So welcome everyone this evening. It's a nice sunny evening in Ithaca. And I hope you're all doing well wherever you are located right now. I'm really excited to talk with you all tonight about choosing medical and dental schools. And so this presentation is targeted for those who are currently in the application process, meaning that you are preparing to turn in your primary applications to medical or dental school in spring 2021. Just a couple short months for matriculation in Fall 2022. So for those of you who don't know me yet, my name is Dr. Chelsea Rule. I'm Director of the Health Careers advising program in Cornell Career Services and our central office on campus. And I'm really looking forward to talking with you about this topic. This is a topic we get lots and lots of questions about in the healthcare's advising roles. So I'm hoping to demystify a few things for you all. Answer your questions. And I really welcome you all to engage with you during this session. Many of you submitted it fantastic questions in the registration form and I thank you for that. If other questions come to mind, don't hesitate to use the Q and A box during this session. Say you can find the Q and A box and let me know what's on your mind. I might answer some of the questions in real time, but I might also kinda wait for some of them for the end. So certainly reach out if you have any questions. And you all can call me Chelsea, I'm super casual. I'm really happy to talk with you and many of you have already met before or I will see at other sessions throughout the year, I will talk a little bit more at the end about all the other things we're doing to help support you through this process. So firstly, I want to talk about what we're going to talk about today. We have a lot in an hour, but I'm excited to first lay out some resources for you all as you're researching schools. Then discuss some factors that you might consider when you're choosing the right school list for you. We'll talk a little bit about this concept of fit. And I know that that word sometimes a little ill-defined. So we'll talk about what fit means and show some examples. So we'll go through how to construct a school list that's tailored to you. We will also touch on some costs. I will share some data as I love to do, some statistics on Cornellians specifically and some national data. And then of course, I want to make sure there's time for your questions. And again, feel free to ask questions anytime in the Q&A. I will have that open next to me and try to look at it. So I'm doing dual screens. So if it looks like I'm distracted, I'm just trying to manage a lot of boxes. So first let's talk about resources when you're researching your schools, how do you even know what schools are out there? And we're talking really broadly. We're talking about medical schools, dental schools, all kinds of schools that we support applicants as you're going through, especially the Cornell HCEC or Health Careers Evaluation Committee, supports medical and dental students specifically. So that's where I've kind of focus this talk. So if you're an MD applicant, if you're thinking of applying to MD medical schools, highly recommended the MSAR resource, it's called medical school admissions requirements. It does cost money. So it's $28 for a year subscription or thirty-six dollars for a two-year subscription. There is a discount on that if you attend the upcoming virtual fair. And I'll talk more about that at the end. For DO applicants good news. Your tool is free, It's called choose DO Explorer. And for dental applicants, you have a tool called the dental school explorer. And that does cost $25 a year. So a lot of these tools, they're not necessarily absolutely essential, although I strongly recommend them. if you can budget that. And note that if you are applying for any sort of fee assistance program for MD schools, your MSAR subscription is likely covered. So just say, you know, we'll talk more about costs at the end as well. I welcome your questions. Essentially, I'm going to share all the slides with you after this talk so you don't need to try to take screenshots or anything like that. Once this talk ends, I am going to email the slides. So a lot of this isn't into to help you after that presentation is being recorded. And this will be loaded onto the Cornell Career Services website on our media site. So little screenshots just on what these tools look like. The MSAR is in the top-left. Top-right is the ADEA a dental school explore, and then the choose DO Explorer is located on the bottom right there. You can see a little bit of what you would see using those tools when you get a little sense about median some information about costs of the schools. There is, there's a lot of really helpful information that goes way deeper than this is just an overview screen. There's kind of a database of all the school specific information. And this is not the only place it's located. Each school will have a lot more information on their website too, but it's a great way of just being able to quickly see what's out there. Compare them, look at some data, and really be able to kind of cultivate a list. So for example, on MSAR you might see that, You can't like save, add to favorites, right So it's an easy place to do all of them. And I have a quote in here, which I love. If you've seen one medical or dental school, you've seen one medical or dental school. So truly you do have to do your homework. This is not a process. We're going to give you a simple formula on how to choose your schools. That's why we have a whole hour-long workshop. There will not be a formula in this talk. It's all going to be about ways for you to tailor your school list to your own interests, metrics, all of that jazz. So we'll go over some factors to consider when you're choosing your schools. And this is going to be a bit of a long list. I'm not necessarily going to touch on every possible thing, but again, I am an extra slide so that you have everything as well. So I will just say a lot of people will make their own grid or a chart of factors that are particularly important to them. And factors and schools that they've been looking at. A lot of people will do that in MSAR or the dental or DO explorer too  lots of options for that. But as you're figuring out what factors are most relevant for you, I'm going to lay out some of the common factors that people consider when choosing schools. So one thing is location. That's a clear interest for a lot of places you're going to live there for four years. Is the school in-state or out-of-state is another important consideration. And would you have in-state residency which may qualify youth? It's a public institution for much lower tuition and sometimes increase consideration because many schools will fill their class with a certain number of people in their state because they may receive state funding. That doesn't really work for private schools. They're usually state irrelevant essentially, although just having some type as to a particular area, I mean, family that lives there, having a partner who are having lived their previously, those kinds of things can matter to especially for private schools. So I keep touching on those public versus private. But something to note. So as you're looking at schools, note. Is it public? Is private. Is it in your home state of residence? Do you have any ties there at all? And think about how much it's gonna cost to live there and what your quality of life might be like. You may not know the area well, so that may be part of your research as you're narrowing down the list. And then when you're thinking of the curriculum of the med school, I think this is an important thing and you may not know the right questions to ask. Yet, because you don't know how to the med school curriculum looks necessarily it's different from undergrad. So a couple things to note. Does the school have pass-fail grading, letter grading, any kind of like pass fail plus sort of system. like pass, honors, that sort of thing. And often the schools that have the pass/fail grading which is the most med schools do at this point. The kind means that they encourage you to work together. So it often as a collaborative future, not necessarily, so there's a lot of differences. And in terms of the Style of, the curriculum is important. What kind of learning do you thrive in? do you like a traditional lecture or do you like problem-based learning? You may not even know what that is. So you might want to look that up and figure out what problem-based learning is. Essentially, it's kind of like case studies that help you work through the kind of learning that you might see in a traditional lecture, but via an issue. And if you're interested in research, you may want to look and see what the research world looks like at that institution, at that med school, those kinds of things would be very important if research is important to you. And again, it's not, it's not one size fits all when choosing schools. So another thing to also look at is when your clinical training starts and it's actually different in every school. So I think in a lot of programs you might think, okay, if it's med school for example, year one and two you in  the classroom, year 3 and 4, you're in the clinic, and that's kind of how it used to be, but it's not necessarily anymore. A lot of medical schools will start their clinical training in the first year or second year, sometimes day one, it really depends on the school. Some of those may be a better fit for you. And so you might want to think about when you want to start seeing patients, for example. And again, this is very school specific, so let's just start noting these things and you may decide later what resonates most with you. Another important thing to consider is the clinical environment. So think about not only the location in terms of where you live, but what patients for you work with, but sort of patient population is present in a training area. So will you serve underserved populations if that's something you want to do. Are you interested in rural or urban health specifically cause being in a rural area versus a city can make a difference. For now, will you be serving people of color? That's something that's important to you. There are viewed to be people of color there in that area. So think about the population that you'll work with and the kind of training that you would receive for your interests. Of course, the strength reputation of your clinical training can have a strong influence on your residency. So I know we're all going to get tempted just started looking at US News rankings. I'm just going to do my best to throw that out the window a little bit. We'll talk briefly about what rankings are based on. But it's not super important. What is important though, would be how, how well people place in their residency affect the outcome data. And that's not really the only thing that rankings measures, you might think it does, but it actually isn't. So rankings are not everything and then they're done in kind of a weird way. So really it's more about reputation of the clinicals. Mentorship is another thing to consider. So think about what kind of mentorship programs might they have when and how you work with faculty. Things like that. And opportunities of course vary a lot too so a lot, medical and dental schools might have rich student life opportunities or abilities from your starting your own clubs. They might have very integrated diversity offices. And sometimes you might be looking in particular for a certain type of research or clinical experience of global health, public health leadership. So think about those things that matter to you. And whether the schools are looking at have opportunities that match your interests where it meets the ability for you to pursue those things. And think also about each school's mission. I will say right now, a lot of people tell me, I'm looking at mission statements, they kind of blend together. I agree with you or with some exceptions. But maybe even not just a mission statement. And we'll go a little deeper into what schools care about. But think about what the school does well and what is important for them. So now, as you look through the descriptions in MSAR, DO explorer, in dental explorer, try to figure out what it is that they are talking about. Whoops. I didn't really talking about patient care, education, leadership, research, their location, integration into a particular community for example. So try to identify those things and sometimes listing those of all the schools that you're figuring out might go on your list, helps you narrow your focus too other potential factors. These might not apply to everyone in every case. But if you are an international applicant to medical or dental school, you want to make sure that each school on your list access to international applicants. And for example, MSAR allows you to sort by international and Canadian accepting schools. Another potential factor in this complicated year, as COVID continues to affect admissions in some ways, some medical and dental schools will still have virtual interviews as they had last year. Some may have in-person interviews, some maybe hybrid. A lot of them frankly haven't announced yet. But as you're making your list, this may be a factor for you. So something to write down in one of your columns on your spreadsheet. And if you have any sense of a specialty interests or you're just generally want to look at outcomes. Match data can be a nice way of looking at that. Note fit MASR, for example, just populated a couple of weeks ago and some of them matched data is not yet there. To kind of keep checking back. And I'll say you can look at class profiles on medical school websites. And some match just took place. The actual match for medical schools was a couple weeks back. So you can actually look at the match results by school, usually on their website too. So I just talked about a lot of things. That was a big breath of information. So let's talk about fit. And again, I welcome your questions. So when we're talking about fit, what I mean is your interests which are so particular to you. The school's mission or when they focus on what they do well resonates. And so you care about with the schools you're applying to care about. And that's what I mean when I say fit. So I don't actually necessarily just about metrics. You will are going to say like, Hey, I showed up here, so you can give me a formula of what metrics to use them. We're going to talk about metrics, but first, we're going to talk about mission fit. And I think this is a really good first step before you start thinking about your metrics, we'll get there. But if you cultivate your list based on fit first, you're probably going to be much, much more successful. And so what we'll go through some examples, I love examples. I pulled some screenshots off of MSAR just as an example. And so I pulled SUNY Upstate, for example, this is our closest med school. So SUNY Upstate's mission and some of their selection factors are pasted below. So I'm just really briefly going to read it out loud. The mission of SUNY Upstate because I know not everyone can see this screen. And then I want you to kinda read along and look at the screenshots. So the main mission of SUNY Upstate as the education of health professionals and to conduct biomedical research. Upstate's clinical faculty and health care professionals commit themselves to education and patient care, demonstrating excellence and compassion in pursuing its mission, upstate provides faculty, staff, students and volunteers and environment of mutual trust and respect with opportunities to grow personally and professionally to make a positive difference in the lives of others. So that's their mission. You'll notice a few things about selection factor. So if you kinda take a look at what you can see here. They, they mentioned, of course, the admissions holistic, which I think is the case for all med schools. They give you a sense of the types of things are looking for. And then they talk a bit about the curriculum, Primary Care, a little extra style. There's tons, tons more on MSAR these are Just a couple of screenshots back down to try to get you to think about what schools are talking about, when they talk about what they do. Well. So just take a quick look at this. Oh, give folks just a second. And then we'll go on to another one and we'll talk about how they're the same or different. So I'm going to go onto the next one. I actually have a lot more of these that we can do at the end if there's time, but we'll just do one more for now. Talk about Weill Cornell. So this is, i then I kind of picked some that are connected closely to us that was designed for partner Medical School. So Weill Cornell, committed to excellence and research teaching patient care and the advancement of the art and science of medicine. To this end, our mission is to provide the finest education possible for medical students. To provide superior continuing medical education for lifelong education of physicians throughout their careers. To conduct research at the leading edge of knowledge to improve the health care of the nation and world, those now and so further generations. And to provide the highest level of clinical care for the communities we serve. That's the mission statement of Weill So again, I'll give you all just a second to read a little bit more about what they consider  in terms of applicant selection will notice this is slightly longer. And then read just briefly skim through about their curriculum or our primary care and compare and use.The chat. Let me know the chat is only visible to me, so let me know what you think is different, interesting, what do you note about this and Upstate  More research focus at Weill more social science, Liberal Arts at Weill to renewables start clinical in the first year. Curriculum is different based on being hands-on or not. One noted that Weill specified age. I'm not sure which one that's referred to by the maybe the second. The Weill it looks like they're looking for more diversity among applicants. Weill has a community clinic. Someone noted in rural. So consider upstate. Yeah, let's go back to Upstate to compare. Someone's at suny Upstate wants you to stay in the areas, serve the community there. Interestingly, the definition of community can be very different. So if you noted that, that's an interesting point too gap and there's, there's so many things that are very similar in many medical school curricula. But it's, it's interesting, the start reading these and learning kind of pinpointing what seems a little bit different, What's unique. So I mentioned, Weill seems very focused on advancing science tech. medicine, SUNY Upstate seems to be gravitating toward clinical exposure. Smaller local communities. And that does tend to be the case often with smaller public universities, vs really big urban centers. So you'll notice that like suny Upstate, talk more about this community. And if you look at the community definition out, Weill this was like nation world is very different, you all picked up on a lot of really fantastic points about these schools. So even in just a few moments here, starting to get a sense for mission and fit. I think. So now you'll have to do some self-reflection. Figure out. What's most important for you. So I think step one, kinda understand a little bit about how you would research schools and what might be important to look for. Make a wish list of the schools and you think fit your interests with their mission, their selection, and the kinds of things that they offer. And you might even start by writing a little bit about yourself like just that you would keep some notes on the kinds of things you think are important. And then start looking at schools. After that, we'll start looking at those first to get a sense of what pops out. And that's cool too. You can always be advancing your list and changing it as you go. Then here's where metrics come in make sure your list as balanced. And so as you're starting to narrow down your list, you remember wishlist of 50 schools, for example, who knows? Then make sure your list has some balance in it. So I sometimes think of sort of three tiers, I think often and this is the case. And they might be called different things and different websites that I've called them reach in range and safer. I'm not using the term safety because that doesn't really exist in med school admissions or dental school admissions. It's, it's tough to get in and, and these are very selective schools. So safer, I think is a nice way of putting it here. Lists shouldn't be a 100 percent reaches. And I do think that reaches are good. So we'll talk about what that word means in just a moment. But how many is certainly going to be up to you. So think about creating a wishlist and then tailoring that list using your own metrics Well, you know your MCAT or DAT and your GPA. And some of those other factors that they mentioned in their selection to tailor each list. A lot of websites out there will allow you just entering your GPA and your MCAT, for example. It'll spit out a list of schools. Schools actually don't make any sense for you, right? Nine times out of 10, the lists have nothing to do with you. Just the right numbers. That's actually not a great way of making your list. This is why I suggest that you do it the other way around. Tailor to fit based on metrics. But first, make sure that your interests and Ambition and can collide a bit, visualize the list will not make sense and it will work out well. So if you do not know DAT or an MCAT score yet, come up with a timing strategy and work with a pre-health advisor to kinda figure out we're going to know your score when you might choose schools will you choose any before you know your score, for example. And also reduce practice scores as a gauge. And the official practice test. And the best gauges going to have a couple that you have before you know, you need to, to kind of change some of your school that can be really helpful. And I highly recommend that everyone who is taking a later MCAT or DAT which is challenging, just chat with me or come to office hours. Chat with me about strategy on that timing. I know that was a big question. In registration. So next question, how to determine what is a reach, what's in range, what's safer, what does this mean? And so let's first talk about reach. A reach might be a reach for a lot of different reasons. Probably the most common one is your metrics seem a little bit lower than the average accepted applicants metrics. So for example, you might be below the 10th percentile of accepted applicants from last year's data. If you look at MSAR and I'll show you what that looks like. And that might be a reach. So doesn't mean you shouldn't apply, just means make sure that that's not your entire list. Something could also be reached because it's just highly, highly selective. So for example, Weill Cornell, yeah, it's kind of a reach for most people, because of the debt free medical education and just the ratio of how many people apply or accept it. Like that's pretty reachy just in general. And often, but not always. If a school is out of state, it's not in your run state of residency and it's public. Sometimes there may be very few seats for out-of-state applicants to this varies. For example, say Texas is a good example of that because Texas admits 90 percent in-state schools with Texas residents, the higher your chances are a little bit lower for an out-of-state public if you're not a Texas resident in the state of Texas. So I think I kind of mentioned this, but are reaches bad? No. You just don't want to be a 100 percent reachy could certainly that's going to decrease your chances of being admitted pretty greatly. But if you have some that are really a great, great fit, and now your metrics seem a little bit lower or it's highly selective versus out-of-state things like ha doesn't mean you shouldn't choose a few of those and how many? It's totally your call happy to chat more or about that, people have questions. And I want to show an example of that. So let's look at MSAR I'm picking on the MD schools a lot. But MSAR shows you some of this data. And if you look, for example, on the left with the GPA data, you can use a drop-down menu to choose accepted applicants specifically to that school that you're looking at? I chose suny downstate in this case in Brooklyn. And so I was looking at the total GPA in this top bar and then the science GPA and the bottom bar. So let's just say hypothetically, I have a 3.6 GPA, 3.5 science GPA, great. What would I call this? And so if I have a 3.6 GPA or accruals and the 25th to 75th percentile deflate seems like it might be on a slightly lower end. But yeah, it's Cornell, it's competitive here. I have a great upward trend, for example, I did really, really well in all my science classes year. So now I'm feeling like Okay, that's going on within range to maybe need a little safe Little reachy, excuse me So now I'm looking at the MCAT And let's say my MCAT score hypothetically 515 So now I'm like, okay, I feel I'm a little bit lower end for the GPA, a little on the higher end on the MCAT Again, what do we call this it's subjective. So there's no right answer. You could call this within range. We could call it slightly reach on GPA, side, I don't think it's a major reach. And at Cornell, often your GPA will be slightly lower in your cat, slightly higher than the national average. It's just when you're looking at national data. And you might also look by MCAT subsection because maybe you had a slightly lower score. But guess what? Most people seem to two, you can see that that's shifted to the left comparativley So all those things should help you tailor your list. This should not be the way you choose schools. And I should just give you a sense that overall you feel that you are kind of within that range, especially in the 25th to 75th percentile or at least a good chunk of your schools. I'm not going to give you a number of like you need x of this tier and x this tier it is up to you and your comfort of risk tolerance. But I do highly recommend that you make your list balanced. And so that might mean with, with a few reaches, you balance out with some that seem safer and some that seem like they're a within that range for your metrics. And again, we're only talking about schools that you already fit with this on your wishlist. So they all make sense for you. Now we're just tailor it to fit numbers. So I want to talk I think there's a couple of questions here. One, I think I answered already, so I'll mark that And somebody wants to know a little bit more about like taking or retaking the MCAT. I'm going to come to that one later. That's a great question and um Other factors are specialty, how we learn more about what school is better for certain specialty. So yeah, if you're thinking MD at least you can actually look the match rates on MSAR. And otherwise you might go to a school specific website to look at their match list by specialty, It's a really great question. If you have a certain leaning and let's say you're interested in a surgical specialty, look at how many percent of  folks matched there. It is a little self-selecting because that meant people wanted to go into surgery and fewer people at certain schools do want to go into surgery. That tells you something too. And so it might be really helpful to check that out if you have any specialty interests or meaning if you're looking more primary care, you might want to see a lot more primary care residency placements, for example. To just start comparing them. There's not necessarily like a right and wrong percent because this is their entire class. Okay. So I'm going to answer the next question of the end. We're going to talk about costs. So many people will say, well, to increase my chances, I should just apply to as many schools as humanly possible, right? I'm going to say no to that because there has to be some limits and it's, it's more quality than quantity with this decision. So. If you're applying MD, again, I'm picking on MD a little bit, but I want to go through some of the costs. Many of you have already taken MCAT So you may be able to kind of budget that away. But of course that cost you some money. Now your primary application is going to cost about a $170 for the first school and $40 per additional school that's for MD. So if you apply it to 28 schools which was our average last year, that's $1300. That's a lot. Notice that that's not the end because then you have secondary applications. And so those secondary applications are school specific, and they run about $50 to a $150 each. So again, just kind of doing the math from that average, printed up with $2800. And if you were traveling in person, if you have to show up and wear clothes and take flights and all that stuff. Of course, that's going to cost money that, that may or may not happen during this year. And of course, some people will do second look, travel that might be a little bit more pop. Possible this coming year I hope. Where even if you interviewed on Zoom, you might still be able to visit campus in the spring after you are admitted. So there's there's possibly going to be some travel deposits to hold your seat. Very, they're pretty inexpensive for MD schools. For DO schools that can be in a one to $2 thousand range to hold a seat. So overall, if you're applying to 28 schools, via AMCAS at least last year, your total would have been about 6 thousand dollars roughly. So of course, if you apply to fewer schools, that decreases a lot because the biggest cost there was the secondaries. And in fact, a lot of people don't complete all of their secondaries. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that. And why it's so important that you applied just to the schools you really, really want to go to and build your list on quality rather than quantity. Again, I'm going to share these slides, but I just wanted to compare other application costs as we're talking about that. That was just sort of a case if you're applying to MD schools, DO schools are very similar, slightly more extensive, 197 and then $48 per school. ADSAS, a little bit more per school So it's $259 for the first school and then $112  for additional school. Texas is doing its own thing as usual And it has a flat fee, a $185 for any or all Texas schools. Really important know about fee assistance programs. If you don't already fee assistance programs may cover a lot of your MCAT especially for the AAMC fee Assistance Program, this can cover a good chunk of your MCAT, the prep. And really importantly, if you qualify, you can get 23 school applications through AMCAS ACOMAS has its own Fee Waiver Program. So you could still use the AMCAS favorite waiver program for MCAT But as you apply to DO schools, you can apply for an ACMOAS fee waiver. Works a little differently. You'd apply for it right around the time you're going to apply just before you submit. And that covers one application. ADSAS  works and very, very similarly but It comes three applications. TMDSAS, Texas no fee waivers But again, it's still get the MCAT cost reduction if you haven't taken it already with a AAMC. Just note that if you do qualify for Fee assistance program and if you've already taken the MCAT it's not retroactive, of course. But in wouldn't qualify anyone who receives it for reduced or sometimes no secondary fees at all. That's important to know. Okay, So I'm going to share a little bit of data with you all about what Cornellians tend to do. And we'll, we'll look at this in terms of this is just a overall and some notes on that. And then I'll answer questions. So I mentioned this already when we were looking at the MSAR screenshots. But Cornell applicants on the whole, and this was part of HCA app, do tend to have slightly lower GPAs and slightly higher MCAT scores than the national average. But of course, this reflects aren't rigorous curriculum here. And your great preparation for your MCAT or DAT, DAT's are also slightly higher. So note that as you go forward. And that may help you sort of classify things in that Safer versus in range versus reach. Typically. In past years, the national average for the number of MD schools people applied to was about 16. The past few years. At Cornell, it has been a lot higher. So you saw that I gave data for 28 schools how much that would cost because that was our average last year. And it's been right around 27 for the past five years. That's a lot of schools. There's a lot more than the national average. So why I think that is there are always some outliers who apply to a huge, huge number of schools. And a lot of people, this is   fairly common, Don't complete all of their secondary applications. So maybe we'll complete the primary and that gets counted in my data. They will submit a primary to, let's say hypothetically 30 schools. But then they realized that means on average three essays per school. So you do the math, that's ninety potentially essays you're writing over the summer. It's a lot of people pump the breaks that point and realize until we finish, let's say 20 applications, because it's just so much writing. Then they start narrowing down rules to the 20th, care most about. So I want to save you some money and tell you to do that now versus when you got a secondaries. It's great to not leave any secondaries unfinished. And that way you have a list of really the best fit for you. You can always add more if you need to. And it just saves you so much time and money and pressure. The average for DO schools, I was looking at national data for this, it's about 10. So certainly people tend to apply to fewer and that's because some people will apply to both MD and DO. But also there are fewer DO schools out there. And I think people just tend to do a little bit better job of like at tailoring. It's been my experience. And the average for dental is around the same I was finding about 8-10 that's national data So certainly Cornellians and they have slightly higher data. We have smaller ends for dental applicants, but that seems consistent. This does not mean this is how many you should have applied to So I just want to give you the, the lay of the land so you can make decisions and think about our averages are. But think about what's best for you. Or at the end of the day, always. I'm going to share with you all lots of other resources. This slide is totally unhelpful to you, but it's just to say this is going to be available to you at the end of the talk so that you can learn a little bit more at the end. And they're going to be some great websites. Webinar if you're applying MD so that you can get a better sense about fit. And if you were actually talk to the schools to which you're gonna apply or you're checking out. There's a DO school fair next week on April 13th and the week after that. There's an MD school fair on April 22nd. If you attend the MD school fair and you're applying empty, you can get a discount on your MSAR cost. So highly recommend that even if just to poke around. So I'm going to breeze through the last slide and then I'm going to answer questions. I see some great ones come in. Last thing I'm going to say, sum, save the dates for more information about applying, more information about choosing schools we're going to be hanging out this year as you prepare for your applications. And I look forward to it. So here's some things to note. Firstly, doing two presentations this year called AMCAS day part one and part two. And when I say AMCAS that really does mean AMCAS ACOMAS, ADSAS and TMDSAS. So we cover all of that and even though we call that AMCAS day. That's just purely historical and because it's just too many acronyms. So AMCAS Day is all about the primary applications to medical and dental school. So save the date for part one. This is covering the application itself. So I'm hosting that. I'm going to walk you through what AMCAS, ACOMAS, ADSAS and TMDSAS ask you about how to fill it out as a Cornellian And some of those commonly asked question about the coming cycle. So I am giving you the advising perspective and some notes on how to fill out your application as an Cornell applicant. Next day AMCAS Day  two on the 29th. My colleague, Doug Lockwood, who is the manager of the HCEC. He's going to walk you through how to upload your letters and your transcripts into your applications. That one's going to be a little bit more focused, Doug can only answer each HCEC questions about the committee letter process at that point. Both of these are going to be really important, but just want you to know that I can answer questions about everything except for the tiny details of the HCEC  process and logistics. It's Doug covers and he covers just HCEC. We're giving you the full scope of what you need to know about a week before applications open. So you will hear a lot more from us and anyone who is asking an AMCAS, ACOMAS et cetera. Question. I'm going to leave it til last, also important to note you can actually meet med school admissions folks in the coming weeks. I highly recommended even if you're not sure at all about these particular schools, just to hear them talk about themselves is a huge, highly, highly recommend that you attend as many as you can. I know we're all busy, so some of them will be recorded not all Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine for you for the first five classes in California, they're coming in 2 days. On April 8th, Johns Hopkins, it's coming April 13th Rochester and in New York is coming April 20th And Georgetown is going to be visiting us, but it's it's an all Ivy So it's not just for Cornell, but you're certainly welcome. On April 12th,  at 4:30  So I just want you to know those things again, I'm going to be sending the slides, so don't worry about writing it all down. And then I'm going to I'm going to take some more questions from you. I want a lot of interesting things coming in. You all are an engaged crowd and I love it. So I'm going to start with a question. See what what's the latest you would recommend taking or retaking the MCAT in order to be early in submission process. Yeah, this is a good question. It's got a little layers actually ideal timeline if you can have your score by the time you go to apply, which would be in May slash June for those applications. That that's the ideal time frame to take the MCAT. There's a lot of not quite ideal but doable timeframes and between them. And certainly I'm happy to talk one-on-one with anyone who's applying in office hours and appointment on what things are looking like for you. I know not everyone's ready to take the MCAT or DAT by that time. But if you can take it before May, that's ideal. And if you can take it in May, that's a workable. It's one thing to note. You can actually apply to medical school, via AMCAS without having an MCAT score at all. So you don't need that to apply. But it does introduce challenges. If you don't have your score. It's hard to choose a school list. And you really don't actually need a full school list until roughly the end of June. And that's when med school start seeing data from you and they know that you're around, you're applying. So you can take your time and take the MCAT in May if you need to. And then you'd have your score back in June by the time you choose schools. But of course, like every month that goes by, It's a little bit later. I'm not saying it's deal breaker, but I just want you to know that if you take it in August, schools can possibly see that until September. So your file would not possibly be closed until at least September. And that means that you might be considered slightly later. than other applicants. Many schools have a rolling admission and that just may decrease the number of seats available to you. But that's a great question. That was a pretty broad answer, but again, I'm happy to talk one-on-one with that one. Okay. So someone asked, I talked a little bit about Caspar. I absolutely will cover CASPER at AMCAS Day so I'm going to talk about them there. But Casper is a situational judgment test and it's required by many medical schools. So I will, I will cover that soon. Stay tuned for AMCAS Day which will be recorded. Fyi. Great question. You live in Ohio and apply to a public school out of state and There is a neighboring states such as Michigan. Are you still at a disadvantage since it is out-of-state? This is a great question. You know, having, again, ties to an area can be really, really important. So if you live in Ohio, I know Ohio and Michigan arrivals or that's in Michigan for like a decade. But not, not really when it comes to the general population and med school communities, essentially. So many state schools are funded by state resources. So for example, Ohio State University is taking some public funds. Michigan State University has taken some public funds. So they might have a certain number of seats for out-of-state applicants. That being said, some schools even public don't necessarily have that same consideration. So University of Michigan is a public school, but they don't have a really strong state preference. So Ohio could be great. They will probably know that you'd be likely to show up because your family is there. So that can be great. Show you have ties. It's actually, it's a little more fluid than it might sound. Good one. And I think I think I have another MCAT question that was related. I think that that kind of covered it. Again, happy to talk one-on-one with anyone. See, I got a chat question. Sorry, I have my chat closed. Someone asked, how do you decide between MD and DO? And that's a really good question to the philosophies are similar but there are some differences. I encourage you all to read. I know I keep saying like do your homework, do your homework, but it is really important to learn about the differences. Many people apply to one or the other and many apply to both. So the DO philosophy, very, very different, very similar in terms of education, but the difference being that DO are trained and a technique called osteopathic manitpulative medicine. That's a hands-on musculoskeletal technique. You can use it or not in your career, but you do learn it and you kind of have this holistic philosophy, which again, it's not that MD's don't, but it is kind of a unique tenant for the DO education. So I encourage you also read about them, learn more about MD and DO school even if you feel set one way or another because it's really just good to know and feel sure. Someone asked how would race affect schools we apply to you in reverse for academic merits? Fantastic question. So I think as I show those little screenshots from some of the schools, you might have seen selection factors. A lot of the schools are really encouraging people with backgrounds really different to each other to apply. So some of them would say things like, Yeah, we welcome vetrans We welcome people of color and welcome these kinds of things. And they are going to be looking at every factor and what you have to offer, what's been going on in your life. Are there any barriers you face? There's going to be a 1000 different things that they're going to look at as, they determine how ready you are for med school, how much of a distance you've traveled in life, how much you've done, how much is seen? And they really want to build a class with a huge variety of medical students it's so important that medical and dental schools have physician population that isn't representative of the patient population. If you come from a background that's under-represented in medicine, if you should tell them that and make sure that you do indicate your race on your application. It's not to say that folks who are represented would have no chance, not at all. But certainly the representation of that profession is not ideal right now. And they're looking to change that. So there is an effect. It's complicated. Again, I'm always happy to talk about that with folks. If you have any questions or concerns as you're making your school list, I will chat about school lists, help you tailor, talk about it. Don't hesitate to drop by office hours. Someone asked and not taking a gap year put you at a disadvantage. And it's a really great question. Again, it depends on you and how much they've been able to do in a more limited timeframe potentionally. You saw that Weill Cornell actually specifically says we have kind of an older crowd here. So it might at certain schools, but not necessarily every school conversion. And someone asked is it possible to submit your application with a good MCAT score and then tests later in the summer and trying to aim for a much better score and yep that is possible. But if you do indicate a future test date, every school's approaching this differently. Some schools will wait until your second score comes in So they give you a fair shake and they see your complete application. Some schools there are going to say, Hey, we'll really going to look at score right now. We're going to interview without knowing this or, and so then we'll make sure and take a look at your score by the time we make decisions after interviews. Well, for some schools it won't matter much. For others. It might set you back in terms of the timeline. This is where things get frustrating because life is getting very school-specific at this point. So I just encourage you all to chat with pre-health advisors are here to help Someone asked, how are schools looking at clinical hours, especially during this time with virtual shadowing the accepted, again, such as school specific question, but generally med schools, dental schools, they know the landscape during COVID. It's been so complicated. So many clinical opportunities have not been available. But shaddowing has typically been kinda one of those things, at least for med school. There wasn't really a game changer. Like you're sitting in a room, you're watching things happened. So what they really wanted was patient interaction experience. That's been key. Little different for dental. Dental is always like shaddowing. For medical school, you know, learn all the professionals. Learn about it by reading and help us vulnerable people in whatever ways you've been able to do, because that's the key. That's what they've been looking for. So even if it's not in the clinical space, if you were at least helping people who've been vulnerable during this pandemic. You're doing the right things. But I'm going to just say caveat yes, every medical and dental school want you to have some sort of clinical experience. So things got paused last year. It's okay, especially if you've had some before. And virtual shadowing, not really shaddowing, kind of just like attending info sessions. Which again can be great. But it's not necessarily like accepted as being shadowing. It's just you learning about the profession. I mean, things that would be really helpful are getting clinical experiences before slash after pandemic. Learning about the profession in any way you can and helping vulnerable people. I keep saying that because it's so key, whatever way interests you. And someone asked, Can community experiences make up for a lack of clinical patient interaction experience? Say yes and no. So again, they want you to have some sort of clinical experience because you wouldn't want anyone signing up for a profession that they'd never been able to actually explore themselves. So they still have some sort of a bar. They want you to have some sort of clinical experience. But if it's less, they very much understand. If it's none, then I would consider waiting And I know this is starting to become really individualized. So again, I keep saying follow up with me, follow up with another health careers advisor. But this is our job. We're here to help you assess whether it's through a year or whether you might want to wait. Okay, some question here. How can we find out which states have a strong in-state preference? Is there a resource for this? That's a great question. It depends a little bit on medical or dental where exactly you can find this information. But for example, in MSAR, you can see whether a school accepts out-of-state, and that's actually a filter. You can just search too, and it's available on the left hand side of the screen. You can also see data as you go Into MSAR on how many applicants applied were interviewed and were accepted from in-state and out-of-state that I find super helpful. So that is a great way of looking at which our state public schools are worth it, so to speak. And which ones are Reachy and which ones are actually not Reachy Just based on that criteria alone. A great one. Okay, so no question without sort of information about if schools are going to look at your app only after a later MCAT or interview without the MCAT score like in the previous question, your answer be available to schools, communicate their approached Applicants? So that's another good question. It's a little bit of you have to do a digging on this one It's not necessarily a list that's cultivated. But I will say that last year there was a set of MSAR advisor reports coming. We're talking in school, med school for this question. So MSAR reports. Try to kinda create a list of like the COVID protocols. And I think they're going to do something like that again, this cycle. So if you google and MSAR advisor reports, you can probably find a little more detail on that, but, you know, every school reports a little bit more and less detail depending on their information at hand. And a lot of places haven't made decisions about that. Fully. Med schools, quiet time is kind of May so a lot of Their 20, 21, 22 cycle updates will probably come then Just FYI. So wow, it's it's about 06:00 PM. I can't believe it. This has been a lot of fantastic questions from you all I know there's probably still so much we could talk about when it comes to schools. But again, I'm just going to say I'm here. We have a whole set of health careers advisors here to help you. And we're absolutely sure to chat with you about schools making decisions as you're preparing to apply any questions. And that's what we're here for. So don't hesitate to reach out to us. And I will follow up with you all with slides from today. And by signing up, registering for this talk, we'll let you know when the recording has been captioned and is available for viewing as well. If you my catch up when all of the things we talked about. So I hope you all have a really great night and thanks for attending. Thanks for your wonderful questions. I hope this has been helpful and take good care. Looking forward to talking to you all again soon.