I've seen so much confusion about what the April 30th deadline means, so I just called AMCAS myself to ask. I think there's a lot of misinformation that I might be helpful in clearing up.

Important Vocab

CYMS = Choose Your Medical School tool. This is the AMCAS portal where you can see all of your acceptances and waitlists, as well as choose to Plan or Commit to enroll.

PTE = Plan to Enroll status. By April 30th, schools expect you to change your status to "Plan to Enroll" for only one school in the CYMS portal. You should manually withdraw from your other schools through email or their admissions portal, in line with each schools admissions protocols.

CTE = Commit to Enroll status. As soon as you're sure of where you'd like to go and before your school's matriculation deadline, you must change your status in CYMS to "Commit to Enroll." That status will be visible to all of your waitlisted and accepted schools and signify that you've made your final decision. You cannot remain on waitlists after you've committed to enroll at a school.

The Role of the AAMC

The first thing I asked the AMCAS rep was what AAMC/AMCAS actually do in this CYMS process, and they said that AMCAS is just a middleman between students and med schools. Their job is to aggregate and pass on information to medical schools about who is planning or committed to attending their school, as well as give us (applicants) helpful guidelines to narrow down your list of schools. The April 15th and April 30th deadlines were originally created as suggestions to move the process along. The April 15th deadline is still just a suggestion, meant to help schools avoid having an influx of declined offers all at once/help them move waitlists/help students simplify their decisions. I recommend you keep this deadline to make things easier, but it isn't enforceable, as schools cannot see how many acceptances you hold and the AAMC itself will not take any action against you. HOWEVER (and very importantly), the April 30th deadline is no longer seen as just an AAMC suggestion; med schools turned the April 30th into a very real deadline. The AAMC themselves cannot do anything if you don't PTE or CTE - all they do is notify the schools of that info. The thing is that on April 30th, schools can see if you've PTE and if it's to their school. Schools can act on that, assume you're not going and rescind your acceptance. If you make no selection, schools can see that too. The rep said that there are some schools that are pretty militant about rescinding your spot if you haven't PTEd to them by April 30th, but some schools (since they see if you haven't PTE to any schools by April 30th) might just reach out to you and ask what's up. Treat April 30th as the final deadline though, and don't assume you'll receive any grace from schools if you miss the deadline.

Timeline

The question that I originally called about was "Is it 11:59 PM EDT on April 29 or 11:59 PM EDT on April 30?" The answer is vague - nothing happens automatically on April 30 other than schools having more information about what PTE/CTE actions you've taken. The important thing, again, is what they choose to do with that information. From February 20 until April 29th, schools can see only the number of total students that PTE at their school. On April 30th, they can see the name, email and AAMC ID of all their admitted students, as well as their status (PTE, CTE, or No decision), to which school they hold that status (it'll say "Yes" if its their school and "no" if it's not), and what date that status took effect. To see an example, look at the below screenshot from the AAMC FAQs on the CYMS tool.

*** Once schools can see your name starting on April 30th (and it sounds to me like it's 12 AM on April 30th), they can assume you're not going but they won't give away your spot until after April 30th. There's no definitive answer of if you need to PTE by 11:59 on the 29th or 30th that I heard or saw - only that they get to start seeing your info on April 30th. I personally don't think they're staying awake until 12 AM or 11:59 PM on April 30 to take any action, and instead they'll start taking action on May 1st (this is based on the wording of many schools, ex. "Starting May 1st, waitlist movement will begin"). But, if you're the nervous type, you can remove all doubt by PTE by April 29 (so you're not even dealing with April 30th at all). The AMCAS rep couldn't give me a definitive answer on the 11:59 question because technically, it's up to the schools how they interpret that deadline. Just know that no action will be taken until after April 30th, despite the fact that schools can see your status the entire day of April 30th.

PTE vs CTE

Plan to enroll and commit to enroll have different meanings and different deadlines. Plan to enroll became available in February and you are expected to plan to enroll to ONLY ONE SCHOOL by April 30th. You must manually withdraw from your other acceptances after this date, but you may remain on as many waitlists as you'd like. Commit to enroll is more definitive than plan to enroll, and that does not allow you to hold any waitlists or acceptances. It means you are sure will matriculate to that school. CTE is the final decision, although again, you should confirm your acceptance with your school through their portal or email on top of the CYMS tool. The CTE option will become available on April 30. Again, nothing happens automatically, even if you CTE. You still need to manually withdraw to avoid any confusion about your attendance status. If you get in off a waitlist after you've CTE, you are responsible for notifying your current choice that you won't be attending. That must be done by each school's matriculation deadline, which is the day you must end your application cycle and commit fully to attending the school your chose. Every school has a different matriculation deadline - some are in May and others are in August.

Still confused?

It's not your fault - all of this is purposely vague. Both AMCAS and the medical schools know they can't monitor everything that you do, so they'll use terms like "out of fairness to other candidates" or "should" or "must" to convince you to take certain actions. Unfortunately, the lack of transparency leads to unnecessary confusion for applicants. If you need more information, I highly recommend looking at the AMCAS Choose Your Medical School (CYMS) Tool Frequently Asked Questions and most importantly, just emailing your schools and asking them directly.

If you find an error or think I got something wrong (which is likely), please let me know! I may not see it right away, since I don't regularly use Admit and made this account specifically for this post. I hope this is helpful!

-----

*** Edited to clarify that your spot won't be rescinded until after April 30th.