Most U.S. medical schools utilize the online AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service) application service. There you will be asked personal information about yourself, your family, the activities that you have completed in college (up to 15 slots available), the courses you have taken and the grades earned in them, standardized test scores, and the personal statement. To learn more about the application in more detail, please visit the medical school application section on the UC Berkeley Career Center website or the AMCAS website directly:
The AMCAS website has a detailed instruction manual for the medical school application that may be downloaded as a PDF for free. It would be worthwhile to look over this manual to better understand what is required from applicants.
Medical schools want to be sure that the students entering their classes are capable of handling the rigorous coursework that the curriculum requires. The primary measures of this are an applicant’s GPA and MCAT scores. However, these two numerical values will not make or break your application to medical school. A clearly demonstrated commitment and true passion for medicine will go a long way in the admissions process.
AMCAS Timeline
May 1st: AMCAS is open to students to start inputting their information. Forms to request that transcripts be sent to AMCAS may be printed after this date. Submission of your application is not possible until June 1st.
June 1st: AMCAS application may be submitted after this time. AMCAS will look over the courses that you inputted and verify them with official transcripts to make sure everything is correct. This could take a few days or weeks depending on how busy they are.
After getting verified, AMCAS will send your application to the schools that you selected. Those schools will send back secondaries at their own pace. Some schools send secondaries to all applicants, others do a preliminary screen and send secondaries to only a group of applicants.
May 15th: Applicants have to make a decision about which one school they will attend by this date.
Cost
For the 2010-2011 application cycle, the fee for AMCAS was $160 for the first medical school applied to and $32 for each subsequent medical school applied to.
Fee waivers
AMCAS does have a Fee Assistance Program to help students with severe financial hardship. This is how AMCAS defines “severe financial hardship” on their website:
FAP eligibility decisions are tied directly to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' poverty level guidelines. For the 2010 calendar year, applicants whose total family income is 300 percent or less of the poverty level for their family size are eligible for fee assistance.
This fee waiver applies to 14 medical schools at the maximum. Most schools will waive the secondary fee as well for applicants using the Fee Assistance Program.
Requirements for letters of recommendation vary between medical schools. In general, one should try to get at least three letters of recommendation from 2 science faculty and 1 from a humanities course. Check the letter requirements for schools that you are interested in applying to here:
Letters of recommendation may be sent to the UC Berkeley Career Center Letter Service which is a service that will maintain the confidentiality of your letters and further distribute them, either individually or in packets, to schools, scholarship agencies, or to the AMCAS letter service.
AMCAS letter service (recently developed): Most schools will only accept letters of recommendation that have come through the AMCAS letter service. UC Berkeley students may choose to have letter writers forward their letters to the Career Center letter service and then assemble a packet to be sent to AMCAS or could have their letter writers send the letters to AMCAS directly. Both options require forms to be attached with the letters so make sure to check on the websites:
So should I do AMCAS or Career Center letter service?
AMCAS will only hold your letters for the 1 year that you are applying to medical school. After this, they are unaccessible. The career center letter file may be opened at anytime during your college career and your letters are available after you graduate.
MCAT prep:
Prep courses:
Kaplan
Berkeley Review
Princeton Review
Cal classes that are geared towards the MCAT(Don’t think there any)
