i’ve gotten some PMs asking about my experience on having a successful re-app cycle so i figured i would explain through a forum post:

context: ORM, FGLI, CA IS applicant, 2 gap years, high stat; i applied 24/25 cycle to 20 schools, got 2 interviews from 1 T-20 and 1 T-40 OOS programs, ultimately waitlisted and rejected from both at end of cycle (last year March).

current 25/26 cycle, reapplied to 44 schools, invited to interview at 15 and accepted to 7, waitlisted from 1, rejected from 1 and withdrew myself from the rest

this is what i did:

1. during this exact time last year, i was contacting all the programs I had been rejected from and asking for application feedback. this was a little toxic, but I also posted my application on SDN (NOT REDDIT OR ADMIT) and asked for advice. i think SDN has many older members of the medical community who can offer a perspective that we (as in younger? gen z? applicants and also as premed students in general) do not really consider. so, in my experience, the best advice I got was directly from the adcoms who rejected me as well as some anon former?current?adcoms/physicians lurking on SDN. off the top of my head, duke and umich were willing to address my application file. (so kudos to them for the transparency tbh)

2. i completely rethought my motivations for medicine. not just in terms of needing to write better primary/secondaries, but i seriously questioned whether 1.) do I have the emotional bandwidth and financial leverage to reapply, 2.) would i be happy in any other profession besides medicine if i chose not to reapply. being FGLI and having an unstable financial situation, i kind of told myself that if I didn’t get in this cycle, then I would pursue another profession, perhaps take a longer non-trad route back to medicine, and be ok with it. i also specifically chose to immediately reapply against better advice because this was the last application cycle that my MCAT score would be valid at most programs.

3. if i had the opportunity to take additional gap-years before re-applying, i would seriously consider that. in my situation, it couldn’t work (see point 2), but i do think that immediately reapplying is extremely stressful physically and emotionally.

4. most of the advice I had gotten (point 1) told me that my specific weaknesses were in my motivations to pursue medicine being unclear. at this point I had to really look at my application and ask myself: why medicine, but specifically what do i hope to achieve out of medicine, what kind of people do i want to serve, what kind of research would i want to do (if any?), and what experiences do i have that inform me of these choices?

5. after answering these questions for myself mentally, i took specific actions to reflect what i wanted to do in medicine. (ex. i grew up in urban, underserved area and figured that i would probably want to serve this kind of population as a physician -> i started becoming more involved with my non-clinical volunteering at a homeless shelter) i had about 70 hours in my first AMCAS submission and then started going in for multiple 6 hour shifts on weekends, 3 hour shifts after work on weekdays in the spring before my re-app to boost it to about 350 hours by the time i resubmitted my AMCAS. obviously this part will depend on whatever disconnect you identify between your current application and your actual motivations for medicine, but the point of this was that i was lowkey busting my ass to demonstrate 1.) i was serious about my goals for the medical career i wanted to pursue, and 2.) i’m someone who will change and adapt to feedback.

6. i completely re-wrote every single piece of writing i submitted. i was told that admissions committees “do not like seeing you re-vomit the same stuff that got you rejected last year” (from a very blunt mentor). my first re-app draft was me basically taking my writing from last year and stitched it back together with new insight and experiences to better convey my specific answers for why medicine (see point 4). from that draft, i showed it to everyone possible and got as wide a breadth of feedback possible. i incorporated all the feedback that made sense to me and tried to reinforce ideas that would make my writing at least understandable and justifiable to people who had very different perspectives from me. (ex. i tend to be a very emotive writer and was told by a mentor to cut down on all the “woo-woo” stuff in my writing. i trimmed it as much as possible, but a good part of it stayed in and i also provided a reason as to why this emotionality was important in informing my “why medicine”)

7. i interview prepped like a maniac. even before i got interviews, I was practicing the classic 10 answers for med school interviews (tell me about yourself, why medicine, why us, tell us about a conflict, etc.) and doing MMI prep on the side. as someone who actually scored relatively low on CASPER and PREview, i knew that I needed to actually prepare being concise and structured for MMI-style interviews, which also helped me to get better at organizing my thoughts and other random interview questions as well.

8. i stayed off SDN/Reddit/admit for the majority of the cycle. i did not go on admit unless it was to update my application tracker. imo, it is very easy to become neurotic and sad and miserable when you are in an echo chamber of other neurotic and sad premeds. every time i wanted to go on admit/SDN/reddit doom scroll, i would work on more secondaries/read my interview answers/meet a friend. i had my email notifications on, but also actively resisted from checking it every day through the same means of doing secondaries/reviewing interview answers/etc.

9. last part and probably most important: i had to be kind to myself because the situation of immediately reapplying already sucks a lot. it already blows to go through this cycle once and doing it consecutively is actual hell. making myself more miserable and pessimistic by doom scrolling and spiraling on forums/email refreshes was not the answer for me. i had to set some priorities for myself (prioritizing my own mental wellbeing and application). during secondaries, i blocked time to hang out with friends, went clubbing a lot, traveled within my means, treated myself to good food and bought clothes/shoes, and importantly set boundaries with coworkers in terms of work. (in terms of working, i was a CRC and lab tech. i didn’t need any more clinical hours/benchwork and i also realistically knew that any chance of a pub would not be reflected in my reapplication anyways. that’s why i set boundaries; obviously, if your situation is different/your app weakness is in clinical hours/research hours, i would not do this)

that’s everything that comes to mind as of now. happy to answer any more questions but i will also preface that i am just one perspective and i am not an adcom member or anything like that.

also sending the best energy for everyone considering reapplication rn!! it is objectively shitty and awful and the american med school application cycle needs reform yesterday but the only way out is through. yalls got this down