How to TMDSAS

I love SDN. It is fun to chat with people, debate a little, and learn new things, all from people who could be my future colleagues. Sure I don't agree with everyone, and there are some people that I would probably strongly dislike in real life. But I do like SDN, especially the cool chain of Texas threads we have going. But right now, I'm going to lay it out about what I think of applying to TMDSAS. Now that I've been through it, I think I have a right to an opinion. I'm annoyed at people who haven't stating things they don't know as fact. And I'm tired of lazy people. This getting into med school thing is for the rest of your life!!! I'm sorry if you might have to stay in and work on your personal statement instead of going out and partying, but you're trying to get into medical school!!!! Cut the crap! Anyways, here's my cut and dry ideas on TMDSAS.

Beginning of College: Start a journal where you write down every club, every award, ever little thing you might possibly want to include in any application/CV/resume ever. It will be a lot easier to remember later on. And if you don't, I'll almost guarantee you won't remember every single thing.

Christmas before you apply: begin your personal statement. You have a nice break, just sit down and write the thing. Get a nice rough copy, start sending it to people and getting it evaluated.

Spring break: Finish up your personal statement. Again this is a REALLY nice break, almost zero stress time you can use. Suck it up and do it.

May 1 or when you're done with finals, whichever comes last: Start the application. Once your PS is done, the rest is easy. Especially if you kept your journal! You don't want to start until you're done with finals because your grades do matter, and the first couple weeks don't matter much.

When you've finished entering everything: wait one or two days, don't look at the application at all. This will clear your mind. Then go back through, look at everything freshly, and check for completeness and errors. The person who will read this app won't know you so you need to be clear and informative, but concise. The attitude "if they want to know more, they'll interview me" isn't really a safe one. They might just want to interview the 1000's of other people who DID tell them everything they wanted to know.

Once you've, checked, rechecked, and triple checked your application: SUBMIT! YAY. Then do all those little things you're supposed to do in the directions. Yeah, the directions are important. You should read them.

Once you've submitted: depending on how burnt out you feel, either do the secondaries that day, or the next. BUT DO THEM! Unless you'd rather put off medical school for a year rather than go to that school, do it! And if you think you'd like to put off medical school for a year, talk to all the people on SDN who didn't match. If you've ever had something terrible happen to you that made your heart sink and made you doubt everything you've done in you life, yeah that's about how I think people felt not matching.

The application and secondaries are not the time to wimp out. Write well, do the secondaries, and nail the interview. I'm not pulling this advice outta my behind, I did go through the application cycle, interviewed at every TMDSAS school, and got into 4. My advice isn't golden, but I've gotten a lot of great advice from the pre-med advisor at A&M. I'll be so bold as to say she is the best pre-med advisor anywhere. Seriously. And she's really made me want to pass on my knowledge and advice I've gained from this whole crazy thing. So good luck applying! I'll try to write some future stuff in more detail. If you have questions and you'd actually like my opinion, feel free to ask. I love to help.

p.s. I'm reading Complications by Atul Gawande. It is awesome and you should read it. :)