So welcome everybody to choose your medical school tool, an application. Next steps. My name is Ana Adinolfi and I'm here today representing health careers advising network. It's a broad network of all the health careers, advisers that work here at Cornell Some of you may have heard that Chelsea Rule unfortunately is not working at Cornell anymore and so you're directing questions to her. You can now direct those questions to me. So I'm covering for her as long as necessary so welcome. Please use the Q&A box if you have questions. So here is my plan for today, we're going to talk to each other as much as you can in a webinar format about how the cycles going. We're going to go over the timeline for the rest of the cycle. We're going to talk about waitlists Plan B, timelines, updates, all that sort of stuff. I have some advice for you and some tips know from previous cycles. I'm going to talk to you about choosing medical school. What is it? What are you using it? all that good stuff And then I'm going to take your questions so please use the Q&A box as you need to. And so to start off with today I have a poll everywhere. Go ahead and sign in and sign. And then the question is, what's one word to describe how you're feeling about the applications cycle at this moment. Okay, we have one response I know it's working one word to describe how you're feeling at this moment. But I believe that it's only one person will get, a lot of people. Anxious, anxious is getting bigger what Other words? Yeah a little sad, excited and Mary, once it's out, how nice and each of, hey, how about science? How many interviews, how you had (or do you have scheduled upcoming in this cycle? Three or more interviews is winning out alright and have you been accepted yet Yes, I have a feeling this may be the line in between anxious and Alright we have 3 people live and responding, I see you out there. Let's talk about the cycle right now, so we are in the home streach, which is great, but there's a lot that is going on still to get you to August and September. Seen variations of this timeline,  all the ways and since fall 2020 when you started applying to medical school. And I know there's a lot of nerves and anxiety antisipation excitement a year around the cycle. Some people have a lot of interviews. I know that there are some who haven't had any yet. We're here in the cycle of interviews and updates and that goes all the way through April. We're here talking right now in February. And I've seen I've seen all sorts of things happened in the last couple of weeks to have an offered an interview and gone on an interview with attendees or two weeks So things are still happening. We're still very much in that interview update cycle. And wherever you are in the cycle my hope for you is that you sense about next steps before. we leave today so I want to break down that very end the cycle because like I said, there's a lot going on. February February 22nd is when it's when the Chose your own medical school tool opens. That's the big events in February. It's happening on Tuesday in March on March 15th. It's a big date for medical school. So you usually do anything on March 15th but the medical schools do. At that point, they need to offer as many acceptances as they have spaces in their incoming class. So a lot of schools, weait are somewhere on or before March next year to get any admissions decisions or to give out a big batch of an admissions decision. Why things happened in March, things start to move around a lot because even if you don't get an admission decision in March, there might be another applicant in the pool that gets into around March 15th and then gives up their offer of admission at another school. And so you can get off a hold or get off a waitlist based on somebody else moving around things and March. This is also a reminder to those of you who are lucky to have multiple interviews are multiple acceptances when you have the opportunity to be generous and give up those spots, do I mean, obviously you have to be the best choice for you in a cycle, but if you have the opportunity to be generous to your fellow applicants, please do that. So in April, that's usually what interviews conclude And then the other big date is a big one for people who are holding multiple acceptances. So those who still have three or more acceptances on April 15th, you're going to need to narrow your acceptances down. You can only be holding three at that point. So again, that April 15th date there tends to be a lot of movement around that because people who had four giving up their forth one to be sure that there will be three. So May it's also time for waitlist If you're finishing the month of May on waitlist this is when you're deciding how long am I going to stick around on that waitlist We find May second. Everyone needs to be choosing one school that they are going to attend and then withdraw from the others. So that's what accounts for all the  waitlist movement in way. Those people who have three schools on April 15th are now on May second, only holding one admission so they're giving up to two. So that's that, and that's when that happens. You're going to be matriculating the summer when you're continuing on to medical school. And of course, you know that the 2022 cycle for 2023 matriculation and gets going again with AMCAS opening in May and AMCAS being submitted usually. And so once you are so what if you haven't yet had interviews? What if you haven't yet been accepted to medical school? And I would say first, take stock of how things are going so far. It's normal to you rejected from schools. It's normal to not have heard from some schools. It does feel like they haven't communicated with you at all since you send it a secondary. It's normalcy I holds for this, That's all very normal for this time. In the cycle, some schools, you're not your not gonna hear from until cycles, all the way done you might never clear from them you might have to withdraw It's not personal. It's not an indicator of whether or not your applications under consideration. So unfortunate, not hearing from a school is not a rejection. To be waitlisted is  also not rejection. So we can't tell what those rules are thinking. And so I urge you to were schools when you haven't yet been rejected. Treat them like you are still in contention just as much as the day you submitted your secondary. I did a huge presentation at the end of October of 2021 about communicating with med school. So I'm not going to go on a big reminder of all of those things that's posted on the CCS media website. So communicating with medical schools, if you're interested in more things about interest letters, update letters, letter of intent, Went into huge detail at the end December, I mean October so I'm not going to do that now. But except to say that this is the season for letters of intent, though, there might be a strategic advantage for some of you to send letters of intent, which is that one letter to schools that say if you accept me, I will attend. Remember you can only have one letter of intent out there. Yeah. It's not common to send a letter of intent because there's so many complicated strategic reasons for sending one or not sending one. So this is a good time to consult with an health careers advisor about your strategy for communicating with medical schools, you can offer an additional perspective on whether or not in your unique case That makes sense for you. A lot of people have asked me in the last couple of weeks, is it time to think about reapplying if I haven't yet been accepted? Is it depends. It depends on how the cycles gone for you so far. I would much rather you spend this time in late February, early March, focus on this application cycle, sending updates, asking people affiliated with That's school to advocate for you, ensuring that you do whatever you can to say if the cycle ends up worst-case scenario, I did everything that I could. I made all the effort that I could. You know, even if it's helpful to you to think about, okay, if the cycle doesn't happen, will I reapply right away, It's hard to see what went wrong and we're still in the middle of the cycle and still have a chance to be admitted, particularly if you went on interviews and are sitting on holds or waitlists. Mid to late March, might be a good time to be thinking about, reapplying if you You haven't had interviews so far. You've been rejected everywhere you've interview you know, I'm happy to have a conversation with you now, the health careers advising network, we're all happy to have that conversation and it's going to be helpful to you. It's never too early to develop a parallel plan, which is when you consider the potential deficits in your application, you work to improve them. Worst-case scenario, you get into med school and then even better first-year medical student, because of the parallel plan that you created you know, best-case scenario, it helps you if you have reactivation. If it's true, late March is kinda tight to take if you're thinking about getting AMCAS and updating HCEC and all that good stuff. before AMCAS starts again the 2022 cycle and that's one of the reasons that we tend to recommend that you take more time off if you aren't admitted in this cycle Oh, but again, that is absolutely. Conversation we are happy to have with you as health careers advisors. And again, check out the CCS media library. That's where communicating with med schools lives Before I move on, I just want to show you some information about last year's class AMCAS applicants used for the 2020, 2021 acceptance. So that's this pie chart. These are people concerning medical school this past fall. The biggest piece of advice for right after the pink color, and that's applicants you are accected to only one medical school. You see it's 38% of applicants, who were accepted. The second biggest pieces that is there on the bottom left, it's the navy blue section and that's applicants you were accepted two medical school. So that's 29% of applicants. Then clockwise it goes down from there through school sports with bicycles, and then seven or more schools kind of group them all together. I just want to point this out to say that 38% of the people who were admitted to medical school were admitted to only one medical school This is fine. This is normal. These people are at medical school right now living the life that you're hoping, to be living six months from now. So it's nice to have seven or more, options of where to attend, but even seven or more people they still had to only pick one medical school. So we only need one medical school and 38% of people last year only ended up having one option So what do you, what happens if you have multiple options? So if you have more than one offer of admission, how do you make that choice? But first, I want to encourage you to reach out to admissions offices at those schools they offer you admission are interested in you as an applicant. They're interested that enrich our feelings or their school or they want you to come. So you can also consult with objective, trusted friends or family members. If you know people or you want me to try and connect you with people who may have attended. That school previously. We can do that for you. So start gathering together your team and thinking about it is important to you and and what information do you still need to have in order to get a really good informed choice. If you come to me and talk to me about how to make a decision about medical school, these are some of the questions that I would aks you. So, you know, what do you want to do? How's your interview day? What's the culture of the school? What do you want to do going forward with your career? Are you interested in working with a patient population that's prevalent at that hospital. Do you like the curriculum of that school are you more of a pass/fail person or graded person. Do you want to go move to the place the school is located for the next four years? Also, think about what you wanna do with your life in the future. A good match reports and see where people are matching. Matching what I think right now, my, my future interests also consider preferences and limitation that could be family preferences, financial limitions and all those sorts of things though, into your decision. And it's going to be unique only to you. But do reach out to the admissions offices if you have additional questions. And remember, it's just like with Cornell, you chose Cornell you came here, maybe some of you maybe knew a lot about Cornell some of you maybe didn't know a lot about Cornell, the experience changed you and matured you and medical school will be Just like that. The reasons  why you chose Cornell your ending your high school career and the reasons why I love Cornell now might be the same or they might be very different okay. So if you exclusively offensive dental schools or DO schools this is a great time to excuse yourself because the chose your medical school tool is what I am going to start talking about now. And that's exclusive to applicants that use AMCAS and to a certain extent TMDSAS the Texas schools because they are covered on the chose your own medical school tool so if you applied to DO or dental schools. Thanks for coming. you can email me questions so you don't have to stick around til the end So what is choose your medical school. This is the AMCAS centralized way where you as an applicant to talk about your intentions to medical schools. All medical schools are going to require that you use to choose your medical school tool at some point. But using the choose your medical school tool does not have a direct communication with medical schools it's considered supplemental so your doing this in addition to communicating directly with medical schools And this is hosted through AMCAS So as you know, there were AMCAS hosting your primary application and then each schools portal was in your secondary application. So it's that same sort of model that you see from the primary and the secondary. This is complicated, complicated. That's why we're here today. So chose your medical school is primarily in enrollment management tool for the admission side and straightforward medical school to get a sense of what's going on with their applicants In the old days this was four years ago. There used to be a date around now and February were schools that automatically gets to see what they're accepted or waitlisted students, where their students were accepted or waitlisted So schools will sometimes use this decision to the side. I don't know already got enough places. I'm not going let them in off the waitlist I'm going to make a different decision about an applicant based on what I know about that. So Choosing Medical School tool, he basically to protect your privacy as anapplicant and to give you choice and agency over what medical schools know about you and what they have, what information they have about you in the process. So this this information is anonymous until May second which is when we have to narrow down to one acceptance anyway. And then after that information, it becomes something that medical schools tied to your name. So this was four years old. The data show that this is really helpful for medical schools in managing our enrollment. So it's something that is going to continue on and on. And I'm going to continue talking to you about it. Here's the page from the AAMC about choosing your medical school tool It gives you all the dates and need to understand. The AAMC has a lot of great information about CYMS, and this is just one of them. So starting on February 22nd, Choosing Medical School becomes available that if you are holding acceptances currently, you won't have access to chose your medical school until you get an acceptance So if you have one acceptance or one or more acceptances, you'll have access to it. on the 22nd starting at 09:30 AM If you really want to go get them. only option that's available starting February 22nd, and it goes all the way until May 1st is Plan to Enroll So plan to enroll basically means that you keep kind of going like you've been going down. Stay on waitlist go on interviews, hold other offers give other people deposits, and you're selecting maintain robots me February 22nd and May 1st That basically means here, That's my top choice. But nothing really beyond that, because you're going to continue on the cycle like you've been doing so far. Yeah, and like I said, I'm only going to see aggregate, applicant information, which means it's not identifiable. So they'll just see this applicants these many applicants in general, these many applicants. Then elswhere the applicants didn't say anything So. And then for other schools where you've been admitted so if your holding two or more offers of admission, those schools can see if you plan to enroll or if you plan to enroll elsewhere. So I've admitted you. I can see you didn't select my school as plan to enroll elsewhere. But again, they're not going to know you that click that. And they are not going to know what school that is They don't have an information about oh Ana Adinolfi decided she would you go to this particular school? So that is true. Until May second detailed identifiable information becomes available about you as an applicant and whether or not you had clicked plan to enroll. So whereas your name was not tied to it prior to May second starting on May second medical schools can see it was Ana Adinolfi that clicked plan to enroll or clicked plan to enroll elsewhere elsewhere or nothing if you didn't put anything yet, That's true. Everybody accepted or waitlisted They can see kind of what what your statuses is you're waitlisted it's more vacancy. Did you click plan to enroll elsewhere? Because you can't click plan to enroll at their institutions yet obviously, they didn't let you in yet. So again, they don't know what the other institution is. specifically that you clicked, they get an aggregate data and reporting, but it's not tied to you specifically. So I might be able to see my top competitors schools are, but I can't see that you clicked plan to enroll at one of my top competetor school specifically But I do know if you click plan to enroll or not at those other schools So after May second click to enroll i enroll is still available for your top schools this just means that they're going to have an information, but it's you in particular that did it. And there's also commit to enroll that becomes available on May second for the first time and that goes until the end of the cycle So commit to enrole is the serious one commit to enroll means I have said I'm coming to your institution. I'm going to show up on orientation day, I'm signing a lease my apartment and I withdrawn from every other medical school that I haven't got out of the time. So this is the very last the very final decision. Know for sure where your going to medical school. And you aren't remaining on any waitlists You're saying I'm done. I've made my top choice. And that will be on May second. See some questions I'm going to look at them now. Can you tell the difference between letter interest, update and intent? I'm not going to talk about that here today because it is very well covered in the webinar that's on the Cornell Career Services media website. Okay. Any other questions? Free of time on the Q&A box. One other question I have is, are we required to do plan to enroll when chose your  medical school tool opens? The short answer is, maybe;?  usually not. Usually the first thing you are asked to use the chose your own medical school tool or has only been admitted to a school and they want you to click commit to enroll So that's May second at the earliest. But each school has slightly different approach to things, but plan to enroll, that's kind of your decision. Do I have a top choice at this time in my and then letting medical schools know my captions. So most of the time you don't have to use it until you, until your required to use it by the medical school and that leads to  my next slide, which is, don't click on anything on chose your medical school tool unless you have reviewed these things first, so up there that first bullet point is the AAMC application and acceptance protocols for applicants We call these the traffic rules because they haven't made up of cool acronym for it yet. But there's traffic rules for applicants and there's traffic rules for medical schools as well and this is available on AAMC website. I would absolutely take the time to review these expectations to make sure you have an understanding of what is required of you as an applicant. Because AMCAS puts that on you you have to understand what are the requirements. Am I doing? What's needed? And you're responsible for protocol. And it's good to look at what medical schools are required to do to submit know what's in and out of bounds and you have an understanding of what to expect from them. So each school has their own policy, their own deadlines, and you're expected to know. It's just like the secondaries are each, so it's going to be slightly different. Do you have to be sure that you read the instructions you're doing things that they want to do. Some schools encourage you to engage with the tool earlier. They usually, so those are going to be explicit about when you are required to use a tool. And I will say that the, uh, the most common thing for schools to ask for is for you to select, commit to enroll four weeks before you would matriculate to that school so it's getting close to orientation time about a month before. And they want you to actually start. Usually that's when schools are going to say, I need you to to be clicking commit to enroll so that I know that you're definitely coming to our institution and work on all of the other that are out there. And so that's the reason why some schools might say August 1st, I might start on August 7th, somebody started in July 20th. And so obviously four weeks before that date is going to be different for every single school. And so you need to know on June 20th, you have to click the button. When need to be sure that you're doing that and make sure that you understand individuals forward. It also is helpful to communicate with schools directly about what your intentions are. So like I said, chose your medical school tool is an AMCAS thing it's an AAMC thing it's just like the primary application was communicated out to medical schools. You have to be communicating individual just like with the secondary. However, it is that they want you to communicate with them. And again, understand what the requirements are. You don't have to use chose your medical school tool If you don't want to you if you aren't compelled to you until it is required by the medical school. So you have to make sure if you're choosing not to use chose your own medical school tool. You want to be sure that when it's required of you, you're ready to go ahead and click admit to enroll. All right, so some tips for using chose your medical school tool plan to enroll as your top choice right now, you might change your mind. if your admitted to one medical school. only Right now, you're absolutely within your rights. to click plan to enroll at that institution at 9:30 AM on February 22nd, if that's what you want to do. If you're, if you're admitted to more than one medical school tool then you can only click Plan to enroll at one institution at a time but you can change your mind. So you might click plan to enroll at one institution, get some financial aid information that's really interesting. And they could plan to enroll at the second school the next day. That's totally fine. You can change your selection as much as you want prior to May 2nd So selecting plan to enroll is required by before it required selecting plan to enroll It really doesn't have an explicit benefit to you. The benefits, really to medical schools and their enrollment planning. So it's there if you want it If you don't, that's fine. You're going to be doing all of this research. to find out when is it required? What is the kind of understanding of their requirement? And schools really use this tool because they want to have a sense of who they're going to enroll and who they're not. So that if you do know and you want to share that with medical school, that can be immensely helpful for them and something. But I encourage and medical schools encouraged. But again, before it's required, it's absolutely optional for you and doesn't carry any specific benefit. Commit to enroll, that's the big deal because it indicates your final choice Every school is going to require you to click commit enroll at some point or the other advantage is the matter I've got to figure out when that date is and make sure you don't miss it. I make sure that you're doing what the school requires and make sure you're communicating both with chose your medical school too and the school itself. So each school has a different protocol that you're going to say no to the school first of all most of you when you get into the school or submitting it deposits, you read the fine print about How do I get my money back? When do I need to let you know what is the procedure for getting my money back? So make sure that you have that understanding of saying no, making sure you're staying no on the right schedule get that money back. Also, you want to be communicating write to them, thank them for their time. Just let them know, Hey, I decided to choose another school but I really appreciate your time. You're time interviewing me, all the best. So quick, easy. be sure to be grateful to them because it really does take so much time for them to review all of these applications You can withdraw at any point, even if you're not admitted to another school. You just leave out the part about choosing to attend another school You just say, hey please withdraw me from consideration I really enjoyed spending time with you. Good luck with everything. So again, if you've interviewed somebody like that nope that schools not for me. Do withdraw because if the schools not for you There's no real reason to be hanging on to that acceptance, hanging on to that interview, hanging onto that waitlist or hold when somebody else could benefit. Whereas if you're sure that you're not going to attend that  institution. Okay. So yes. When you want to say yes, most of you if you buy and you already said yes, I giving them money, That's one way to hold a seat for yourself putting down the deposit. And then of course, you'd be put down a bunch of deposits before May 2nd You can put down more than three before April 15th. It's just a matter of making sure that you are getting your money back, you need to get your money back Planning to enroll that is again an non-binding decision where you can  only select one at a time, making changes and commits enroll is I am absolutely going to this school. I'm not going to change my mind in that means you've  said No, you've done that first part with all the other schools you say commits, enroll, and then you communicate with all of the other schools. where you have applied, interviewed, accpeted even if they haven't communicated with you since you submitted your secondary, we're still going to communicate with them and say, thank you for your time. I'm committed to enroll at another school so make sure you are communicating with everybody and withdrawn formally once you've made that commit to enroll decision. Alright. So like I said, AAMC, website has a ton of information about the choose your medical school tool It has those long lists of traffic rules, the application and acceptance protocols. You can find out a lot about what each individual school is asking of you on MSAR So there's another great use of MSAR If you haven't dusted that one off at a lie a lot and that can be a quicker way to be looking at some of this stuff And know that the general information you're going to see on the AAMC's website has slightly earlier dates like February 18th and April 30th. That's because a lot of the traditional dates that AAMC usually does stuff on holidays this year So it should it should be February 18th but it's actually February 22nd this year because of presidents day holiday. So just note that you want to look at the 2022 dates that are on the AAMC website But it's also worth noting if you're watching this recording from the future, hello, double-check the dates for your application. Just move around a little bit. Alright, that is all the information that I have. It's now time for questions. If you haven't already typed a question. I have you have a question. Go ahead and put that In the chat or in the Q&A box. On the screen I have the information about my drop-in hours. So there's a few ways to drop in with me. I have individual drop-in hours on Mondays and Wednesdays in the afternoon not next week, I'm on vacation next week, but after that, yes, every Monday and Wednesday and I try to be really specific, if I'm not able to make it And then group drop-in hours start on March 1st and that's going to be just me sitting in a Zoom room seeing who shows up and answering the question of whomever shows up So it's going to be some 2021 applicants. Some 2022 applicants Just come by if you have questions and this works out great. You you can't get in a 30 minute appointment and you can't get an individual drop in. You know that I'm going to be there sitting in zoom room for an hour or so. Hopefully you can catch me.  for quick questions. There's also a whole network of healthcare as advisors on campus. And so it's not just me there is tons of people that are here to help you. And help you make the decisions that are so crutial this time in the application cycle And so searching Cornell Health Careers Advisors, the first, second search results should get you the list of all the advisors that are here in campus. It will also get you all the links to things like Say, how do I sign up for a 30 minute appointment with Ana? How do I sign up for zoom? what's the link to that zoom? All of that information is on the Cornell Health Careers Advisors, but it should be right up top there. So I have to say, I will take a look in the chat and the Q&A and see if anything has popped up So do you question? Yes, it will be putting this recording probably in the next the next three to five businesses days it will go up on the website. Alright, So a question in the chat. So to clarify, if you do not use the chose your medical school tool before May 2nd we are not at risk of losing a seat at the medical schools as long as you submit deposits However, after May second should be at least indicate plan to enroll? It's up to you. So yes, you aren't required to select, plan to enroll, anywhere, commit to enroll each medical school is going to have your own rules about committing to enroll it's possible. A medical school could say May second is the date to selective commit to enroll It's unlikely and it's frowned upon for medical schools to do that but it's possible, let me know if that happens to you. You can chat about it. But more common is that Medical School will require that commit to enroll 4 weeks before matriculation. That's it. That's the most common thing. But again, four weeks before matriculation could be a month variation between school, so you don't have to select plan to enroll if you don't want to, you just have to know when schools are wanting commit to enroll Hope that helps. Other questions. I'll stop the recording and stick around for a few minutes. Other questions come up.