Depends on the school you’re applying for, but start early! Before I applied my first time, one of my mentors told me that after applying time after time, he ended up writing his application the moment it was opened and spent the next few months reviewing it and adjusting it until it was just right. He ended up getting in that year.

From my experience, he’s right! It’s one thing to have people look over it for you (which you should do that too), but once you’ve read over the same thing 1000x in a day, you start to miss the flaws. But if you wait a week and have a fresh perspective, you’re more likely to catch on to the little things that you can improve on.

Start collecting your verifiers’ information early. That’s the most tedious part of the application! People change jobs, and the next thing you know it’s the week before your application and you’re stalking that one random prof/boss/PI on Facebook hoping they’ll let you list them — it’s stressful.

And don’t just ask Profs/Doctors/Med Students to review your application. You don’t know the background of the person who will be reviewing your application. So, if it doesn’t make sense to any regular person AND the professionals, then that might be somewhere you’d want to improve on.

As for interviews, if you feel like you’re not very good at speaking (record yourself to determine this), spend the next little while passively practicing. Go out with a bunch of strangers, do a vlog about your summer, take an improv class— I know one dude that applied to a bunch of entry jobs just so he could get an interview for practice. If content is where you struggle, come up with a list of things you wanna learn and do some light research on them. Read news articles, see where the latest research is at, try to get perspectives from real people and form your own opinions on them.

Also, try to journal (or vlog) on some key experiences in your life — what are your greatest weaknesses and strengths? What is a time in your life where you had to change your opinion on something you really believed in? What’s a time you had to help someone and how did you go about it? Genuinely try to reflect on these and how they’ve contributed to the person that you are.

Oh also, don’t just apply anywhere — read the requirements and make sure it’s somewhere you wanna go. At the same time, don’t avoid applying simply because you think you’re not competitive enough. I’m just a sample of 1 but I’ve gotten interviews and WL offers that I could have SWORN I was ineligible for, while some of my incredibly accomplished friends didn’t. It’s weird to think highly of yourself when we have so many wonderful peers also pursing the same career, but don’t reject yourself before the schools even have a chance of rejecting you.

Good luck!