter process. So Doug and I have separate roles in the same office in Cornell's career services. He evaluates you and handles that letter process. And I advice you and I don't have any part in the HCEC, but certainly we talked about it a lot and so I'm here to support you on that process. But the logistics of how you get your transcripts and your letters into your applications is all going to be covered in great, great detail tomorrow. Pre-registration was required for this session and it's also required for part two. You haven't yet registered for part 2 go ahead and do so in the Zoom link, I will approve you before the session tomorrow. So just so you know, if you have questions, I am more than happy to answer them. Obviously, I may not answer every single detail of questions is meant to be a broad overview tonight But I welcome your questions in the Q&A box. And I'm going to pause twice to answer questions, once after the cycle overview section and then once after the application walk-through at the end. So I do have the Q&A box up, but I can only multitask so much. So most likely we're just going to take questions during those two sections, but I welcome you to ask them anytime. So go ahead and use the Q&A and ask away. I have seen your pre-submitted questions. I hope that I have covered them already, but if I have not, please ask them again in the Q&A, I really welcome those questions. I love to interact with you all. Some diving in one more logistic, sorry. The slides from this talk, I'm going to share them with you after the presentation tonight or early tomorrow. So here I have those quickly. I tried to put a lot of stuff into words, which is why my slides are really boring so that you can have those refer to for recording will be available next week. You'll notice that AMCAS  day from Cornell happens before primary applications even open. So a lot of the time your questions will be answered as soon as you get into the application services. Other times the Application manual is it's going to help you. But so other times you're going to want to follow up with me. So I'm going to have lots of resources for how to get other questions answered. Recording will be close captioned and that's why it's going to take a little bit of time. And Kristine Goggan, you may have seen in your inbox that helps that our newsletters, listservs, she's going to help with the closed captioning and we'll get that out to you as soon as we can. All right, so jumping in we're going to start the overview of the 21, 22 application cycle. So I really just want to start with this note. I think we all know this, but world is still really complicated. And this has been an incredibly challenging year. So I recognize that there are a lot of questions is related to what are things going to look like? What is changing, what it's going back sometimes to normal. And there will be a variety of answers. So just remember first thing that medical and dental schools are staffed by humans that are actually really nice people. I mean, really want to help you and support you. But they're figuring things out as they go to. So as information changes, note that each school will have its own policies for some things you may have to check websites. Others all try to get information out to students. I hear it. We're going to talk about some resources to get information throughout the cycle. But they are thinking about the context of why things are complicated. Last year, obviously, we all remember transitioning to online courses if you're a student that's standardized exams last spring, some are more complicated if you are taking them, then some folks did some pass-fail grading. During the spring and summer. Activities have often been postponed or canceled, especially clinical ones. And this is really, really complicated. There will be questions about how COVID has affected your path in various places, in different applications. And we will go through some about specifics. For some schools, it's going to be on the primary applications themselves. For others like MD schools, those questions will be largely in secondaries, that there will be some space to reflect on that. And from what I know today, a lot of schools will have virtual interviews, but that hasn't really been officially announced because med schools and dental schools typically make decisions in May which is their quieter time. And it's up May yet we're close. But as soon as I hear more, I will share that with you all. So don't hesitate to reach out to health careers advisors with questions. Again, all the hyperlinks here. You will see these slides shortly. So Hang onto those. And I'm share lots of different support resources because that's my job. So we will have lots that are peppered throughout. Brief overview of what we will talk about and review. We're going to discuss the application cycle and timing. Remember HCA app back in the fall in Canvas. I shared a little bit of an overview, but we're going to revisit that now that we know a little bit more of we've conquered the HCEC process, things are starting to make sense. We'll briefly touch on things that had been complicated, like grading policies. We'll talk about standardized exam timing within the application cycle. Some new ish, situational judgment tests. And we'll talk really briefly about interviews before we jumped into the applications themselves. I want to highlight one resource now their health careers, FAQs. And this is new. If you saw this last year, we have updated and added some new questions. So please check that out and I welcome More questions. I'm always happy. Is anything different? this year?  Of course the answer is yes, but some things are, are not actually different. So one thing to note is just about what med schools are thinking. Is anything different with how they're reviewing applications? Yes, I would say there's increased flexibility regarding pass-fail or SU grading as it were here, especially during the spring and summer. So certainly a lot of med schools came out the beginning last year and said We really like to see grades that we understand that things were very complicated. And we will accept SU nearly every school said that. And they also understood that a lot of things were canceled or postponed due to the pandemic. Especially again last year, but things haven't necessarily become perfectly normal and may recognize that if you still have trouble finding clinical experiences, not and that's understandable. The caveat to that, I did put an asterisk here. If you had planned your first ever clinical experience right around the pandemic and that was canceled. So you've never had any clinical experience and you're applying in a clinical program this year, consider waiting to apply if you haven't been able to find anything. Just because it's not that medical and dental schools will say it's fine if you don't have any experience, it's just it's fine if it was postponed. And if you had started things, you had a break, you pivoted to maybe some other really great service activities, for example, that's totally understandable. But if you've never had any clinical experience, talk to a health careers advisor because we are here to help you navigate your particular situation. Notes that there will be opportunities and talk about how COVID has impacted your path. Again, in primaries for dental school, for DO school, and in secondaries for MD schools. And remember from HCA app, holistic review is so the lens through which they are viewing your application. So you understand contexts, that's a big part of how they look at applications. And that's really important. So take that all together to just say that, yes, there is increased flexibility. But certainly there are medical and dental school still want to know that you understand the profession that want to help vulnerable people. That has to be demonstrated in your activities in some way, shape, or form. But they, they understand that the world did shift and it isn't normal now. So when to submit, let's talk about timing. This is a big question. I always hear this notion apply early and I'm going to echo it. But I want to bring a little more nuance to the conversation. So early does not necessarily mean apply. The first day applications open are the first hour. It doesn't mean that at all. So I'm going to say apply, but really when ready. So you need to have a curve, a correct, complete application that's absolutely essential and more central than timing. And early is a term that I think is missing if misused I'll say that. Early would mean typically, you know, early June, for example, early June, it's very early in an application cycle. It doesn't necessarily mean the absolute first second that applications can be submitted. And in fact, in lots of cases that's actually negligible and not measurable. So I just want to reiterate earliest, true but earliest sometimes misuse. If your a students enroll in 2021 classes, you're going to want to wait for your spring term graades to post and we'll talk more about that and why that is. It's essential for having a complete application, and it's not going to take that much longer to wait for your grades. I know our semester is a little shifted this year. Again because of COVID and having a longer winter break. Most schools did that. So it's not a disadvantage to use specifically, it's just a shift in most academic calendars this year. It's absolutely fine. The HCEC did adjust their timelines to match that so that you can get your spring 2021 grades in and still have a nice early letter released from HCEC. Doug is going to cover that in more depth, but I just wanted to touch on that and a side note that you can submit your primary applications without your scores MCAT or DAT You might decide to just apply to one school or a small set of schools. If you don't have your score yet. And you can submit, it doesn't matter whether you have your scores to submit your application. Same thing with letters. You don't need to have your letters to submit your application. So if you decide you want to submit by the deadline, let's say the HCEC first tier letter release deadline for undergraduates or alumni. But you haven't decided on your entire school list or you're waiting for your score. You might choose, again, a small set of schools, but don't choose a throwaway school. I hear this a lot. Don't apply anywhere you don't want to go. But maybe think about a school where your MCAT score is not necessarily a huge factor. You would apply there either way. So you can kind of choose a basic list then. You need to narrow the focus one way or another. Coming on your score, you get that That's a good way to go. And if you are not quite sure about applying this year, discuss that with the health careers advisor. We are here to help with timing questions in your particular situation. And more on MCAT timing. If you're considering pushing your MCAT back, for example, let's say you're not quite ready yet. You know, you just need a little more time to get that square root wanted to be. I get this question a lot. When is to me, I'm not going to give your data, but rather some discussion of how you should figure out some questions to ask yourself. Can you submit your primaries? And again, you don't necessarily have your score but can you submit at least one school or a small set of schools by the HCEC first tier deadline. Would your application be complete and great other than the score, really strong writing, do you have that kind of core set of schools that you could just Taylor one way or another, a little more reachy a little safer depending on your score. And what are your practice scores telling you now? Are you taking any AAMC practice tests to really gauge where you're at. And do you think that based on evidence, it can get where you want to be by the time you take it. You can and you should indicate a future test state, in AMCAS if you plan to take it again. If you haven't taken it yet, you need to put a future test date in there we'll talk about that. And notice that medical schools will hold your application nearly always, with a few exceptions. Until your score is in. So if you are retaking, this is important. They would usually wait until your second score comes and most of the time for reviewing. And typically when med schools review your application is when you're called file complete and I will have a slide on that. So again, with this applied early when ready, caveat, nuanced way of thinking about things. Couple of things to note. This is I think a screenshot directly from one of your required readings for the HCEC. Note the first tier letter release deadlines for alumni and for undergraduates, but were pushed back so that you could add your Spring 21 grades. So June fourth at noon is the HCEC alumni deadline for first-tier letter release. And June 14th that for undergraduates. Again, this is just first tier. It does not mean that if you submit the end of June that you can't apply or that your HCEC letter wouldn't be there. It's just determining how early your letter would go out and weren't released here. So just wanted to clarify that Doug is really going to dig in on this, so I'm just going to scratch the surface today. Let's talk with the application services that were going to cover today. I'm starting to jump in with acronyms. They want to make sure we're all on the same page. So if you're applying to MD, MD and PhD programs in the US other than Texas, you're using AMCAS exception, Baylor, MD/PhD, still uses AMCAS If you're applying to Texas medical or dental schools, are using TMDSAS if your applying to DO schools, osteopathic medical schools are using AACOMAS. And if you're applying to dental schools in the US, other than Texas, you're using ADSAS some of you may be using more than one primary. If you're applying to dental schools in Texas and elsewhere in the US, you might be filling out ADSAS  and TMDSAS. So I'm going to use the AMCAS framework largely as an example So it's because it is where we have probably the most questions and the layout and sections are really largely shared. But I'm going to highlight where other application services differ. So I want to make it inclusive to all of you who are applying with multiple or other services besides AMCAS So just a lot of AMCAS pictures that other languished your app. Let's talk a little bit about how processing works generally. Again, using AMCAS as an example, picking on AMCAS So when you submit your application, the primary application notes that the earliest possible date you can do so this year is May 27th. Even the applications open May 3rd, you gotta take your time, work on it, make sure it's all complete Then you can submit. You pay a fee or you user fee Assistance Program FAP benefits to Submit. And then your application goes through a process called verification or processing. Same deal. That is when you send your transcripts again once your Spring 21 grades are in if your a student to AMCAS along with their submitted application. And then a real human being compares your AMCAS grades and the way you entered your courses to your transcripts, your official transcripts. So then they verify process your application, and then they give it to med schools. Now, they deliver applications starting on a certain day each year, and that's called the transmission day, which is June 25th this year for AMCAS That means that if you submitted your application, let's say hypothetically, you're an alum you submitted May 27th. Your application was verified. June 15th, congrats. It's going to sit there for ten days before med school. See it. That's what that means. So the transmision date is the earliest date that medical schools know you're an applicant. And that's if you listed them as a school. For me, that's the only time meds schools will see you. Hopefully that makes sense. I'm going to go through now the specific application service timelines. So AMCAS as I mentioned opens May 3rd, but you can submit it as early as May 27th. The earliest transmission date is June 25th. Again, those are the dates that you have to hit to be competitive. This is the earliest. So I just want to stress that AACOMAS you could submit on opening day of May 4th. Don't recommend that, but you can. And the earliest transmission date is June 15th for AACOMAS TMDSAS opens May 1st. This is new. They actually have now a two week or so window. before you can submit on June 17th. Earliest transmission date is June 1st, I think processing usually takes about a month for TMDSAS and ADSAS opens May 11th, and then you can submit as early as June 1st. And it takes about four to six weeks process AMCAS, AACOMAS really just depends on the volume, how long it takes to process. It could be a few days, it can be several weeks up to a couple months. Again, I'm stressing you should not submit until spring 21 grades are in. And the reason for that being that many of these application services you can't update them. And so to be complete, to have the full picture, you really do have to we the extra week or a couple weeks until have  your grades and med schools and dental schools prefer that you do. So I've talked with many, many of them to make sure this is true. and it absolutely is true. So TMDSAS actually require is your grades prior to processing. They will not process you without your spring 21 grades. AACOMAS will process you. But you cannot go back and change this. So you can never have that be part of your GPA. And it usually helps you significant  because usually things get better as you go on, ADSAS will accept the application without spring grades but again, you can only update on much later in the process. And dental schools really do want to see your grades, so they really prefer that you wait a little detail on the AMCAS timeline. So you'll see that these are these are the same dates this year. If you are applying early decision, which I was pretty rare. Your deadline is August second. Most other application deadlines are later in the fall. And so when we're talking about applying early, early as before the deadlines in the fall, some early as early summer, let's say June. That's really what we're talking about. The AADSAS timeline again, pretty much what I just shared or February second is when the application closes. So it's a little bit later than some of the other services, something longer and even longer for AACOMAS opens May fourth and again, they start sending to the med schools June 15th. And then deadlines for a AACOMAS pretty variable anywhere from October through April. TMDSAS follows a pretty different timeline. It looks very similar here, but one of the differences being that they have a match process. And so the match takes place in the spring. And that looks a little bit different, but as far as your deadlines go, very, very similar to the other application services. And again, it's near that they give you a couple of weeks to fill out the application before you can submit. And if you're a student, you're going to take you longer than that and that's completely okay. You're not behind. Again, just want to highlight TMDSAS, especially you cannot submit with your Spring 21 grades. They will bounce it back to you. So I just wanted to show is a little snapshot from the application guide. If you haven't guessed. These application guides are my best friends, so they will be yours to get a lot of key information from them. And so you'll see a lot of snapshots tonight of these. So let's take a moment to talk a little bit more about the COVID responses and how they might fit into primaries, which they won't for AMCAS, but they might for others services And again, I'm showing here a snapshot. These slides will be shared with you. This was an open letter from AACOMAS to prospective applicants. Just kind of talking about what take the DO schools will have on COVID impacts, including accepting  online, pass/fail, and things like that. And they also sometimes require physician letters from DO schools and a lot of them are waiving that because they understand it's been difficult to make those relationships. So some schools still have a DO letter  requirement, but very few this year. I just want to note that  AACOMAS has already shared their questions for what they'll ask them to COVID and the application. They will ask the logistics about what your school chose to do. They will ask you about your grading options and then just generally how COVID affected your path. So academic, professional, and personal and it's going to be very similar for ADSAS. So these are the types of questions that you'll have an opportunity to answer. They are optional. And just so, you know, if you're applying to dental school, there's a great website for ADSAS, COVID updates by school because each school sets its own policies. That's true for medical and dental schools. But dental schools have it all laid out in a one-stop-shop. Medical schools will develop this. It's not really available right now and a lot of policies will get posted next month. How much does it cost to apply? This is a good question. In 2022  cycle, which is where we are now. AAMCAS fee is a $170.00 for the first application and then $42.00 for each additional school beyond one. So just see, you know, to on this there are 152 schools besides the. Texas schools that use AAMCAS if you're applying to MD schools in Texas and elsewhere in the US, you would have to submit both of those application services and they both cost money and take time so plan for that. I'm sharing the other application fees for you all to TMDSAS is interesting because they have a flat fee of $200 no matter how many you apply to in Texas. But every other program has a scaled one submission price and then a certain amount for each school thereafter. And these are the costs here. And check that out. You're going to apply. I will fee assistance programs too. It's very important and they differ quite a bit by the application service. If you've apply, if you've taken the MCAT and you may have already seen this, the assistance program for AAMC, the AMCAS version which has also been for MCAT prep and cost. But for AACOMAS and ADSAS you actually apply to fee assistance later during the process after you submit it. So we'll discuss that later. Alright, so we're revisiting the cycle. And many of you may recognize this kind of chart from HCA APP We've talked about this a little bit. Where we are now is essentially into my cursor. We're here, we're just on the precipice of primary applications. This is an exciting moment. It's a lot of work. I know it's a little scary for many of you. Again, we're doing this together, it's exciting. And the next step after you submit your primary, besides catching your breath, taking a little break, getting some sleep is going to be to fill out secondary applications, their school specific applications. And most typically those come in July-August. Not every school has them, especially for dental, but it's very common in medical, especially MD. Then next step, thinking about interviews. Interviews can really stamp anytime it's filling late August through April. So it's a long interview season. And we're aiming for matriculation if we're applying this year for August or September ish 2022. So this is a long time until you actually start med school. I know. And in between and a lot of steps with quite a bit of work. But what's not on this list is that you already did all of your HCEC writing HCA APP. Tons of reflection writing throughout the process and that will serve you so well. A lot of your HCEC materials are going to go right into your AMCAS for your secondaries. It's going to be helpful. So know that you have done a lot of this work already. Bonus additional stuff that happens during the cycle. And this is fairly new we'll talk about some situational judgment tests and your new tools, Casper, SJT and VITA This is mostly for MD although Casper also used for dental and DO, SJT and VIDA and are just MD. So Casper, I'm going to talk about this briefly. Lot of questions about this. I think it's maybe four or five years old now. It feels like it's fairly loosely, but it's not a situational judgment test and you write your responses. It's an online test. And the questions that they try to answer, the US right answer would be how you approach complex problem-solving. How do you go about solving really complicated? It's her hypothetical situations with a lot of nuance. And I really encourage you all to practice and just learn more about the test. And I have the website there. But I want to highlight that actually no prep it's necessary. It's not like the MCAT by any means. It's not something that you have to cram for or do anything specific. What I recommend you do besides just get familiar with the tech and understand what they're going to be asking you and how they'll be asking in how you respond is think about your instincts, but are your approaches to complex problems? How do you solve complex problems in the past? That's really helpful. So do a little introspection is designed to be prepless. So they just recommended or required by a growing number of medical schools that are very well, maybe some of the schools on your target list and check it out. The dates that you can take. The Casper exam. Very they're kind of all over the place from May through February, but I do recommend that you do it in the summer, especially it's required for any of your schools. Lots of different dates that you can take it and check out that website. And just know that there are some new additions to the Casper suite, shall we say. Nu is a video tool that does very much the same thing as the original Casper called snapshot. And I just heard about another edition called duet. Duet is a fit-based tool to kind of understand a mission fit between you and the school. To my knowledge, not that many schools are using it yet. It might be more of a pilot this year. Check with your target schools to determine if any or all of these are required. If they are. Remember, you don't have to prep a lot, you just have to get familiar with the Tech. Think about how you solve problems. And similarly, there's a brand new tests that just came out last year for the AAMC call the situational judgment tests or SJT assesses the 8 shown pre-professional competencies. They're very up front about exactly what they're testing and what kinds of scenarios they will give you. It's a very similar length examine the slightly longer than casper It is video-based, It's online proctored, and the AAMC has an upcoming webinar that I highly recommend that you check out on May 4th. So if you are applying to any of the following six schools, if you're not apply to those schools, are not even considering them. Don't worry about this. SJT is not happening for you this year. But if you're looking at any of these schools at the bottom on the page, Geisinger, Morehouse, UAB, UC Davis, Minnesota, and a new DO schools just added DesMoine than you would need to look into taking the SJT go to the webinar. I believe there are several windows throughout June, July, August, and I think even one in September that you can take. So again, it's Remote Proctor so you have to schedule sort of an appointment during the day. I think it's usually in the morning. So this is a really brief intro to some of those things. I just wanted to share that there are lots of the smaller tests that happen throughout the cycle then this may or may not affect you. So we talked a lot about all those little steps throughout the timeline. You have to complete when are you considered file complete. So where medical and dental school seeing you have completed all those things, those tasks that you have to do for them to start reviewing your application. That's when you've submitted your primary application and it's been verified process, you have your score, your MCAT ot DAT, score it in. Your secondary applications are complete and so you filled out the essay specific to that school. They received all of your letters that you said would be sent and if they require casper, SJT or both then you've completed those too. Sometimes there's a little scoring period of a few weeks for each of those. So something to take into account. Again, this is why we're not panicking about submitting May 27th versus June 11th right if you're an undergrad and waiting for his for your scores a lot of things have to happen before your reviewed. And so those dates become negligible. What's really important is that you try to submit a perfectly complete application that you feel really proud of and you've really checked carefully. You've put all your effort into your writing and make sure there's no errors. And even ideally, it's not even required, but ideally you've submitted by the first here letter release deadline for HCEC as well. Those are the things you can control and some of those things you can't So I just want to highlight all of those things that you're waiting for before review  at the school level. So really quick preview of some of the next steps. I mentioned that I'm going to be here along the way helping with secondaries, interviews and all that. So just to give you a sense of the workshops that are coming in about mid to, near the end of June. We're going to have a secondaries workshop. So we're going to start thinking about brainstorming for secondaries, getting started on them, even though the transmission date won't have hit yet. But we'll also discuss Casper, SJT to you a little bit more too. So if you have questions that would be a good place for them or I can office hours. I will have an interviewing workshop with my colleague Craig Jones in August. We always do that. And I think it's a really great way to learn more about interviews. Craig Jones, if you've ever talked with him before, does a lot of the medical school interview practice. So he's really a fantastic colleague to get to know. And we'll see you in August for that. We'll talk about traditional interviews and MMI multiple mini interviews, Min case schools you're applying to offer those. I really want to say I welcome your questions. I know I'm breezing through this. There's a lot to cover, but that's why we have Q&A And I'm going to take a little moment to answer some of those questions. I also have office hours. So every Wednesday including today, I just came from my have office hours from two to four PM Eastern. I just sit in a Zoom room and I answer your questions, whatever you have and just throw them at me. Anything pre-health from there. And then I also have some upcoming application Q&A's. So I will announce the, dates and times for those, they haven't been scheduled on Zoom yet, so Zoom links forthcoming, but I will share that. There will be more evening times like this to be able to answer questions if you work, ought to be able to help you out still. So I actually have quite a few questions. I'm going to go through some of those in the Q&A now. If anything just pops into your head. It's related to just a cycle overview and not the logistics on the application. And we'll move to the Q&A now and tackle some of those. If you have application specific questions, that's our next section. So feel free to put them into that Q&A but I won't get to them yet. Okay. So I want to go through some of the questions I have so far. Thanks everyone for asking these this is really helpful. I wish I could see you all on camera, but I also think it's nice that you don't have to be on camera. And you can just take this in and not worry about what you look like. So I hope this is helpful. So someone asked, how does this affect the early release alumni deadline? Like, aren't you already first-year three methods like, Oh, this is a fantastic question. So for HCEC timeline for alumni, there was an optional early alumni deadline that was February 1st, I believe. If you submitted that you're almost like zeros here. Right. So you're going to be the first out of the gates. The first year is like a big pool besides that. So if you did use the early optional alumni deadline and had everything in really early yes, you will be even earlier if that's possible. hoping that answers your question. Appreciate that one. And so someone asked, would we not be included in that June 25th first round application? I feel like a need a little more context for this question probably came up at a key moment that would have been helpful for me. A note and I am not quite sure what that's what that rule. So please feel free if you ask that question. So forget clarify. But for example, it's not like applications come to med schools and rounds. They just come on a rolling basis. So if you were processed June 24th. You might be seen by med schools June 25th probably would review or process June 26, you might be seen June 26th might be June 27th. It doesn't really matter. That's very early. It's extremely early, so we're splitting hairs on anything and that to me, if you're processed August 15th, that's different. There are fewer seats available by the time they might see your completed application. That's different. You're submitting secondaries are at the end of the cycle, the end of the summer, excuse me, versus early summer. So the difference between hitting right at the beginning of those submission, deadline vs a little bit into the cycle is negligible. But when we're talking several months passed that, that's when it becomes it makes a difference. Someone else asked does this mean there's no real advantage to submitting our AMCAS application before June 25th? No. Actually, it does matter because two things hinge on your your AMCAS submission date one is getting into the verification or processing queue because your application is not immediately available to med schools, that does have to be processed. And your HCEC letter release is contingent on your application submission date to at least one school, do have to share that with the committee. And again, they have some deadlines for first here. How long does it take on average for transfer to be processed by AMCAS? I think somewhere I have a chart on how long processing has taken. I think it's later in the slideshow, so I'm going to show you that. But typically in the beginning, it doesn't take too long to take a few weeks. It might take more than a month later in the cycle where it gets really busy. So usually, I would say on average they say something like four to eight weeks. It might even be less than that. Good question. Like the HCEC AMCAS can't tell you how long it's going to take what they do tell you is where they are in the processing. So  they will have on their website things that say, we're not processing applications submitted June 11th. And so that's how you'll know where you're at. And someone asked Can you use exact writing in your AMCAS application from your HCEC letter? Well, maybe that means like from your HCEC materials. So if you use things that you wrote in  your BIF directly in the AMCAS application, good for you, fantastic, you can totally do that. You should, you may have different size of a character limits. They need to work around. But you've already done a ton of legwork. You share that with the committee. The committee isn't sending your BIF along. So you can definitely pull from those same essays or tweak them a little bit. It's absolutely great question. Let's see. I'm going to skip over some of the specific application details for the next section. And somebody asked during the long interview season, when is the peak time you might be flooded with Many interviews at once. Oh my gosh, I wish there was any sort of legend or key for the interview season, but it's all over the place. You never know. Some people get a ton of interviews in September and then nothing for the entire year. Some people get them kind of scattered throughout the year. Some people get nothing until February. It is all over and we can never predict that sometimes the application submission timings and several in when you're interviewed. So if you don't turn everything in your not file complete until September, then you know that that might affect when you're getting interviews. You probably are interviewing in September or October not necessarily the end of the world, but certainly as you go on a cycle, seats for interview started being given out by rolling admission school. So you want to be early. But again, with that caveat that you need to complete, an early does not mean first day. We're talking early June if you can, so that Mary's good question, someone asked, how do you submit your Casper score? You actually do it through the Casper, the all says assessments. And you have to pay to submit Casper per school so you want to you don't necessarily just send it to every single school you want to make sure. You're sending it only to school that needed or like to see it that it does not go through the application service itself. Casper is totally separate from AMCAS. someone asked about office hours for people to work full time. Yeah. I'm going to have some sessions in the evenings. I'm totally doing that. I'm really appreciate that question. I wanted to try to be able to see everyone. Am I the  only health advisor, I am not. I am the advisor that sees absolutely any Cornellian and so any students, our alum from any college at Cornell. But there are health careers advisors in all the colleges that have a certain amount of pre-health students. So you can talk to healthcare and advisors in college. And there's also some in certain units like OUB and OWADI things like that. So you should check the health careers advisors list. Someone says kinda hard to get appointments with me and I totally sympathize. I know, because I see so many thousands of people, it is hard to get a slot on my calendar sometimes. So a lot of what I do is events like this, the group sessions, and I'm more than happy to talk at office hours over Q and A's. And then I do have not only 30 minute appointments, you can book an advanced and also same week 20 minute appointments but you have to call the office for those. So I try to have 100 different modalities that can again touch, but I know it's hard so someone asked we can see Casper just once? Yes. You'd only have to do that once and then you send scores to different schools. Should we do Casper after we've submitted the primary? If we're hitting the HCEC deadline, or before submitting in early June it's actually up to that one is completely your call. Some people like to submit and just like we're done with that now I can think about other things. Thoughts pretty common, but some people would do casper earlier. Let's find yields whenever it's good for rule on primary applications is the exact same files into every school? Yes. The primary application goes to every school that you list at the end. And as the personal statement, the only essay for the primaries. Yes, for AMCAS, no for others, there are some others as well. And if you're applying MD/PhD, there's more essays for you so that depends Somebody asked realistically, is there any difference between submitting May 22 vs. June 4th To my knowledge, no, that's a good Doug question for tomorrow too, but as far as I'm aware, there's not any difference. That's a really great question. And someone asked, what do you think we'll have our spring grades. I just looked today to see like if that's on the registrar's website officially, it's not. Given the timeline, it's pretty much the exact same as last year. I think that's going to be somewhere around the second week of June and they should have it before June 14th at noon. Obviously the HCEC demoing which shift if that's ends up not being the case of the Registrar says it will be to June 15th My sense is that they would follow that. So they want to give you enough time. That's the intention. Casper registration opens get sometime this month. I don't have an exact date for you. That's a great question. A lot of people will like subscribed to their Listserv may serve to when they can keep you up to date. Will it benefit you to submit your application before MCAT score release? So it depends on when you take your MCAT. It's tough, not knowing your score. And this is the big challenge, I think for a lot of applicants. So often people will submit to one or just a few schools before they know their score Or if, because if it doesn't look the way you wanted to, then you've got a strategize. If worst-case scenario, you decide to withdraw your application. You're not withdrawing from 25 schools. You're withdrawing just from one or a few. And it makes it a lot easier Plus it just costs a lot of money without know your score. And so this gives you some flexibility, but you might want to go ahead and submit it, get it processed so you can more quickly act on there and it would get sent to schools more quickly. So that's why they, starting with one school strategy is kinda difficult. where are secondaries usually located at school, website or ADSAS Very commonly for dental schools, they are actually in the ADSAS like school specific section for MD and DO schools most often once you submit primaries, they and they see are submitted process primary, the schools themselves send you a secondary. It's a great question and it differs a little bit by each service. If we aim to take our MCAT and mid-June surely have all materials needed for the first tier of letter released before then. This is a great question. Yeah, So ideally, you should, for the first-tier letter least you should have if you're an alum I think, In this case that person is, if you're going to submit it by June fourth at noon, then you would have all of your a HCEC things and darn, including the submission of your primary, that's how you finish your checklist for the HCEC. And so that means you might not have your score yet and you'll be submitting to one school or few schools prior to receiving your score which again, it's totally fine. It's just a little tricky, I know. Am always happy to talk with folks about that office hours, Q&A's, lets see If the Casper is optional, should I take it? I mean, it isn't the school's website and see how many talk about it. Very much just like we're piloting it. great if you do or is it really like being really strongly recommend that you take Casper? And often that's the case although it definitely varies so I'd say visit schools website before we make a decision. They're all so different. Let's see. Do Medical Schools send out secondaries, before they see MCAT Scores? That's a great question again, lots of variation. Many do, especially this year, starting last year, that's been a common practice. But some of them would wait. And which has kinda depends on whether they are a school has some secondaries automatically to every applicants. And if so, they're probably not going to wait or if they are doing a review. And even then if they review your application before deciding on secondaries, sometimes they still would not use them. Kaunas further review the PFI school small. So it's going to vary. I keep saying like you'll get this pool of secondary state. You also make it a trickle after that of those schools they reviewed your application, said yes what some of the secondary. So in the interest of time, I think I'm going to move on a little bit to the next section and we're still a few few questions open. And I went to my best to get to all of them at the end, I want to make sure I cover all the material. Let me take a big drink of water. And then we're going to move on to application specifics and feel free to ask if there's anything else on your mind. You will manage how to get to the right mechanics not there'll be lots of other forums for this. So thanks for hanging with me for two hours on a Wednesday night or hanging with this long recording. I hope that this is really helpful. So application-specific. Next, let's dive into the application. So these are the parts of the AMCAS application. This is the MD application. And I love this little flowchart that baby that's here. You're going to have identifying information the schools attended. And that's going to include all of your courses as well. Biographic information. Here, your coursework section, work and activities. That's kinda like your BIF in a  way. At least the activites part letters of evaluation. You're going to choose the schools and they're all going to receive the same applications. You'll fill out essays, predominantly personal statement, and then have standardized test scores. So those are all the sections. Note that if you were applying in ACOMAS ot ADSAS they use the same application portal called liaison spanned the same sections. Basically exactly the same but slightly different order and they have a few kind of nuanced tiles. And then if you're applying via TMDSAS, they have slightly different layout as well. They have their own system. Note that each of these have supporting documents. So to the question earlier about dental schools, supplemental essays are sometimes in those program materials. And additionally, for some of these schools, you may enter in all of your prerequisites, how you've met the prerequisite. So there's a few different sections that AMCAS does not have. But essentially same deal, slightly different tiles and orders. So here's the AMCAS login screen. This is what it looks like. You you will go to AMC.org slash AMCAS as soon as May 3rd and you would find a new button that doesn't exist right now about logging into 2021 cycle. This is the login screen. If you've already taken the MCAT, which most of you have or at least registered than you've probably already created this. But if not, you need to creating an AAMC account for AMCAS. So again, only complete if you don't already have an AAMC ID don't want to duplicate. You will then go into your AMC profile and you're going to see pre-populated information or fill in management that's missing. Note that we are in the 2022 as your application cycle, that's really important because you may still be able to access 21 application cycle. And you may think, hey, it's 2021, that's probably where I go, but it's not 22. They use the matriculation year as the cycle name, whereas the HCEC used 2021 AMCAS use it's 2022. So in the menu you're going to notice a few different things. One of them and that arrow, you'll see this button that says print application, that's key. Come back to that. You're going to use it later and we'll highlight that because that's how you're going to download a PDF of your submitted application to send to the HCEC That's part of your check-list And then the M cast menu. If you click View Application Status History button, you'll see where you are. You can see if you're in the processing que. You want to still know what your order is, our when it will be done, but you'll know when you're being assessed him know when it's been submitted. That's a good status to check in on. You won't necessarily get emails, so definitely check in on your application throughout the process. And on the main menu you can see a lot of quick links. There's going to be some helpful links to MSAR, websites. Guides really need to know and love your application manuals. Those are going to be your best friends throughout the process. And you can see the status of your letters and transcripts. You will know when they hit your application. If you're applying to AMCAS Doug is going to cover transcripts tomorrow. But really it's going to be pretty quick to get transcripts a soon as your spring grades are in. You can use an automatic electronic systems so it's really handy. First section, identifying information. You're going to see check marks for all the pages, by the way, in that top-left corner, that are done versus ones that are still in progress will be red or blank. And so just as you're going through make sure that you see the green check marks. And note that in this section is pre-populated. And the only thing that you might need to do is just to add a school ID and IDs because that can help your verification process and matching those transcripts to your enter. If you have any other means by which transcripts, and then let's say that good to interfere too. You will enter information on sex and gender identity. Can choose pronouns, may know how to address. And then you'll go into the schools attended section. So in the schools attended section, you will enter any school at which you've earned any sort of credits. Most premier, any school. It's a rare case where you wouldn't have to enter a school. I know sometimes it's complicated when you're thinking about your courses that you took in high school. So most of the time, if you receive any sort of transcript or credit at all, would answer those. At the bottom is Fe I want to highlight the advisor release section. There's a button there, asks you whether you want to authorize us to release your information to advisors. I encourage you, if you feel comfortable to release your data. It is carefully safe guarded and is incredibly helpful for us to provide totally de-identified aggregate data for advising. So if you've ever asked me about average GPAs or how many schools people applied. See here, this is where I get my information. So this is really helpful if you feel comfortable doing so, I highly, highly encourage it. So again, in the schools attended unit said choose whether you need to submit a transcript, but I will just say almost always that's required. There is a transfer exemption process. It's very rare. If you've ever studied abroad, then you will absolutely want to watch a tutorial, a humble link in the next slide. And again, if you have any questions about like the nuances, entering an AP or IB or any credits in high school. The applicant guy does a great job of walking you through that. And I'm here to answer any questions about complicated situations. Study Abroad probably one of the most complicated situations that you can encounter because it varies so much by program and how you enter it. So if you're filling out AMCAS and you did do a study abroad program. There was a video you should start by watching, and I think that that will answer most of your questions, but anything beyond that I can always happy to help. So in a biographic information section, you can see all the different sections. On the left hand side, you can see that I know it's small. You and your preferred address, things like that. And then going through that, one of the important It's a really small Mach, very important one is disadvantaged status. So in the disadvantage status is just a radio button. Do you wish to me consider disadvantage or not? And then there's a little more information box that I've opened up here. You can see it kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of whether looking for when they ask about disadvantage status because I know this is a confusingly worded box. So what does it mean? This subsection is going to ask if you wish your designated medical schools to consider you disadvantaged, since it's a self-identification. And what they say is you might consider yourself disadvantage if you grew up in an area that was medically under-served, have insufficient access to social, economic, and educational opportunities. So you might have grown up in a medically underserved area, but you might not consider yourself disadvantage. You might consider yourself to be disadvantaged if you have had access and barriers of any sorts, social, economical, educational, you might consider that if you're a medically underserved, it's certainly situational and self-identified. But I'm always happy to weigh in on that. Healthcare as advisors can help you with this essay as well. If you're concerned about how do I trust this? What do I talk about? The few answered guess it's not a bad thing at all. It's helpful contexts for med schools because real commitment to increasing diversity of the physician workforce and many of the patients that you will serve, it will be disadvantaged. There are not from any disadvantage physicians. And so this is helpful contexts for them to review your application. That's not to say that everyone should list the status. It really needs to be reflective of your situation. But if you do consider yourself disadvantaged in any way, certainly this helpful thing to Toulmin's things. There's an essay, you can talk about some barriers to access, more context about your situation. You didn't really talk about, you know, you're at Cornell, right? Or you have been. So you've gone to great place that, you know, what were some of the challenges getting their home on afterward. So that's something that you can address in that essay. And I want to get to a challenging section now, the Institutional Action section. This is under the same header. And I just want to note that transparency is very key for this profession. So you really need to be honest and open if you have received any institutional actions. And this word is really broad and bake. So what they say is where you enter the recipient of any institutional action by any college or medic school for unacceptable academic performance or conduct violation. Even though such action may not have interact with your enrollment, are required to withdraw. And essentially there the prompt as I understand it, and lots of conversations with legal experts and others and Medical School Admissions. Even if something has been expunged or it's post grad and here not sure if that file is still open. Do you need to disclose institutional actions? Health careers advisors are here. I hope you with that. Because I know it's complicated and sometimes it's hard to talk about things like the, really, the key is the essay. Just clicking S is not absolutely a deal breaker to worry. But it's really important that you provide a brief explanation of the situation, what happened. And really, really importantly, take responsibility. Show growth, shows the learning from that. Nice if there hadn't been a little distance from that. And not only do you say it hasn't happened again, but you really explain how you got from that situation. There is really similar problems in the other applications too. There similarly flawed. And so again, honesty and transparency. Really key, but also that works for most humans. Human. We all make mistakes. Some of them are, are more important to the schools than others. So they really want to hear a little bit about the situation, but they and really importantly want to understand reef on sentence. They love a good comeback story. So next thing you'll do is probably one of the most time-consuming and portions of Africa where I get a lot of questions about entering coursework. So the coursework section next on the list, if you're kind of following the toolbar. I just want to highlight on this page there are several tutorials also going to be your best friends about entry API if you have them or just entering future courses, but you didn't do the study abroad. Walkthrough is really important too, if you've studied abroad. And what it will look like as in like this page. So it's going to be a bunch of drop-downs and just small text bars are going to enter in everything that you see on your transcripts. Essentially, you will, if you've taken classes at other universities besides Cornell, you're going to want to grab those applications, background, those friendships yourself so you can enter your age. The applications. Yes, you will need to enter for every course that you've taken. And any university will enter your API village or anything that shows up on a transcripts. And that's how verification works. Late is when it looks as close to your actual transparent as possible. So this is why they encourage you to continue the personal copy of your transcript to complete this section. And I have a note there. Enter all raids from all attempts and free retakes. So don't skip over anything. You will want to enter it exactly as it appears. That's the best thing you can do. And then the person who is actually verify will work out any kinks or nuances and say See like 1000 credits. That's funny. So the wire in this, each of you just enter what you see. That's really the key. Sar. Or from a copy of your transcripts, enter them exactly as they appear. I feel that's the most important thing that I can really tell you with you and add your spring rates and are available. So again, if we're talking to him, Cass, you can go and starting May 3rd and enter and everything else that you can just knew that spring 21 graded. Bubble blink, and then fill that in and get your grades. And that's when you order your transcripts tip, so that can be coordinated and it will really only take a few minutes if you're doing it that way. So again, I should slow you down too much and you're still in it completely fine timeline. If you're submitting in before that, first hear me. She's the lateral roots. So refer to VM has guidelines to crossfire courses, notes, a course classification for AMD CAS, and really for, for all of these services in space-time course content, not title so many various ligands and drink this and while I drink some water, I don't know why syphilis on Wednesday 7 talk more. Thanks for hanging with me. Boats and castles going to calculate your GPA so you do not have to do that on the front end, you just enter what you see and casts. We'll get your back. Same with all the other services. And so all the sources will calculate GPA, cumulative be CPM or science GPAs and other non-science. So those are the sections for M cast, cumulus and be CPM and AO. Other. And note that economists use BCP and they don't use M transplant of your Science GPA, math, I'm ad says have a bunch of different categories. They have all sorts of science breakdowns. And TMD SAS is already coded your classes. You don't need a cost item, varied it up for him. And AMD has come through it's year-by-year be CAPM, cumulative and all other. And so you can see trends over time, which is very handy. Again, Baidu that you don't need any of that. And then if applicable, they would calculate post back and or grand GPAs too. So if you've completed a master's program and you mentioned those courses and some that transcript. Yes, they they will also calculate a great GPA for you and anything that huge step. And a baccalaureate level after you already had a bachelor's degree that will consult on her clothes back. If it's post back under the myths, we'll we'll see an undergrad complete underground including post back GPA, but you won't see. But that's something else that David C on there and just FYI. So how do you classify your courses? You're going to want to look at the NAM cast instruction manual page 30. This is one of this things that is up on my screen all the time. The sum of urine probably will be for you to note that in this red highlight, these are the BCP and Placitas. And so they have a little bit of break down, not just biology, but all different types of biology that would fall under there. And then you can see that there's a live other sections besides be CPM level Florence, you're all there. I know the questions come up a lot of like, well, what do I do with my nutrition or what do I do with my bio engineering classes? And note that there are Sections under Health Sciences for nutrition and engineering, for biomedical engineering might be where most of my classes fall. But again, classification is based on your judgment of the course content, not always just a title we need apartment. So if you feel that your nutrition biochemistry class is really a biochemistry class, which I would totally agree with than you would call it Can, not necessarily nutrition, right? So it's about the content of the course. But nutrition is naturally interdisciplinary. And so most of those courses will probably fall there, but there might be some exceptions and you're the judge. Just so you know, if if AMP calcium disagrees with your classification, they're just going to change it. They're just going to when they verify flip it over and it'll say nope, that was not on nutrition and bile acids, just nutrition and they just change it. If you disagree. Always good to have a syllabus fire, sorry. And so you can submit what's called an academic change request, send the syllabus, and that process is pretty quick. If you disagree and you'd have to do that very quickly. But that's why anything that feels like it's kind of cross-disciplinary, maybe grab a syllabus just to make the best judgment on that. And then you're going to use that for your academic change request if you disagree with their judgment. Another big portion and takes them a lot of time as the work in activities section of your application. So work and activities for AMD cas, I'm showing you a screen of what it looks like. You can enter up to 15 activities. So we have the 15 could meet your most meaningful activities. You get extra space for those. So you'll see that for each one, it's looking a lot like them, this theory, remember that? And there's a reason for that the HCPC made it nearer your costs and application services. So maybe really easy for you to use that directly. So the M casts work in activity section. Again, up to 15 entries. Each of the 12 that are not most meaningful allow 7000 characters with spaces. They're going to appear in your application in the order that were entered, the chronological order, I should say. And you can enter multiple iterations. So if you did something several summers, you can enter it up to four different times. You can say like June through August 2020 and June through August 21, right? You can enter multiple times. You enter the total hours that you spend time exhibiting. You receive credit, your interest and contacts you and some key information in there. I needed to write about what you did and what you gained. Some lunch of bef you can and and cats enter a future date up to August 2020 to but no later than that because hopefully by vet school or dental school. Just because you can doesn't mean you always should. So I'm just going to draw out that. Yes, you technically can. We'll talk about whether or not to list a few short hours shortly. In your three most meaningful choices carefully. I know this is kinda some really corny, but choose your actual most meaningful activity. It's don't worry so much if. One is clinical when a service, I know a lot of people get really nervous about whether it needs to follow a formula. I don't think so. I think you should choose the ones that have been most transformative, most impactful, where you feel Roman, I think that's the key and then you'll have the best possible writing and reflection. If you choose one of the most meaningful, you click a box. And then in addition to those 700 characters, will also get an additional 10, 25 characters. To explain why you chose this as you're mostly. So someone had an athlete, should I use my stuff? Yes. This is definitely a key section where you're going to need heavily on your Biff and reflection neuron. In and cast. Here are the categories for reactivities because you get to assign one category that best matches each of your activities. Often it's cross-disciplinary and that happens a lot. So you choose the best one. A lot of folks will ask me, or should I group things together? Should I separate things into two different categories? If something was service and it was also extra curricular. So I'll say, you know, something is extremely substantial. You've spent a lot of time doing something and the clinical arm of an activity. And then, and then nonclinical are sure you could split that up into two. You don't necessarily have to enter like every single shadowing experience separately. Sometimes you will because they're really impactful, but sometimes if it's just, you know, I'm afraid of our physicians over the course of four hours, which is pretty typical. Put those together into one, that's fine. So use your best judgment on with substantial and what feels like it's just trying to fill out or fluff up that application. And not everything is going to capture, be captured completely dropped down category. So sometimes you will have an activity that it's mostly research but has a little clinical right about that. That's okay. But if it's really heavily clinical and research showing you couldn't separate. So use your best judgment. Talk to a health careers advisor if you have questions. Tmd, SAS, slightly different but same basic scheme. It's just 300 characters with spaces, very similar categories, slightly fewer options. You need to indicate three most meaningful for TMD SAS as well. Total of 500 character for the most meaningful. Don't enter future start dates from Texas home. And there's a separate spot for planned activities for this application. For Ansys, you have different descriptors. So you'll see there are a lot more like dental experience in mental shattering. There's some differences. There are a lot fewer categories in some ways that's easier. And you did not enter Tinder and progress activity. And you may communicate up to six most meaningful activities. There's frictions here, a very short for ads as supernovae cutting down quite a bit. And for economists, even fewer categories, really broad. And then no planned activity has been in progress. Activities are okay for a whole mess. And they have a separate achievements section so bad. That's why you don't see anything like that and their activities. So for the work and activities, again, I keep harping on this. You did a lot of work already in your bits and reflection girl. So detail not only when they experienced was what happened, what your role was or what it is, but also what it meant. How has it shaped your path? How did you develop some of the core competency is, and now I feel like you have to competency drop. You don't absolutely have to say I continued social skills, but certainly talking about math and how it might connect to your future career. Draw that dotted or actual solid line and something that can be really helpful. The reflection is so key in this section is showing me all logistics. It should also be reflection and not just in your most meaningful. I know this is challenging in a small space, but tried to talk about what you learned. And just an example, I know I get a lot of questions about like, how do we interrupt me if I didn't want to? So they know it's future and they're not feeling like I'm over blowing what I haven't done. So I'm giving you just a little example. If you wanted to enter, this is what I did the past year. You can enter a separate iteration for your future hour. So maybe just from like whenever it started until June 21 when we submit how many hours and then we can list of future iterations they understand. Alternatively, you could say immerse 2020, August 2002, and you could list the full 300, but then in a tech stocks you to explain what's projected rates. Okay. So I am going to camp breeze past letters because we're going to cover that tomorrow and not me. Dog is going to cover that tomorrow in the letters of evaluation section in part 2. And Doug is the keeper of all things, each CEC letter, so he is certainly the expert, but I will just share for you all. You're going to definitely if you use the HCPC, you're going to have at least one committee let her know that that's the first bubble layer. You know how the HCPC letter entered in as a committee letter. If you have totally optional but if you have additional letters, dog is going to talk about how you would add those directly to M cats or any other applications are reasons. In part two tomorrow for 30 Eastern. Though, I'll let him come to that section. The next step will be adding medical schools. And so this is where you choose to schools. And now there's actually a link directly to that, I'm sorry, profile. If you have amps aren't access. And so you can go and check the school out, learn more about them, decide if you want to apply. You might already just household school if we're just putting them in. When you enter the US, you can also choose if you're applying empty or empty page two. And then you can also choose the letters that you want to assign school. So you might choose HCC, well, for all of your schools and maybe you have an additional letter that you want to send to just a few schools. You wouldn't do that actually in this section. So just something to note for tomorrow. Doug is going to talk all about that I buy you can designate different letters to different schools. So logistics coming tomorrow. I gave a whole webinar on choosing schools earlier this month. And I have the link here on this side. But if you're thinking, when do I had schools and you're in this question comes up a lot. You can submit your primary, as you know, by now to just one school or a small set of schools. And you can add additional exposed layer. So adding schools is one of a few acceptable post submission changes. Once you have certified, paid the fee, you've submitted your application. Amazing. You can still go back in your application and change a few things. Schools, you can add letters, you can't take them away, but you can add letters. We can change some of your address specific things like and so there's a few post submission changes. This is the big one. So if you're thinking, I don't know how many, I don't know how to choose schools. Please watch the webinar and don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions after that. I'm just included some links to help you build your school is learnable. All the schools that are out there, I am a service you're applying for. So check those out. If you're interested in data. The average number of schools for MD applicants last year was 28. That's not necessarily going to be my recommendation for you. Everyone has to, for the 28 is a lot of schools. And that does not incorporate the fact that some people don't complete all of the secondaries for every school can it just gets to be a lot. So maybe that a lot of people apply to our schools, but they don't concede all the secondaries to every school. So as you're thinking, how many, you know, note the average, that's fine. The averages are in closer for D0 and gentle. But that's not necessarily the borrower was like This works for you. That's just our overall data. So another section is your personal statement. And Cass is actually called personal comments essay. You'll notice that I always continue to call it personal statement because that feels funny to me. No. Personal comments say is your MD personal statement? It's called slightly different things for other services. And this is where you enter in the personal statement that you wrote for the HEC or a new version that's tailored to fit. You have 5,300 characters and spaces for AMD cast. And formatting does not transfer care. So if you have italics, sorry, they're not going to work for any of these services. And I have a workshop on personal statements that I did back in January. Again, these are on our website on the CCS media library page. Feel free to check that out for more guidance. And other character limits for all the different application services are shown here. So AMD Cass, 5300 characters, same thing for a congress. Tmd SAS is 5000 characters. I think the line disappeared. It's 4500 for ten. So if you plan to copy and paste from Word, again, note that formatting does not transfer and sometimes things get a little wonky with the copy and paste. It works better if you use Wordpad or something like that with no form a new packs. Uh-huh. So just to double-check, double-check as you enter in. And for TMD SAS, they have an optional essay about unique life experiences or life circumstances. And then, sorry about one is actually require the optional one is the personal characteristics and important or challenging experiences. So that's kind of a unique essay to TMD SAS. You can choose to fill that out or not. And those who are not found in the other application services. But again, those kinds of COVID questions will be found in ANSYS and a chorus. And again, MD schools often about those types of things in the secondary applications. If you're applying to an MD PhD, you have two bonus essays, congrats. So you get to fill out the why MD, PhD essay and a significant research experiences essay. So little screenshot from that. This is the, what the why MD PhD essay looks like. And you also have to fill in the number of hours of prior significant research that's pretty new. So additional to the essay, how many hours? And the last thing you do is indicate your standardized test date. So if your client through M CAS, it's automatically seen if you've signed up for me, I'm kind of like it's in there. If you've taken the MK, your score is already down. Yes. If you're applying through TMD, SAS, or a comas, you do have to release your standardized test score through the AMC I'm Kat website to those services. So it's an extra step. If you haven't taken the exam yet or you're planning a retake, indicate your future test states that's incredibly important. And that's one of the post submission change it. So if you apply to med school and you're trying to the HCPC first Hera are released deadline and you submit by June 3rd and you're alone and you think you're going to take the exam, you know, that one of the m can exams and early July, but then you realize, oh my gosh, I'm not quite ready. And when I push that back, then you need to change your feature test state. That's helminths. We'll know you're going to be 50, could be. And again, health careers advisors are here to help. So just want to keep pushing that weight if you're worried about timing, definitely check-ins. I know it's pretty individualized. So the very last thing that you will do before you submit is certify that your application is complete, accurate. And then you pay you pay for how many schools you're submitting to. And there are a ton of questions, read them very, very carefully and certify before you submit. If you make a post submission changes, you will need to certify this over again. So you will need to say yes. Again, I know I change my future. I'm Kathy are in the Latin schools. Yes, it's all still accurate. Read it again, certify. We may have to pay more. So if you've added schools, remember they're $42 each and impassive pay a little bit more when you add schools. But it doesn't push you back. If you're still being processed. It doesn't push back processing time and all. It doesn't change your place in the queue. So it's okay to make post submission changes and recertified. Even if you're in the middle of verification or you haven't been verified yet, but does not change your position. So again, thinking about submission. The earliest possible date for AMD has again being May 27th this year, but students will want to wait for spring 21 breeds and no to that undergraduate HEC first year, what are released deadline. So kind of ideal target would be before June 14th at noon for students and for alumni in June fourth at noon. But just note, we're talking about earliest dates. You don't have to hit the earliest to be early. So take the time to fill out the applications really carefully before you submit that. So, so important quality over speed. And remember that some of these differences between like submitting your June second and your third, it's negligible. Don't sweat at, take your time. And to complete your HCPC checklist, this will be an exciting last step after you've submitted your application and it's waiting for verification. This is how are you hit those deadlines? You actually have to do that print application. Print the PDF, make sure your M cast ID is in your checklist. Now, make sure you fill out your submission date in the checklist, print the PDF, and email it to the cheesy. I believe Doug is going to go over this too. It's part of his process. Some churn will get it too, but just wanted you all to know. That's your last out. Then that verification. I like this little image of things going through the the filtered through verification. To be verified, you also have to send your official transcripts. And again, you're going to do that when you're going to learn all about that tomorrow. So I'll let Doug cover it. But when you submit your application and you submit your transcripts and Castiel all of that. When you are ready for review and you're up for processing. They will compare transcripts and your application. Look at them side-by-side, make sure everything matches. Smooth out any weirdness of the way that M Cufflinks to show runs ols your data ever since your transcripts. Change any course thoughts for kitchen, if they disagree on that and they say typically or Mrs. about six weeks, That's corner average doesn't mean it's a guarantee. But that's, that serve the most accurate data they have. How do you know where exactly they are? Go to the m CASEL website or you can follow them on Twitter, think they haven't acts and caps info, Twitter feed. And they update that every morning with the submission dates of their currently verified. So if you submitted June 3rd, you know, you're being processed that day, for example. And the first thing gives you a sense of how close you are and you can see how fast things it takes time processing is out of your control. The main thing that you can do is try to submit your application. That's completely correct. You feel good about it. And ideally by the first tier letter released deadline by the HCC if you're an undergrad or no one. Another thing that's part of Application Services is criminal background checks. And most medical schools partner with certify skiing. And they will ask for this information usually upon acceptance, most of the time after January for MD schools. But it will often be through AMD casts and this is very important for your licensing. They require transparency as part of this profession. So again, if there's anything that could possibly ever come up in any sort of deep background check are going to share that with them. Pass that in and of itself is not a deal breaker. Keeping anything from them. That would be a deal breaker for licensing. So remember, transparency. And certify also works with several of the osteopathic colleges as well. And so if you're using if you're applying to any of these, we'd also certify width vehicle this application. So just to give you all a sense about letters of recommendation timing, I'm sharing this I'm sorry, getting ahead of myself sharing this chart from a EMC. So this is Md letters, the evaluation received in the last five years and kind of when they tend to hit. And you'll see that there's a lot of big peaks kind of anywhere between June through August, especially when they hit applications. So just note that this is all across the country. Many, many schools do not have a committee at their school. And so people will submit individual letters of recommendation. And I've worked for schools like that. And so often Rose hinge. And if you do not have a community, if you do have a committee, we're probably going to see your letter somewhere around July, August, somewhere in that range for stage C. C doesn't give predictions, but they work really hard to get in your letter out as soon as possible based on when you completed all of the things that were in your control and it takes some time to write it. So committee's take a little longer than individual letters. And med schools appreciate the time and effort that goes into this committee letter. So they're happy to wait. It's not like they're reading on Irina. It's negligible. So piece of data that juncture but made from the HCPC. They said that the majority of Asia he sees HC guessing letters are submitted very early in the process and with over 80 percent of the letters released, I mid August, 90% by the end of August. And the later ones tend to be people who submitted their checklist much later than the deadlines. So just say, you know, I hope that gives a little peace of mind to get back to feel systems because we've been talking for how expensive this process is, that there is support. So the AMC does not want finances to be a barrier to medical education and they recognize how expensive this process is. So if you've already taken an admin cap and you think you may qualify, then hopefully you've already seen this. But if not, don't think this is not retroactive, so it doesn't cover your cough or a paid, but it could cover a lot of costs for the average to itself. So hum. And you can apply multiple times. They did increase the coverage for fee assessment. That's now I think four times the national poverty level studiously to you maybe a little now and worked before. So I encourage you to check it out. It cuts her and kept me in half and it allows you to submit, say, up to 20 schools for free. There's free EME ha, prime material for him, I'm sorry, access. So this is a great program. Access and UK homeless also have fee waivers. So Columbus actually apply for the assistance program before your application is received if 14 days to apply once you're approved. The interesting thing is you have this like two-week window where you have to submit your application once you apply for the fetus sense. And it's a little bit different. So you actually want to apply right around the time you want to submit your application. And they do get exhausted. The funds get exhausted every year still applying someone early as beneficial. And really same thing with AD, since it starts at the very beginning of the cycle. There's a limited number, first-come-first-served. And so it allows you to submit up to three schools covered by the program. And so you can request that fee waiver as soon as you create an application. And again, they can be depleted quickly. So that's a helpful thing to know. It's not like it's going to be defeated and days it's going to be depleted by August loss. And so we just want to share this with you all early typically needs earlier in the summer. Don't wait till deadlines. There are no fees programs for TMD, SAS, it's a flat fee. So some tips for success. Remember, deadlines versus their timelines. Those things are different. So don't hit up against the deadlines that's getting late. But submitting early really just means try to submit some time in that first half of June, if at all possible. The MD program, some deadlines sometime between October and December typically suffer early assurance. Tmd SAS is typically November 1st. Do and DDS have some range, especially the animal. So usually October through April for Neo and for dbEST and deities that cooker for February. And I keep harping on this. I'm going to do it again. Early applications or goodbye error-free is essential. And remember, early does not mean the first-aid at things open. I know there's so much anxiety around this and it makes me really sad the way that the rumor mill has become so aggressive about it. So just trying to hit those first here, HCC letter deadlines, that's that's a great timeline. And allow plenty of time. This does take time. I know you did a lot of work already with your Biff and all of your HCPC materials and your reflection journal. And it's gonna pay off hugely, but still takes time and you want to make sure to triple check everything before you submit. So again, triple checking is key, will need to share your submission with the HCPC. And Doug is going to go over the full knee, goes back. But remember, that's an automatic face, easy to just know when you submit, they require proof from you and that finishes your checklist. You will need to shut either MSR or the metaphor dental school websites to know a little bit more about the secondaries, Casper interviews, how those will work, because this is where things start to become really school-specific. I wish I could give you all a lay of the land perfectly for every school, but it doesn't work that way. It becomes very individual at this level. So little preview about second, spin again more to come next month or engine and actually try to submit your secondaries promptly. Than general guidance tends to be about two weeks. That's not make or break, again, quality over speed. But the intention is that you're going to kind of think about them maybe a little bit ahead of time. You are reflecting, thinking about some of those questions, talking about the workshop. And so you can submit things relatively quickly and you're not taking several months on each essay. So last couple of things, check your HCC checklist. They will actually have such sort of similar to M costs. They're going to have some updates about where they are and allow release process. So really check that out. The AAC does not allow you to ask questions about when your letter is going to be released. They don't have that. It depends so much on how many people submit and that first hear the volume. Obviously they can only work so fast, so they can't when we predict. But again, that's something that's out of your control. What you can do is submit by efforts to your timeline and that's the earliest that you can be. So the next things to start thinking about, getting familiar with the traffic rules. This is a funny name for basically the protocols for applicants. And you will see those in a later workshop. I'm going to have a lot on. The traffic rules are basically telling you when you might hear back from schools with suny schools can tell you decisions. When do you need to narrow your list to only one acceptance or up in here, all of that detail comes in the traffic rules we will talk about later. But those are kind of some of the things to do when you finish your outputs each time you're thinking about next steps. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about secondary is a little because I know you're all thinking about the next steps already. Secondary application fees. Very I would say they're typically 32, maybe up to actually a $150. If you qualify for FY assistance program. They're almost always waved. So definitely something to keep in mind. When will they arrive? Will know sooner than June 25th. June 25th and M, the mass M Katz transmission day. That's the day that medical schools can possibly even know that you're out there and you're an applicant. That's when they began receiving all the process applications. And this was a racial question. Somebody asked some schools new evaluate candidates before they send secondaries to them. And so it could take a little while to get a secondary from some schools. Some of them just automatically send to every single applicant. So some of them will come right on June 25th, the fear verify then if you're verified July 7th, that might be when you get a lot of secondaries and then they'll probably triple after that. He talking about secondary is by arcsecond areas. I probably should have put this first. There are usually two to four ish, on average, essays that are specific to each school. They have very big word limits by each program. Sometimes they'll ask how you've also met their prerequisites because ending programs don't have that in their primary application. And this year and these schools are largely made COVID questions in their secondaries rather than the primary. So again, these are specific to you. Let's say hypothetically, you apply to Weill Cornell and suny Upstate. You're going to get potentially an e-mail from each of them saying, come out soon, we can complete our secondary. And they will have a different set of essays per school. So often schools will ask senior about COVID specifically mortal, ask them out adversity in general and you're welcome to put COVID related barriers, challenges there. So again, these instruction manuals that I keep talking about that exist. This is where you'll access them. It's not like you need to know this right now. I'm going to provide slides right after the talk to everyone who registered. But there are some additional guides and workbooks from M cast that I think are helpful too. So I've thrown a lot of tools and year note that the HCPC continues to communicate with you throughout the process for the online checklist, especially for the news bulletins, required readings, things like that. So it's really good to make a habit of checking into your checklist for each season. You're wondering andrew all this health care as advisors who can help me with the application. It's not just me. There are other folks around the university. I came home to where a team are here to support you. And I'm very happy to announce that there will also be on writing tutor. that will work through the Cornell writing center and partner with our office. There'll be available sort of when the semester ends, it usually ends up being mid-May til mid July, that might shift semester a sort of shifted. And so you can schedule writing appointments for writing in your applications even after the writing center closes. That's part of the services that we offer to you. Other tools, I really encourage you all to sign up for this monthly newsletter if you're applying to MD schools from the AAMC, I sign up for it and it's really fantastic and gives you a lot of that. Like, what's breaking news? What do you need to know? And I think it's really helpful as you're filling out applications are gearing up to do so, to look at other successful applicant profiles from its anatomy of an applicant. Dental schools have something release them were fantastic, is to be thinking about how do you put your best self forward? How do you really talk about your strengths and your application? It's a small space. How do you highlight that? So looking at some examples of other peoples, discussions on their competencies might be valuable. And last but not least, before I take a bunch of questions, I just want to talk about how you make an appointment with me. I know, I see a lot of folks, so it's not always the easiest thing in the world, but I try to be as available as humanly possible. And so not only do I have 30 minute appointments, you can book an advance on bookings or by calling my office. But I also have same week appointments that you can book every Monday and you have to call for those. And then I also have office hours two to 4 on Wednesdays I say here I know Zoom room and wait for your questions and talk with you. The only date that I will not have them in June is June ninth because I'm on a virtual conference that day, learning more to help you all. And then otherwise the office hours will go through June to support you as you're applying. And I will also have some evening Q&A's because I know many of you work and so I want to try to help meet demand there. I will announce those through Handshake healthcare's notifications and that pre-health listserv. Shortly You can just save the dates again, I'm going to share these slides with you to write down how many different opportunities for you to ask them questions. I'm here as a resource and we're more than happy to help. And no, There's so much detail on so many moving parts that go into your applications. So this is part of my job that I really enjoy. So with that, I'm going to take some more questions. I know there's been quite a lot building up in the Q &A, and so I'm going to answer a few of these. If I don't get to them all, you know where to find me, but I will try to gets read many as possible before we end at 6:30. So someone asked does AMCAS show your GPA as you fill it out or only after it's processed? great question, only after it's processed. That's part of what they are calculating. when they verify you. Let's see. Can we submit our primary before HCEC letter is delivered? Yes, you absolutely have to know that it's required. So that's a great question. And so your verification has absolutely nothing to do with letters. You will be verified based on having your courses filled out and your transcripts. That's all. If you're taking the MCAT  in June with HCEC, not go to schools until they have a score back. HCEC and MCAT have nothing to do with each other. Actually, they're totally separate. So as long as you apply to at least one school and you can do without an MCAT score And you go through the whole HCEC process it doesn't matter when you take the MCAT Actually. Okay. If you're a new activity since you submitted to HCEC, do you need to send HCEC an update? You don't because HCEC, to my knowledge, only writes for you through fall. And so you would just share that in AMCAS or your other application. And you can totally enter in something that HCEC didn't know about because it's new, that's fine. And someone asked like, if I her how her time scheduling one-on-one, is it okay to send writing samples to bring writing samples office hours? Yes, it absolutely is. I will not broadcast your personal statement. I'll read it on the side and we can talk about it. I'm happy to do that. Can you see a career advisor at any college? No, you can't. The way it works is you can only do so in your college or your major. And I'm also available for absolutely. Anyone. Certainly, if things are going well for you in your college, you can talk to me as well. Yeah, I understand that. And there are often multiple advisors in your college, so you might try talking to another advisor in your college to who you might just have a better relationship with. There's usually multiple in almostevery college. Great. So are MCAT score is sent in automatically with AMCAS? Yes. But if it's a future date, you have to list a future date, in AMCAS If you've already taken the MCAT and you're applying via AMCAS it's already in there you'll see it Great question. How would we submit by June 4th if we don't have our grades until the second week of June Ah ha, your You're mixing up the alumni and HCEC timeline. So in fact, if you're an undergraduate waiting for your spring grades, the HCEC has moved back the undergraduate timeline to June 14th at noon, and they would move it again if it turns out you didn't get your grades until later. So totally understand that question, too. I have office hours meetings in the summer. I work all year long I'm absolutely I have office hours through June, but I will have appointments, year round. Thanks for that question. Can Casper hurt you? It's interesting. Casper is scored. You never see the score. Supposed to give med schools a sense and dental school as too of your kind of between the lines, Candicy like what kind of decision-maker or you, how do you deal with complexity? And so, I guess potentially if you saw things super black and white, yeah, it potentially could hurt you. But every school considers the score very differently. And you'll never see the score I know that part would be frustrating. But do your best, show your best self. That's what you can do. And most of the time I think it can only help. But I could I could potentially see that situation. I think that's unlikely. Think carefully through each scenario. So when it asks you to list this cycle, we're going to be more competitive. There was a large increase of applicants last year. That's so true and I didn't know that was going to happen. Most people thought it would be the opposite. So I can't tell you how many people will apply this year. What I can say is the data. I know each HCEC registrants, it's about the same. But that doesn't track national data. I don't know. It's very possible. And some of the people who applied last year and we're perfectly competitive, didn't get in because of the huge volume of applicants and write reapply. That's possible. It could be that people get scared off and fewer people apply, I don't know yet. But I will be here with you throughout the cycle. We'll talk about trends in each session. Let's see. If you're an alum. Can you request transcripts now? Absolutely. You can  to include all classes in high school, only college classes. So only classes at a university or college level for which you received any sort of credit so like dual enrollment as I'm talking, you can think of that word earlier. So that's one of the mean. You do not enter high school grades. You would only enter like a college grade if you have a transcript. It doesn't matter if I transfer. You just send the transcripts from an institution you've attended. And let's see here, Cornell transcript shows automatic transfer of AP. But you do not use those credits like you took statistics at Cornell even though you have the credit to pull those transcripts. So you don't ever have to send high school transcripts. You don't ever have to send College Board if you received Cornell credit or from a previous institution. If you transferred, if you receive college credit for AP from the institution you attended, that's the transcript you'll send. The AP has to be posted to your transcript for it to be valid. And again, when you're doing the course entry, you're just entering what you see that's it like on every transcript of centering when you see if you had AP's that did not show up on your transcript, you need to report those. No, you do not secrete side question to that. And so we talk about course classification. I think we covered this one. See if you mislabel classes about what badly on you. Oh, that's a good question. Actually, med schools won't know AMCAS will just  change it it to mislabeled it they ll probably just change it. But try not to do that because if you have a certain amount, I think it's 10, changes and AMCAS  just sends application back to you and says, Wanna try again. There's a lot of errors here. And so that slows down your processing. So you want to just do the best job you can be judicious with those like cross-disciplinary choices. But use your best judgment if the class you probably know. Well the academic change request slowdown application process, no, it actually happens really, really quickly like a couple days typically. And so it really doesn't make an impact. It's okay to submit a change request, if you deem it appropriate Let's see. I think a lot of these I answered. They want certainty with such great questions folks and so excited to these. Would a poster presentation we put down as separate from research or group it together. You can do that either way. And so this is where it gets tricky and sometimes individualized. So I tend to say like talk to a health careers advisor or come to office hours. Because sometimes it makes sense to put them together, but sometimes if the publication itself was like this huge accomplishment, you might want to list that separately versus like helping working on a figure kind of things. So it depends. It's up to you. Your pending publications. How are you add those? I don't know, not every field, but like from my field and, and biomedical research on often we will use different language like manuscript and preparation. Manuscripts submitted under review, accepted with conditional changes, things like that. So you just use those types of language indicators to show them where you're at. And that will just be in a textbox. Our medical schools accepting virtual shadowing as legitimate? and this is such a great and huge question. Generally. Virtual shadowing is typically not actually shaddowing It's mostly like watching webinars from physicians can be super helpful, but it's not necessarily an active activity and you can list it. But I would encourage you group it a bit with other shadowing or maybe just listed as like general way than a lot of time learning about the profession through all these different ways. A lot of people, a lot of med schools think positively about virtual experiences because when you could do, but not exactly the same as a shadowing experience. Unless you were actually in a patient provider call in a telehealth visit, which some people are but via  HIPAA, it's kind of hard. So you can list it But med schools are really, really, really adamant I've been hearing this at every single conference that I've been to. They do not want you to ever have to pay for virtual shadowing See that is really, really bad. Predatory on the other peoples end not on your end. But they do not want you to have to do that. So they don't usually see that positively and so don't, don't spend your money on that if you can. There are some free experiences but don't spend money. Okay. Is there a achivements/honors honors section for AMCAS? It's, it's one of the options that you can list. And often if people list anything work a bunch of things together that's very frequent. If you have them. Are gap years a seperate activity, here's a separate activity. Typically things that haven't happened yet don't go in AMCAS I'm going to be honest about that. Unless it's like I got a Fulbright, I know I'm doing this. It's a 100 percent guaranteed. We only need to list any hours. Or you could clearly just say they're all projected. But most of the time or something hasn't started, doesn't go in your application yet, it goes in your secondaries, it goes in updates that you might send to schools will have lots of workshops on that down the road. So typically if it hasn't started don't list it, is there a number of activities that make your applications stronger like do you have to hit the ceiling of 15? Not absolutely. And especially if you're going to list like one hour of an event, That's not substantial. It doesn't need to go in there. But generally, most people are struggling to narrow down to 15 who have competitive applications. But if you have 14 and they're incredibly strong, don't sweat that don't feel like you have to get 15 and it doesn't work that way. that's a great question. So I have a few more questions, but I know we're getting to be. We're at time. I am happy to stick around for a couple more minutes and answer a few more, but I'm going to pause the recording because it's already been two hours and I know people get tired. If you need to leave, please feel free to. I will have lots of forums to take your questions. Sincerely hope this has been helpful for you all. I really find joy and guiding you all for this process. More than happy to keep talking about as we go forward. So thank you so much everyone for your fantastic questions and your engagement during this session, you make it really fun. And again, don't hesitate to reach out to me through all those forums. I will share slides soon as I can with everyone who registered and the recording is going to be shared as soon as we  close caption it next week. Thanks everyone. I'm going to stop the recording here and really appreciate you-all.