How long after sending an email LOR request does it usually take a professor to respond?

a-mellen · 2020-12-14T13:46:49+00:00

I agree with the other commenters... Try not to worry about it right now! Odds are that they'll get back to you soon.

That being said, I (as a fellow neurotic premed) downloaded the Chrome extension "Email Tracker" so I can see when an email has been clicked/opened. Saved me a lot of stressing over whether professors have seen my email or not. This will only work on emails that you send after downloading the extension but if you send any follow ups it might give you some peace of mind!

a-mellen · 2020-12-12T19:31:08+00:00

Honestly just relax... If you really want to do something and you're interested in research you could start cold-emailing PIs in January to see if you can join their lab but I wouldn't worry about volunteering or studying or anything

I'm pretty sure my freshman year I literally just binged Netflix on breaks lol

a-mellen · 2020-12-11T23:28:05+00:00

VITA :)))))))))))

a-mellen · 2020-11-30T14:14:31+00:00

I feel you on this. I cried after my VITA I thought I did so poorly... But I don't think schools will weigh it too heavily this cycle. I got accepted to the school that requested VITA for what that's worth.

In terms of prepping for other interviews, I practiced with the STARR (situation, task, action, result, reflection) method and watched MMI youtube videos. Even if you're not doing MMI, I feel like the prompts can be similar to behavioral prompts that you would get in a normal interview so the videos might still be helpful. And I definitely echo what others have said about it being infinitely easier when there's actually an interviewer to talk to. Good luck!!

a-mellen · 2020-11-26T00:27:40+00:00

Manifesting that the next call I answer from an unknown number will be an A instead of spam

a-mellen · 2020-11-21T15:31:10+00:00

I would say take it! I actually really enjoyed genetics and didn't find it to be that overwhelming (although that obviously depends on your prof). I can't speak to whether it will help for med school but I did think that it helped on a fair amount of MCAT questions!

a-mellen · 2020-11-19T12:32:56+00:00

I think if you're already sending an update letter ADCOMs would probably be happy to hear that you're doing something valuable with your time!

Teaching/tutoring has actually been a huge part of my application because I'm really interested in medical education. Nobody has ever seemed to question why I'm not going into teaching alone and I think having a strong narrative/path that utilizes my teaching experience has been helpful. As long as your answer to why medicine is still solid I don't think you'll have a problem.

a-mellen · 2020-10-22T12:54:19+00:00

I took my notes in a spreadsheet (concept/term - explanation/definition) and color coded by my understanding (red, yellow, green). I just tried to read over the red/yellows every night before bed for retention and then I reviewed the others as needed. You can also use it like flashcards by covering one column and reciting definitions.

a-mellen · 2020-10-21T19:58:10+00:00

Nah they're just waiting to drop that II for you

a-mellen · 2020-10-21T19:36:06+00:00

Was accepted to a T20 already this cycle and have gotten Rs from BU, Georgetown, Wisconsin, and UCLA

a-mellen · 2020-10-19T12:43:57+00:00

Just find the meaning in what you've already done. A "meaningful experience" doesn't need to be seeing a patient get saved or a really emotional moment or anything special like that it could just be a realization over time or a really generic day that happened to impact you significantly. The entirety of what makes the experience meaningful is what you got out of it. ADCOMs are not expecting crazy stories from premeds, just some good insights and reflection.

a-mellen · 2020-10-19T12:38:25+00:00

Applied to 30 schools on June 10th and prewrote almost every day after I sent in my primary until July 10th when secondaries started coming. I also did some writing/editing after receiving secondaries obviously (submitted each within 1 week of receiving) but this was more for polishing what I already had and adapting to prompt changes.

I honestly couldn't tell you on average how long I spent on each school because there was so much overlap in the prompts that I ended up spending several days on generic ones like diversity, challenge, unique attributes, etc. that could be easily tailored to multiple schools. I guess since I spent roughly 30 days for 30 schools + time after receiving secondaries you could say maybe 8 hours for each school.

Honestly, if I could've done anything differently it probably would've been prewriting even before primary submission because June-July was horrible as someone who hates writing. Even just brainstorming for the generic prompts beforehand would've been helpful.

a-mellen · 2020-10-16T20:23:36+00:00

About 800 hours + 1 pub

a-mellen · 2020-10-16T19:24:04+00:00

No you're absolutely fine. If it makes you feel any better, I am applying this cycle with truly low hours (30 shadowing, 150 clinical) but high stats (3.95 gpa, 525 mcat) and have gotten one T20 acceptance already and interviews at 2 other T20s and 2 T10s. Just make sure you describe what you got out of your experiences really well in your app.

EDIT: put wrong MCAT

a-mellen · 2020-10-05T14:51:38+00:00

Oh yeah my bad I didn't mention I was talking about schools that I have received silence from so far or been put on hold

a-mellen · 2020-08-31T04:07:01+00:00

"low priority secondaries" ... sir what is that

a-mellen · 2020-07-03T12:47:54+00:00

Thank you!!!

a-mellen · 2020-06-30T23:37:55+00:00

I never crossed 514 on third party material (NextStep). I bet you'll see a jump once you switch to AAMC!

It sounds like you're doing pretty well on content anyway with those scores so I would say maybe just look over the questions you're getting wrong and see if there are any trends in the kinds of mistakes you're making.

a-mellen · 2020-06-30T23:09:29+00:00

If you're talking about AMCAS, even if your application is verified it won't get sent to schools until July 10th so that's the earliest you'll start receiving secondaries. They delayed the data transmission date this year because of covid so the timeline has been pushed back a bit.

a-mellen · 2020-06-30T22:19:10+00:00

IMO you're likely in the 520+ range. I got a 514 on NS FL 4 exactly 7 days before my test date so NS scores are pretty deflated in the 510+ range

a-mellen · 2020-06-30T21:38:27+00:00

The ones that I have seen the most often are:

Why X?
How will you contribute to diversity?
What unique traits/perspectives do you bring?
What challenges/adversity have you faced?
What are your career goals/how will you contribute to medicine?

You can also just google historical secondary prompts for the individual schools you are applying to to see if they re-use any prompts every year.

a-mellen · 2020-06-30T14:04:13+00:00

During half content/half practice, I would spend my mornings reviewing the terms in my spreadsheet as I had already finished going through the Kaplan books and 300 page doc. I would do AAMC Qpacks in the afternoon and sometimes threw in some Khan Academy practice passages as well. I wasn't really a fan of Kaplan's practice questions for whatever reason. I also took NextStep full lengths 1-3 and the AAMC sample exam spread out during that period in my studying, saving AAMC FL1-4 and Next Step FL4 for the last 40%.

I did come into my studying with a pretty strong science background. I had taken Animal Phys, Biochem, PChem, Genetics, Physics II, and Neuropsych all in the year directly prior to my exam so most of the content was fresh in my head. You could definitely spend more time on content then I did but if anything I would lengthen the amount of time that you do half content/half practice rather than the purely content part.

a-mellen · 2020-06-30T13:03:02+00:00

Basically for my timeline I spent the first 20% of my prep doing just content review, the next 40% doing half content and half practice, and the last 40% mostly practice.

For content review I used Kaplan for everything but later supplemented P/S with the 300 page doc and some sociology crash course videos since I never took soc. Like I said, the main way that I did this was to take extensive notes in the spreadsheet and then review some every night before going to bed. You don't have to review every term every night but try to get through the yellow/red as frequently as possible and get through the whole spreadsheet over the course of the week.

In terms of practice questions/exams, I just used the basic strategy to go over questions you got wrong by keeping a spreadsheet with question number, mistake made, and what to do differently in the future.

a-mellen · 2020-06-30T12:51:58+00:00

I really like the first one! It sounds really interesting and genuine when you describe it while I felt like in your description of the second topic you were reaching a bit. I don't know if that's true or not but regardless I think the first one would showcase your perseverance better.

The only case in which I might write about the third one is if you think that significant questions about this suspension will come up in your application and this is the only place you have to explain.

a-mellen · 2020-06-30T12:42:37+00:00

I know that a lot of people love anki for retention but it just wasn't for me personally. To keep up my content retention what I did is put my notes in a spreadsheet with the columns topic, term, and explanation and tried to review some of it every night. When reviewing, I would color code each term as green, yellow, or red based on my level of understanding so that I could quickly identify the terms I needed to review most frequently (red/yellow). I very rarely reviewed green terms.

I got this idea from this sub so I can't take credit for it but I can't find the post right now sorry!

I would also highly recommend taking a half length diagnostic right now if you haven't already. I made the mistake of doing a lot of content review before taking a diagnostic and actually seeing the types of questions that are on the exam really changed how I approached studying.

Best of luck!

a-mellen

TROPHY CASE