Not being accepted to medical school the first time obviously isn’t what you were hoping for, but you’re far from alone. Of the upwards of 50,000 applicants who apply every year, about two thirds are rejected. When this happens, you have two choices. Do you give up, or do you reapply?
If you still want to pursue your dream of becoming a doctor, read our 13 reapplicant frequently asked questions to help you navigate the reapplication process.
Below we’ll answer the following questions:
Unfortunately, yes—reapplicants are at a disadvantage. This is because reapplicants need to demonstrate how they’re a stronger applicant this year than they were the previous year. The medical schools you’ve already applied to will expect to see growth and notable changes in your application. After all, there’s a reason they didn’t accept you the first time around. Have you made those necessary improvements?
Another disadvantage is burnout. Applicants often make the mistake of thinking they can simply reapply the next year if they don’t get in. They think it will be easier because they’ve already gone through the motions of applying once. However, let’s dispel that idea right now: Reapplying does not get easier.
By the point you need to consider reapplying, you’ve already invested over a year into the medical school application process. You will no doubt feel burnt out. Applying to medical school is an incredibly time-consuming and strenuous process. Starting it all over again after over a year of hard work puts you at a disadvantage compared to those going in fresh.
There are two options for reapplying to medical school. You can reapply right away a few months later, which, depending on what areas of your application you need to improve, is risky but possible. This means applying in June of the same year you received rejections from the schools you wanted to attend.
The other option is to wait a little over a year to apply again the following June. This will give you about 14 months to improve your application.
In either case, submitting your primary application in June when applications open is critical.
Applications work on a rolling basis, and since you’ve already been rejected once, you need to utilize every advantage you can. You lower your chances of acceptance the later you submit your application because you’ll continue to fall behind in each step. You’ll receive secondaries later than other applicants, which means you’ll also receive interview invites later than other applicants. After interviews begin, schools start sending out acceptances, and there are only so many acceptances they’ll send out.
Carefully assess the strengths and weaknesses of your application when making the decision of what year to reapply, and seek feedback from trusted mentors and people intimately familiar with the application process.
Whether or not you wait a year is a personal choice. Take time to assess your application and ask trusted mentors or one-on-one advisors to help you determine your weak areas. You need to determine if you can make the necessary changes in the limited time you have between when you find out you weren’t accepted and when new applications are due a couple of months later.
What you absolutely don’t want to do is to rush through the application without taking the time to improve it, which will ultimately result in another set of rejections.
That said, if you do take a year off, what will you do with that year? Ensure you are making the most of it and choosing activities that will augment your application.
For example, if you already have 800 hours as a medical scribe, gaining another couple hundred hours isn’t going to make that much of a difference on your application. How can you make a meaningful difference to the strength of your application? Were you missing a research component in your activities section? Were you missing clinical experience? Did you not cultivate enough meaningful relationships to provide you with strong letters of recommendation?
Think long and hard about how your application needs to improve—and the time you have to make those improvements—when deciding whether or not to take another year.
Yes. You can reapply to schools that rejected you, but they will know they rejected you. You’ll need to prove to the schools why you are a more qualified applicant now.
What steps have you taken to improve your application? What experience have you gained since applying the first time? It is imperative that you demonstrate adequate growth and maturity to any program that has already determined you don’t meet their qualifications. This may be a good reason to take a full year to reapply as opposed to only a few months.
Whether or not you apply to different schools or the same schools is a personal choice that also depends on the strength of your application.
It is perfectly okay to reapply to the same schools but only do so if you have made notable improvements to your application. Making the necessary changes may mean taking a full year to improve your application.
If you are not willing to wait another year before reapplying, you may want to consider applying to less competitive schools the second time around since you don’t have much time to make meaningful improvements to your application. You might also choose to include more safety schools than you did the first time you applied so that you have more backup options.
Here’s the big question—how do you improve the second time around?
How to best improve your application is different for everyone. You only have so much time to make improvements, whether that’s a couple of months or a full year. The key is to critically assess your application to determine what changes will make the biggest difference.
What areas of your application were weak? What can you do in the limited amount of time you have to make the most impact on your application?
Carefully assess your own application as well as matriculant data for the schools you previously applied to. If you had an above average MCAT score and GPA for those schools, it means that other aspects of your application weren’t strong enough to merit an acceptance.
Do you know you had strong letters of evaluation from all of your letter writers? Did you take time to gather feedback on your personal statement from people with adcom experience?
If you didn’t receive any interviews, it indicates that an aspect of your application was not strong enough to move you forward in the application process. If you received a few interviews with schools but didn’t make it past the interview stage, it’s likely that your interview skills weren’t strong enough.
Do not leave your second application up to chance. If you don’t have someone with admissions committee experience in your network who can objectively help you assess your application, it may be time to seek out professional one-on-one advice.
How much of your personal statement you choose to reuse depends on the strength of the original essay. Did you take time and care in the editing process, and did you receive feedback from people with admissions committee experience?
The schools that rejected you want to see growth and maturity. They want to hear you understand why you were not accepted the first time and that you’ve made the necessary changes. Be sure to update the language in your application while not being self-deprecating or speaking about the rejection as a direct “failure.” Your previous rejection is now a part of your medical school journey, and what has that experience taught you?
While making improvements to your essay, be sure to stick to the same general themes. Why you want to become a doctor shouldn’t change from one personal statement to the next. Completely changing your story about the reasons why you want to study medicine and become a physician will come across as disingenuous—raising red flags.
Again, whether or not you need new letters depends on the strength of this area of your application. Do you know for certain that you received strong letters for your first application?
Remember, it’s not enough to simply secure four or five letters of recommendation if one or two of those letters are lukewarm at best. Just a single generic letter brings down this entire piece of your application, as well as your application in general.
If you did not have a meaningful relationship with your letter writers or if they expressed hesitation before writing your letters, you may want to obtain stronger recommendations. That said, if you choose to reapply only a few months after finding out you weren’t accepted, you won’t have much time to build stronger relationships.
Do not swap out your letters if you aren’t sure the new letters will improve your application. If you believe this is a weak area of your application, taking an extra year can help you build stronger relationships for letters.
Keep in mind that AMCAS requires you to resubmit any letters you choose to reuse when you reapply.
You only need to update the Work and Activities section if you have new information to add. For the most part, this section of your application should stay the same, but be sure to add any notable new experiences that are relevant to your application.
If you think this was a weak area of your application, you might choose to rewrite some of your descriptions to add more depth and meaning to them. Did you adequately explain your role in each activity, what it meant to you, and what you learned over the course of the experience?
When considering your list of activities, are you showing length of commitment to your extracurriculars while including a variety of different types of experiences, including research, clinical experience, and volunteering/community involvement?
Did you include any hobbies? While you might think that medical schools don’t care about what you do with your spare time, including 1-2 hobbies in your list of activities can help them get to know who you are and what specifically you can add to the student body. Plus, it shows you know how to balance your studies with personal wellness—admissions committees are not interested in accepting applicants they think could burn out.
Retaking the MCAT is a stressful and time-consuming process, so the decision should not be made lightly. It is generally not worth your time and effort to retake the MCAT if you only aim to improve your score by a couple of points. In that case, you are better off putting notable effort into improving another area of your application since it takes so long to prepare for the MCAT. You also risk receiving an even lower score the second time around, and medical schools see each of your MCAT attempts.
If, however, you have a strong application with a poor MCAT score, it may mean it was your MCAT score that was holding you back from receiving an acceptance. Research matriculant data from the schools you applied to see how you compare. Do you need an improved MCAT score in order to be a competitive applicant?
Do you have the time and energy to commit to retaking the MCAT? It takes months to adequately prepare for the MCAT, even if you are retaking it. Another way to combat a low MCAT score is to apply to less competitive schools when reapplying. Look for schools that have a lower average MCAT score for matriculants.
Turning down an acceptance to reapply to different, preferred schools in another application cycle is possible but not advisable.
Schools will know that you received an acceptance and rejected it, and as we’ve already covered, reapplying is a stressful and time-consuming process with no guarantees. Medical school is extremely competitive, so there is the chance you could reapply only to receive no acceptances the next time.
If you receive an acceptance, you should take it once you get that far into the process. If the school really isn’t the right fit, you can work on trying to transfer to another program after you gain more experience.
This brings us to another important point: Only apply to schools that you would be willing to accept an offer to. As you make your school list, ensure you have a variety of target, reach, and safety schools. Your safety schools may not be your first option, but they should still be schools you would be willing to attend if you do not receive an acceptance anywhere else.
Not gaining an acceptance at your top choice schools is a tough reality check, but it’s not the end of the world. There are many, many strong medical programs across the country, and you may find you’re actually a better fit at a school you didn’t consider before. And again, there’s always an option to try to transfer after you’re in medical school.
You become an applicant once you hit submit on your primary application. If you choose to stop the process after that, you will still be considered a reapplicant since the schools you applied to will have seen your initial application.
This is why it is so important to submit your primary application as soon as applications open and to plan ahead for your secondaries. Preparing in advance will help you submit your secondaries within 1-2 weeks of receiving them.
Whether or not there is a limit to the number of times you can apply depends on the medical school. Some medical schools do have limits on the number of times you can apply. For example, you may only be able to apply twice.
Other schools do not have limits on application attempts, but most applicants only reapply once (two attempts total). A third application attempt with no acceptance should be a clear sign that you will not be accepted into medical school.
If you have reached this point, take time to assess your other options. You may be able to gain an acceptance at a DO school if you are interested in osteopathy, though DO schools are still quite competitive.
You might consider a Caribbean medical school, though there are both pros and cons to this path. Learn more: Caribbean Medical School Pros & Cons.
You also have options to pursue a medical career in another field, such as becoming a nurse, a paramedic, or an EMT.
If you are reapplying to medical school, check out our Reapplicant Guide, which includes 6 steps to reapplying, as well as our 9 Reapplicant Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make.
Don’t leave your second application up to chance. Med School Insiders has a team of one-on-one advisors who can help you assess your unsuccessful application, choose what to focus on, make decisions about when to apply, and, ultimately, gain the acceptance you always wanted.
