Your application to medical school has been submitted. Still, your journey to becoming a doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO) is far from over.
Despite your desire for a lengthy hiatus, the AACOMAS secondary application is on its way and will arrive sooner than you expect.
Your AACOMAS secondary application is your opportunity to convince the admissions committees of the osteopathic schools of your choice that you and their program are an ideal match.
This guide will provide a step-by-step process for accurately completing your AACOMAS application to maximize your chances of admission to osteopathic medical schools.
If you want to know more, please read on.
Table of ContentsThe AACOMAS (American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine Application Service), as a centralized application, enables applicants to osteopathic medical schools to apply to up to 35 schools through a single website.
Osteopathic medicine differs from allopathic medicine in that graduates receive a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) rather than a Doctor of Medicine (MD). However, the training and employment opportunities are comparable.
You might choose to become an osteopathic physician rather than an allopathic physician for several reasons.
Osteopaths distinguish themselves from medical doctors by treating the whole person, not just the symptoms. Osteopaths emphasize preventive medicine, the interconnectedness of the body's organs and systems, and how they influence or affect one another.
The AACOMAS application for the following year's medical school class typically opens in early May.
Mid-June is when colleges start receiving and processing applications.
Due to rolling admissions, your probability of being accepted to med school decreases the later you submit your application.
Therefore, you must remain on top of all deadlines. Accordingly, prepare to send your primary and secondary applications before the deadline.
No matter how many secondaries you may receive, you must submit quality responses within 7-14 days. There is so much to do in such a limited time, and you must prepare for your secondaries in advance.
After submitting secondaries, interview invitations could arrive as early as late August or as late as the following spring.
Since invitations may come at any time during this period, it is essential to begin preparing for interviews well before you start to receive them.
You know that medical school admission is competitive, but what are AACOMAS admissions committees and interviewers searching for in prospective students?
We will cover all of that in the following few sections.
A few exceptions exist for students enrolled in specialized programs with prior agreements with medical institutions.
Before registering for osteopathic medical school, some applicants earned a master's degree or doctorate.
The premedical curriculum varies from college to college but generally consists of the following:
Criminal background checks are primarily motivated by increasing public confidence in the medical field.
Additionally, criminal background checks improve the safety and well-being of patients.
They facilitate the eventual licensure of applicants and enrolled medical students as physicians, reducing the liability of med schools and their affiliated clinical facilities.
The Department of Veterans Affairs requires criminal background investigations for all medical students involved in hospital patient care.
All osteopathic med schools conduct criminal background checks for all students.
You are responsible for becoming aware of and knowledgeable about the requirements imposed on you during the application process. In addition, numerous colleges and clinical rotation sites require drug testing as a prerequisite for enrollment or at other specified times.
When applying through AACOMAS, the applicant must disclose any prior criminal convictions.
Failure to disclose such offenses accurately and truthfully on the AACOMAS application may result in the revocation of an admission offer or, if the omission is discovered after enrollment in medical school, in dismissal.
All medical institutions require evaluation and recommendation letters. You can submit letters electronically through the AACOMAS application or directly to the schools using alternative services specified by each school in the college information section of this book.
Alternative services may consist of, but are not limited to, the following:
Many programs have stringent letter submission requirements, which vary from school to school. Check with each osteopathic medical college before submitting recommendation letters.
Please refer to the AACOMAS Help Center for information about submitting letters directly through the AACOMAS website.
Your medical school application should be easy and straightforward if you familiarize yourself with the AACOMAS application process and have the necessary information.
Here is the step-by-step application process for medical institutions using the AMCAS system.
Source: AACOMAS Official Website
In the Personal Information section, you will provide your biographical and contact information and your citizenship status, race/ethnicity, and parental information.
There is also a section for influences, in which you will list any physician relatives.
Additionally, AACOMAS requests your specific interest in osteopathic medicine. You will be presented with several selections to select from.
The Personal Information section concludes with a subsection titled "Other Information."
You must disclose your military status, language proficiency, criminal record or academic infractions (if applicable), and income level.
Suppose you have a military dismissal, criminal record, or academic infraction. In that case, you will be required to compose a 500-word essay detailing the circumstances and any consequences you faced.
The "Other Information" page also contains a section on COVID-19 containing three optional questions.
While the first two questions are straightforward yes/no questions, the third one allows 2,500 characters to describe how the pandemic affected your path to medical school.
This section begins with a listing of your high school and college experiences.
Next is the most time-consuming portion of this section: entering your transcript. It will help if you input all of your college courses. It is as straightforward as copying your transcript into the electronic system, albeit time-consuming.
Have your transcript available, and enter the course name, credit hours, and grade into the system.
Pay close attention to the specifics, as errors may be difficult to rectify once your application has been submitted and may result in processing delays.
You must include all courses on your official transcript, including withdrawals and ungraded orientation courses. If this seems daunting or you lack time, AACOMAS provides a Transcript Entry Service. Depending on your number of transcripts, someone can enter your coursework for USD 69 to USD 145.
You may indicate interest in this service on the Transcript Entry page by clicking "Tell me more."
Nevertheless, you must pay for and submit your application before completing the service. After filling up the form, you will be prompted to verify its accuracy.
You will input coursework according to the term in which it was taken. All completed, ongoing, and future coursework should be entered similarly. You will choose the course's subject; some systems may not neatly fall into a single subject.
Referring to how your university classified it may be the simplest solution. However, AACOMAS suggests you should "make your best guess if you are genuinely uncertain."
Regarding GPA, the subject of each course determines how your GPA will be calculated. For example, AACOMAS computes both a science GPA and an overall GPA. Once all courses have been entered, the course type will be classified as study abroad, advanced placement, honors, or repeated.
Standardized test self-reporting is the concluding task of the Academic History section. Enter all previous test results, dates, and scores.
If you have an upcoming exam, you should enter this information along with your test ID but leave out the test score. If this date changes, you must revisit and update your AACOMAS entry to reflect the new date.
You must provide your AAMC ID so that AACOMAS can match your MCAT score to your profile. Then, you will visit the AAMC's website to request that they send your scores to AACOMAS. As scores are typically published in batches, the AAMC website will contain information regarding turnaround time.
AACOMAS needs transcripts (official) from each post-secondary institution where you enrolled. This is in addition to the transcript information you entered earlier.
This encompasses any academic institution following high school and college-level coursework completed during high school.
Official transcripts (paper or electronic) must be sent directly from each institution. Visit the office or website of your registrar for information on how to submit transcripts now.
Once transcripts have been received and verified, AACOMAS cannot be used to update them.
However, suppose you have notable grades in a future semester and would like to update individual institutions on your most recent grades.
In that case, you may send a letter of update after the application deadline. In addition, some secondary school applications include spaces for grade updates at some institutions.
This section of your AACOMAS application has four parts:
You will submit your recommendation letters. Whether your letters are from a committee, a letter packet, or an individual, you will establish one entry per letter or letter source. You have a maximum of six entries per letter or letter source.
You can submit any additional letters directly to schools if you have more than six. However, remember a school's letter requirements and do not exceed their maximum number of letters.
Enter the committee chair as the evaluator for letters from committees. This chair will then answer the standard queries and upload the committee letter via Letters by Liaison (the recommendation service affiliated with AACOMAS).
When requesting a letter of recommendation, be sure to inform the letter writer that an email containing this information will be sent to them. The email could potentially end up in their spam folder.
A dossier service like Interfolio is another standard method for storing and sending correspondence.
Keep in mind that although it may be tempting to reuse letters from previous applications, it is recommended that your letter writers update their letters for each cycle.
In this section of the AACOMAS application, you must enumerate meaningful and medically relevant premedical experiences.
Consider any post-high school experiences that influenced your career path, even if they were not explicitly medically related.
Contrary to the AMCAS application, AACOMAS permits you to list unlimited examples.
You will categorize each experience into one of the following groups:
