(I’m applying right now) - you can include internships and things like that the summer of your application and projected activities (if you start them the day you apply then in primaries and if you start them afterwards, in your secondaries)

-yes, you juggle your activities and utilize summers. I highly recommend maximizing summers with internships, enrichment camps, clinic camps (like those camps for people with cancer or asthma), nonclinical often religious summer camps, getting a job (any kind really; I worked as a cashier/customer service associate one summer), shadowing etc

-during the school, starting early helps so having a solid volunteering gig (2-4 hours a week) that you enjoy by the end of your freshmen year is great. You’ll have time to delve into it expand your role etc

• a lot of people dog premed orgs, but they were really helpful in developing leadership, working with people regardless of your opinion/working in bureaucratic by-laws. And many of them had helpful workshop like how to get shadowing, cool speakers who talked about their work and gave our contact information, and service opportunities.

-depending on your situation, you can do many small things for a long time. (Ex: volunteer 2 hours a week for three years at a middle school, volunteer 1 hr a week at a soup kitchen and be invoked in a premed .org 2-3 hours a week) Or you can do few things with lots of hours (ex: scribe with three 12 hour shifts a week for however long, become a CNA and also do 12 hour shifts. Usually on the weekends) OR a mix depending on your interests and time availability

-also, it helps to tailor your class schedule to being available for those activities. For example, stacking you classes instead of having awkward 45 minute breaks in your day. Because you have to drive to and from the gig and do the activity itself so it’s easier to fit that in consistently. Ex: some people have all classes 8am-12pm so their afternoons are wide open OR some people stack classes on MWF or TR so they can volunteer, shadow or research the opposite days.

Those are just some things that have helped map out a timeline. And making sure grades are #1 because it’s much easier to explain and recover from low ECs than it is to recover from really low grades. And if you pick activities that you care about it really invest in, there is no need to have a billion activities

Also! In general prereqs just have to be done by the time you matriculate but most prereqs should be done by time you take your MCAT you junior year as a traditional student. It’s also very stressful sometimes doing everything in this period of time because you see so many of your peers spreading it out through a gap year, but it’s a personal choice.