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12 Tips For Applying Late To Medical School

So you’re applying late to medical school. Maybe you’ve been saving up money, had to delay your MCAT, or had to finish prerequisite courses. You’re probably really nervous and unsure of how this will affect your application. Well, we are here to help you make the most out of a late application! Below we’ve listed our top 12 tips for applying successfully as a late applicant.

Applying Late To Medical School
  1. Focus on the preparations required to apply. Put all your effort into writing your personal statement, securing good letters of recommendation, studying for the MCAT, researching schools, writing secondaries, etc. 
  2. Work with a premed advisor or an affordable med school application consultant. Whether this is someone at your school, someone at Motivate MD, or elsewhere, it will be a significant advantage especially as a late applicant.
  3. Organization is key. We recommend tracking your schools– and secondaries, interviews, and deadlines– via spreadsheet (see this reddit post for an example).
  4. You will have several months more experience than other applicants, so focus on getting the most out of your job/shadowing/volunteering/research/other activities, and take care to really highlight that in your application. 
  5. It is Important to have a significant strength in your application, whether a high MCAT score, stellar letters of recommendation, unique activities, or ideally more than one of the above.
  6. If you are able to apply as a disadvantaged applicant, some schools will be more likely to accept you later in the cycle due to considerations of the financial barriers.
  7. Apply to both MD and DO schools. While DO schools have the same application timeline as MD schools, most have slightly higher acceptance rates than MD schools. Therefore, apply to DO schools as well (mostly those without rolling admissions). DO schools especially value essays, activities, and other non-grade or score related application components, so you will potentially be at less of a disadvantage. 
  8. Make informed decisions when making a school list. When applying late, you should carefully consider your schools. Use resources like student doctor network or reddit premed to see what late applicants’ experiences were, which schools they applied to, and where they got accepted.
  9. Avoid applying to schools with rolling admissions very late in the cycle. Some schools have one set application deadline, usually in October or November. However, many schools without rolling admissions have early decisions options, and when you submit could still impact your chance of getting an interview, if schools have rolling interview cycles. Check schools’ websites to get a better idea of how your late application would affect your chance of acceptance.
  10. Many in state-schools favor in-state applicants and have most seats saved for them. At these schools, even if you apply late you still may have a competitive chance of an interview and acceptance. On the other hand, if applying late, avoid applying to schools that favor in-state applicants, as your chance of acceptance will be lower. 
  11. Apply to schools for which your stats fall above the average accepted students’. This way, you will still be considered a competitive applicant even if applying later.
  12. Submit all your secondaries within two weeks of receiving them. Start pre-writing your secondaries as soon as you submit your primary application. Another key time-saver (and you want to save as much time as possible applying late) is to group your secondary responses by topics, not schools, so that you can use the same general response for different school. For example, make a document of “adversity” questions and group by word limits that different schools have. Make another document of the COVID question, or diversity question, etc.
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