I just finished the secondary for Yeshiva University Albert Einstein College of Medicine. It wasn't too bad. Still, they want to know what I did when I wasn't in school and they wanted to know if (and presumably why) I had gottent any grades of 'F'. So I had to write 2 pages of reasons. Overall, it isn't a bad application. They require $100, which is on the pricier side for an application fee.

Rejection Always Stings...At Least A Little bit...

I finally submitted the secondary application for The Medical College of Wisconsin last night. Yesterday I spoke with one of my letter writers and confirmed that she is getting them done, I think her letters will be at the schools next week by Friday, maybe earlier. The ochem professor's letters should go out this week. The bio instructor's letters got out about 2 weeks ago, so next week I should be having fully completed secondaries at 5 or 6 schools.

When I talked to my ochem instructor about my MCAT score he sounded surprised that it was as high as it is. He thought that I would have a good chance of getting into my School of Choice.

Wake Forest emailed me with an attached PDF saying that they did indeed evaluate my application but because of the competitiveness of the current bunch of students, they could not accept my application this year. Hmm. The MSAR book says their median MCAT last year was 30, 1 less than the national average. Of course the GPA is way up there, about average for a med school but much higher than mine. Wake Forest's average incoming med student had a science GPA of 3.68. Good, but not stellar. I would have liked to find out exactly which criteria I was failed on and what numbers they were looking for. Well, on the bright side, that's $55 less to shell out for a secondary app fee and less time needed to fill out the app. Still and all, rejection is not fun.

MCAT Scores!

I got my MCAT scores back a week and a half ago. Here are the results:

part	score	percentile range
Verbal Reasoning	12	94.2-97.9
Physical Sciences	11	80.9-89
Biological Sciences	09	43.1-61.4
Writing Sample	Q	70.2-88.3
Total Score	32Q	83.4-87.2

I am really grateful that I was able to do so well. The Kaplan course, the summer physics course, both helped immensely. Most of all, my wife helped by taking care of all the rest of the household stuff so that I could have more time to study.

Late Monday evening I discovered that the Creighton app requires a digital photopraph so I convinced myself and my lovely wife that I needed a digital camera right away. I drove out to WalMart at 11:30 PM and bought a fantastic little camera from Canon - a PowerShot A540. With a case and a 1 gig SD memory card it was a little over $260. I think I took nearly 100 pictures with it in the first 24 hours I had it. I had trouble getting the camera to connect to my laptop so the next morning I emailed Canon about the problem. By the end of the day they had replied with exact directions, concerning turning a couple of services on, now it works just fine. I love great customer service and the camera is great.

Ah hah! I just switched to the new Blogger beta...and...it seems pretty similar, which is a good thing, I think. And there are labels. Google is nothing without labels, I tell ya! It seems to publish faster too. That's just my feel for it, it's not like I am sitting here with a stop watch.