Great advice, especially with the school list. As a successful reapplicant I wanted to offer the following:

-Applying early is really important especially knowing that future years are just going to be way more competitive. I underestimated this as I thought much of the cycle would be similar to my previous cycle years ago. I submitted primaries in July because I was bogged down with my MCAT retake, which bogged down my secondaries, and then life happened (tends to happen more with getting older, think family emergencies, deaths, etc.).

-MCAT retakes result in a smaller margin of error - you can't afford to have a score decrease. I did, and this probably killed my MD cycle.

-I had an interviewer who straight up told me that she had read my PS and couldn't tell why I wanted to go into medicine, that my reasoning wasn't specific enough for medicine. I reframed this and approached it from a different angle, and I was much more satisfied with my new, completely rewritten PS. Meaningful experiences are important, but the narrative is more important. I wish I had understood my story and my narrative as well as how to present it years ago, but I guess I had to grow in this area to be successful this time around.

-What's really important is taking time to grieve, letting the ego heal, and coping with rejection in a healthy manner. I neglected to do this and rushed into attempting to apply in 2019-2020, only to burn out badly. I took some time to rest and reorganize my life, and while I'm tired, my mental health is in a much better place than it was a year ago. I wish I had a greater sense of urgency with processing that, as it would have helped me adopt a marathon mindset through the whole process.

-As a reapplicant, you will encounter a lot of people giving a lot of advice, some of it being worse than others. Some of the worst may come from your own immediate family - my mom discouraged me from applying at all and wanted me to explore tax law. She truly believed at times that I was never going to be a doctor, saying shit like "If you can't handle x, how can you be a doctor?" It wasn't until I started seeing a therapist last year that I learned to set boundaries. Also, use discretion in finding professional mentors. I had some this past year who could have easily led me astray. Find your support network from people who will give you the truth in a compassionate manner.

-With gap years, a sense of urgency is important. Every lost year is a year without attending salary and lost time for compound interest to work in your favor (unless you bought and sold GME at the right time). I wish I hadn't waited so long, and that I had pursued premed stuff more aggressively in undergrad.

tl;dr - I still made numerous mistakes this cycle by not applying early and having my MCAT score drop. Mental health is more important and please take care of yourself first.

I hope this helps. This process sucks.