What's the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS)? The American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) is a non-profit centralized application processing service. AMCAS compiles your application and transmits it to the medical schools to which you are applying. The AMCAS is one application. As a medical school applicant you're responsible for collecting all of the materials, requesting transcripts and standardized test scores, and soliciting letters of recommendation once. AMCAS forwards your application to all of the schools to which you're applying. One application is simple, right? Not so fast.
The AMCAS is likely the most thorough application you will ever complete. Expect to spend a great deal of time compiling the information you need, entering it in, and proofreading. The AMCAS includes the following sections.
Identifying Information
Enter your legal name, sex, birth date, preferred name, any variations of your name, such as a family name or a nickname, and ID numbers that may appear on transcripts sent to AMCAS by the schools you have attended.
Education Information
Provide a comprehensive list of your educational experiences.
- High School: Enter the high school from what you graduated. The AMCAS Instruction Manual has information for students who obtained a GED certificate, were homeschooled, or attended high school in a different country.
- Colleges: List every post-secondary institution where you were enrolled for one course or more. Enter all colleges even if you withdrew from the course, transferred the credits, or no credits were earned.
- Transcripts: Submit a transcript for every post-secondary institution at which you took coursework, regardless of whether the course was repeated or credit earned.
- Institutional Action: Explain if you were ever the recipient of any institutional action resulting from unacceptable academic performance or a conduct violation, even if it did not interrupt your enrollment, require you to withdraw, or appear on your official transcript.
Biographic Information
Enter basic information such as your contact information, citizenship, legal residence, languages spoken, ethnicity and race, parent or guardian, siblings, felonies, and misdemeanors.
Email
Your email address is entered with your biographical information, but your email address is such an important part of your application that it deserves its own section. Email is the primary mode of communication between AMCAS, medical schools, and applicants. Email is the only way that you will be notified about your application .A correct and up-to-date email address is critical because AMCAS correspondence is sent only by email. If your email address changes you will need to update your AMCAS file through the AMCAS website. If your application has been submitted you will need to certify it again and resubmit it before your email is saved.
Felonies and Misdemeanors
Disclose and explain any felonies or misdemeanors on your record. If you plead guilty, or no contest to a felony or misdemeanor crime, after submitting your application and before beginning medical school, you must update your AMCAS file and inform the admissions office of each medical school to which you have applied. Each medical school must be informed in writing and within 10 days of the criminal conviction.
Coursework
The Course Work section is difficult because you must list every college course you have taken regardless of whether you completed it. Obtain your official transcript from every college you have attended since high school. You will enter every course and grade that you have earned. Take care because omissions and errors will delay the processing of your application. Include withdrawals, audits, repeats, incompletes, and failures. Each course is assigned a classification according to the primary content of the course. The AMCAS Course Classification Guide will help you classify your work.
AMCAS will convert your grades into an AMCAS GPA , a standardized GPA that enables medical schools to compare applicants' backgrounds. A separate GPA is computed for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics courses (known as BCPM GPA). All other course work will be calculated as a second GPA (known as AO GPA).
Work/Activities
The Work/Activities section gives you the opportunity to enter up to 15 experiences (work, extracurricular activities, awards, honors, publications, etc.). For each experience you'll be asked to supply the date of the experience, hours per week, a contact, the location, and a description of the experience.
Letters of Evaluation
In the Letters of Evaluation section you will enter information regarding each letter of evaluation being sent to AMCAS.
Medical Schools
Here, enter the schools to which you will apply.
Essays
Every application includes a Personal Comments essay. The available space for this essay is 5300 characters or about one page. Applicants who apply to an M.D./Ph.D. program must complete two additional essays: the M.D./Ph.D. Essay and the Significant Research Experience Essay.
Standardized Tests
Enter MCAT dates, previous MCAT scores, and additional test information, such as GRE scores. MCAT scores should be no longer than three years old. MCAT scores earned in 2003 and later are automatically released to AMCAS. MCAT scores released to AMCAT are included in all future AMCAS applications.
