BUY NOW PAY LATER???<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

1. Shoot your shot. Trust your gut and the strength of your app. A lot of this process is luck, and some of my best interviews and the school I PTEd to as of now are schools I thought I had no shot at. In retrospect, maybe they are well deserved, but my unsuccessful last cycle made me seriously doubt my app and lose all confidence in myself. If you’re a reapplicant, your app can only be stronger this year as a result of whatever you did last year, so you deserve to aim for the same tier of schools or higher. (But ofc still apply to safeties and some schools you didn’t apply to last cycle!)
2. Being a reapplicant is not a death sentence, if anything I think there’s a lot of inherent value in it. It is unbelievably emotionally taxing to reapply. I spent all of last spring crying, refreshing SDN and my email every 5 minutes praying I would get off a waitlist, and anxious about having no idea what I would do in my unplanned additional gap year. Amidst all of that, preparing a new primary app and going through the process of writing secondaries again while still holding out hopes for a waitlist to work out was grueling. But this cycle proved to me that schools do admire the drive it takes to be a reapplicant. It shows you are committed and truly want to pursue this career. And there are a couple of the schools I got interviews at I’m convinced just felt bad I’m a reapplicant lol.
3. Make your school list and use MSAR wisely beyond just looking at avg gpa and MCAT. The second time I applied, I looked into more details about total number of applicants, OOS vs IS stats, demographics, etc to add 8 less popular safety schools that I thought I had a good shot at and didn’t apply to the first time. I turned in those 8 ASAP (<1 week turnaround) and got an interview at 4 of them. Some schools get 5000 total applicants, some get 12,000 - make sure you apply to some of those ones that get less.
4. Secondaries are WAY more important than most people think in my opinion. I don’t think my secondaries were at all bad my first time, but I was unbelievably strategic and spent way longer on them the second time. I did a ton of research on each school before I started writing, and really tailored them to that school’s mission. For example, Creighton loves whole person care and non medical community service, a T20 school may value research way more, Rush is huge on community service hours, some schools are big on clinical hours, etc. I picked which activities I focused on in my secondaries very wisely based on what I felt that school would value most. I treated each school as if it was my dream school, really put time into each why us essay, and made subtle changes to wording of sentences to fit the “vibes” of each school. I extensively researched the patient population and community health needs of each school’s affiliate hospitals before writing the secondaries. And for schools I had no ties to, I tried to have a super quick secondary turnaround hoping that would be seen as a display of my interest. Med schools can only interview 500-1000 students. They are not going to just interview their best applicants, because those applicants would likely choose a different school. They will interview applicants who meet certain criteria AND have a very high likelihood of attending their school (whether that be because you have some sort of ties or are a great fit to their mission)
5. “Why us” secondary essay tip - when applicants are picking schools, they often post on Reddit or SDN a school X vs Y post with pros and cons of each. I found these posts to be super helpful and have a lot of gems you wouldn’t find on a school website.
6. A lot of schools offer feedback to reapplicants. I really regretted not doing this. Off the top of my head, I know UA Tucson, BU, and Indiana University do. I’m sure there are A LOT more I’m missing, and if a school doesn’t explicitly say in their rejection email that they can’t offer advice then why not just give it a shot and ask. At worst you get no advice but it shows them you care about their school and are a motivated individual looking for ways to improve, and at best you can get some useful tips.
7. See what other ways you can show interest in schools. Do they have open houses? Do they have virtual info sessions? Do they have advisors you can reach out to and ask questions? Can you schedule a campus tour? Some secondaries even ask you to check boxes of what admissions events you’ve attended. But at least in your why us essay you can mention attending these events.
8. Changing your Personal statement - Personally, I believe your core reasons for going into medicine aren’t going to change much in a year so no need to completely rework your PS. Obviously get it checked and get some opinions, but especially if you got interviews, your writing couldn’t have been that bad. All writing has room for improvement though, so definitely re write and make changes as needed but don’t feel pressured to completely change everything. I made only minor changes to my PS, kept 80% of my work and activity descriptions identical, and just re worded a few things and added in 1 additional activity that I gained. Trust your gut though and get some people to read your stuff. For me personally, I didn’t feel my PS and work/activities had any major issue bc of the 3 interviews I got, but for some people they could be.
9. LORs - again, something like your college classes didn’t change so I don’t see why you need a new LOR. Get it redated if possible, but if you can’t don’t stress. 2/3 of my professor LORs I did not get re dated. I got one additional LOR the second time I applied, but my other 4 were identical (2 just re dated). For some people, LORs could be the reason you didn’t get interviews, but if you got interviews and were waitlisted, personally I think your LORs must have been fine (because I think most schools read your LOR before determining if you get an II, I could be wrong though?). Another thing I didn’t realize is that some schools only accept a few LORs and if you send too many they will randomly choose what to read. My first cycle, I sent all my LORS to every school through AMCAS. Second cycle, I looked up school specific policies and individually selected which letters to send to each school. For those that only accepted a few LORs, I was strategic in picking which one I felt would be valued more (in addition to my college professors, my research PI, or my letter from volunteer work with an underserved community supervisor, or from my clinical position)
10. Interviews - I think what went wrong for me the first cycle is that all 3 of my interviews were at “reach” schools. For most schools, it’s not like the interview single-handedly determines whether or not you get in. You get a score for your interview, and that along with the rest of your app is reassessed. For my 3 schools, I think my interview was fine but I was just competing with a very competitive group of applicants I was already towards the bottom of because of the rest of my app. That’s why the second time I focused on trying to get interviews at “safety” schools. I was accepted to almost all those schools post interview this time. Again though, there is always room for improvement for everyone and everything, so keep working on your interview skills and doing mocks even if you are confident that wasn’t your issue.
11. Applying DO - I didn’t the first time, but second time I did bc I knew I did not have it in me to apply a 3rd cycle and would much rather go DO at that point. I applied to 8 DO schools and got interview invites at 7 of them, attended the interview for 5 of them (other 2 were in person), and was accepted to all 5 I attended. So my takeaway from that was that DO schools don’t yield protect unlike a lot of MD schools. While I understand MD schools may be ideal, there are some amazing DO schools and ask yourself when you apply if you’d rather go to a DO school or be a reapplicant. And understand that your answer could change after a very frustrating app cycle. You don’t know how you’d feel from a year from now and if you would wish you had left that option open for yourself. Don’t stress about timing as much though, I submitted all my DO apps in September after my MD apps were completely finished.
12. Changes to make for reapplication - while I feel like a lot of people had great apps and just got unlucky, really assess what you could do differently to improve your app or how you could market yourself better the second time. It’s kind of crazy when you think of it that 4+ years of your hard work will be read by an adcom member in a few minutes. Good writing and marketing yourself as best as possible are critical. For me, while I had a good amount of clinical hours, I felt that my clinical hours were weaker than my research hours so I started a new clinical position in April before reapplying. While I didn’t have that many hours by the time I submitted my primary, I was still able to write anticipated hours and write meaningfully about the impactful patient encounters I did have at that point. That was really my only tangible change I had. The rest of what I talked about in my reapplicant secondary essays were smaller things (ex. I learned a language during my gap year so spoke about that a lot, and talked about what I gained from continuing a lot of my existing activities for another year). But same MCAT, same GPA, identical LORs (except for the one additional one), mostly similar PS and Work/activities section, and improved secondaries.
13. Rolling admissions are no joke! I really think 2-3 weeks could make the difference of an identical app getting an interview or not. And for some schools, interviewing earlier in the cycle really increases your chances of being accepted instead of waitlisted. Without compromising quality, get those secondaries in ASAP. Focus on your primary app now, but spend all of June pre writing. Einstein for example even says on their website that most of the people they interview submit their secondaries before the end of July. And again, I think a quick secondary turnaround time could be a great display of interest. It’s impossible to submit all your apps right away, but pick a strategic mix of which apps you want to have a 2-3 day turnaround for, which ones a 1 week, which ones a 2 week, which ones a 1 month, etc. this is especially important for schools you may be a great fit for but have no ties to.
14. Update letters and continued interest letters - send them! personally I think October - December is a great time because that’s before the second wave of interviews will go out in Jan/feb. Don’t stress if you have no major updates. You really don’t need a publication or new position to write an update letter. It could simply be I continued X and Y activities and am still very interested in your school. Post interview too, look up school specific policies and see if an update letter could be useful. And of course, if you’re on a waitlist, see if an update letter of letter of intent would be appropriate.
15. Get as much advice as possible. This process is so confusing and can truly be a crapshoot, the more tips you know the better. Talk to older students, other applicants, mentors, etc. I am shameless and will private message anyone and everyone on SDN. You’d be surprised at how friendly most premeds can be and how willing they are to share advice.
16. You don’t have to retake PREVIEW, but you need a new CASPER each year. I found this out very late and wish I had known this earlier.
17. Tip for saving money on reapplying if you don’t know if you’ll get off a waitlist- submit your primary application to just one school when it opens so you won’t face delays in verification. Give yourself til end of June to see if you get off a waitlist, and if you don’t, then add and pay for all of your other schools at the end of June or beginning of July. That way, if you get off a waitlist you only wasted money on applying to one school. If you don’t get off a waitlist, you would have zero delays in verification and submitting secondaries.

The AHL BOG is still waiting to see if ASU & Oak View Group will/can squeeze the Runners dates in at Mullett Arena with the Suns G League team also a strong possibility to play at Mullett next season, eating up dates that Sun Devil isn't using in its 1st season in the NCHC. There is also the issue of the two remaining years on the team's lease at Tucson Arena. A source also said the Tucson lease permits the Runners to play as many as 5 games away from Tucson. Any more would be a breach of contract & would have to be renegotiated. Per source, the AHL needs to have this all ironed out by May 31 to allow a move to Mullett next season.

• University of Jamestown is joining the Northern Sun conference (with UMD, SCSU, Minnesota St, Bemidji St, and Augustana... and Minot State). Both of their club teams (and their women's team) are acknowledged on their AD page alongside the rest of their sports.
• Roosevelt University in Chicago has already made the transition from NAIA to D-II this past school year as a provisional member of the GLIAC (home of the CCHA's FSU, LSSU, MTU, and NMU, as well as former D-I program Wayne State). The men's (and women's) club team is acknowledged on their official athletics website. Plus... maybe their rink is a workable one? Since this has already happened and there hasn't yet been a hockey angle exposed, this may well be the only time I mention it.

• Navy
• Penn
• Maryville
• Minot State
• UNLV
• Liberty
• Illinois (Adam Augustine, Big Ten’s hockey admin, indicated in a USCHO podcast from Thursday at this years frozen four that they’ve heard nothing about UI revisiting their decision not to pursue a team)

• If there's actual reported news of a new hockey rink being built or scouted (see: Iowa, Arizona, Georgia, UMKC)
• If there's something reported on by actual college hockey reporters (Simon Fraser, LeMoyne, et al being reported on CHN, USCHO, etc.)
• Something openly acknowledged by a formal entity like the athletic department or College Hockey Inc (Illinois, Binghamton, Utica, TN State, et al)
• If a school is reclassifying to D-I or D-II with some form of college hockey already involved (Maryville, Jamestown, Roosevelt, et al)
• If a club team plays exhibitions against D-I programs (Minot State, Liberty, Arizona, UNLV, et al)
• If a club team openly talks about maybe wanting to go varsity and there's something more than a quote from a hopeful coach behind that (Penn fundraising, TN State working with College Hockey Inc., Simon Fraser or Maryville having AD personnel quoted by serious reporters, et al.)