Things you can do to prepare if you are applying this cycle

Coronavirus apocalypse is upon us and you may find yourself with some extra time. Here are some ideas on what you can do right now to prepare for the upcoming cycle!

• Calculate hours, start date, and end date for your activities and compile them onto a spreadsheet for easy entering into AMCAS later.
• Pre-write your personal statement. A lot of us who have already applied are extra active online right now and can help you look over them!
• Pre-write your activity section. Remember, you have 15 spots for activities at 700 characters each. You can choose 3 to be designated as "most meaningful" and you have 1325 additional characters for those 3.
• Look at MSAR/SDN/Reddit to start compiling your school list. If you do not have your MCAT score yet, you can still prepare based on your GPA. If you have a huge discrepancy in your stats (super low GPA, super high MCAT), you can adjust once you have your MCAT score.
• Research schools you are super interested in. Go on their website, see what programs they offer, location, research opportunities, anything you find important in choosing schools. Write notes for yourself later because I always mixed up schools in my head. This info can be used to answer secondary questions that ask "why this school?" and may be helpful for interviews later on.
• Start pre-writing secondaries using the above information. Go on SDN to see previous prompts. I chose to pre-write the super common prompts (diversity, adversity, gap year activities).
• Prepare for CASPer by familiarizing the process of signing up for this and view practice prompts. Take a look at which schools require CASPer.
• (I guess if you're really REALLY running out of things to do) Prepare for interviews with practice MMI scenarios, practicing the basic questions (Tell me about yourself?), practice talking about your activities confidently, and make sure you have some anecdotes regarding activities should you be asked about any.
• Start thinking about how you will be financing your application fees, CASPer fees, and interview fees. Plan a budget, look into credit cards that offer rewards.

It's a crazy time for all of us. As an anxious person myself, I always found comfort in doing things that I can control. Just remember that adcoms are human, they will understand why you had a gap in your activity or abruptly stopped from all this craziness. There are spaces on secondaries to explain anything else not included in your application and if you have something to say about how coronavirus affected your app, you have space to do so.

You WILL overcome this, you WILL be physicians one day. Don't let this stop you!