Medical School: What to Do After Your Acceptance

It’s finally that time of the year, everyone who started the cycle are starting to either hear back from Medical School or already received an acceptance. If you haven’t yet, don’t worry! There’s still plenty of time to hear and get invited for interviews. When Conor received an acceptance letter from his top DO school, we felt a little overwhelmed with being over the moon happy and with all that we had to do.

Here’s What You Need to Do, Now That You’ve Been Accepted to Medical School

Celebrate!
Once you open your letter it’s so hard to not get overwhelmed with the pages and pages of following information and deadlines. You just got accepted to Medical School, celebrate and be happy! Your acceptance won’t be taken away if you don’t get started right this second, promise! Call your family and friends and let them know the good news, go out for a nice dinner and really celebrate this milestone. It was hard to get here so soak it up!

Read through Everything
I bet that you could not believe your eyes and read through that letter as quickly as possible. After you got some time to celebrate, sit down, go through the letter and start making a list of what they need from you. Every school is different and I know Conor’s medical school needed a deposit and some paperwork filled out. 

Reserve Your Seat
In the paperwork you received, there will be an important deadline and procedure to go about reserving your seat. Some people will reserve multiple seats at different schools so they have options or hold onto a spot while they wait for their top school to get back to them. If you do this make sure that you notify all the schools you reserved your seats with, that you’ll be going to a different school and they can open your seat up. If you know you’re not going to a medical school and you did reserve a seat, try and let them know as soon as you do just so other students waiting on waitlists can hear back sooner. To reserve a seat, you’ll typically mail them in filled out paperwork and a check and they’ll send you a confirmation. For Conor, he was able to do this all online which was super convenient and the cost wasn’t too bad. I believe it was well under $400.

Fill Out Final Paperwork
Just like with reserve your seat, there will be other forms you’ll have to fill out by a certain deadline. These are basic and differ from medical school to medical school. The ones Conor received I think were just asking if he agrees to the school’s mission, philosophy and how they work in labs (they’ll have partners and do physicals on each other). It’s probably best to get these in after you reserve your seat and not put them off because they could be left in a pile to be forgotten. 

Budget for your Deposit
If you haven’t already budgeted for your class deposit, I would start slowly putting away for it. If you have someone else paying for it that’s fantastic. We started putting money away in our savings last year to prep for interview travel, deposits and what not, so for the most part, we are prepared. However, it isn’t so cheap, when we pay the deposit in the Spring, it will most definitely eat up a good chunk of our savings. 

Notify Other Medical Schools
If you’ve finally decided that this is your school, then go ahead and write a letter to each of the other schools that you still have applications in and let them know that you appreciate their time, consideration and you want to officially withdraw your application since you got accepted at XYZ School. I think you can actually email some schools but I encouraged my husband to write letters since it’s more personal.

Financial Aid
This is a big one, get all the resources you can from your medical school concerning financial aid, how to pay for your school, how much it costs and any and all options you have to pay for this. Really take the time to explore all of your options. We are personally looking into HPSP to help us afford his schooling, it seems right for us for many reasons but it might not be the best route for someone else. Do not forget to get all your tax information together and complete FAFSA as soon as possible. It’s always a pain and sometimes you’ll get hiccups in the website so start it early. If you feel really lost then don’t be afraid to reach out to your new school. 

Personal Information
This is more than something you need to do after you get accepted into medical school but just something you should have together anyway. At this point you’re an adult you should make sure you have personal documents together. This includes social security card, birth certificate, proof of residence (utility bills etc), health insurance information, former tax records, proof of income, and your health records. You’ll need all of these things at some point either when renting an apartment or finalizing paperwork during orientation. The best thing we did was buy a filing cabinet and we organized all this information and paperwork so there’s no question about where these are.

Meet Your Classmates
So typically you would have to wait until August to meet your future classmates but thanks to social media you don’t have to! Often your school will give you access to a students only site and they’ll have forums and groups available for you to join and connect with other students. Some schools also maintain facebook groups, so do a little searching and start interacting with your peers. It’ll be nice to walk into orientation and have a familiar face. You’re going to lean on these people so start building relationships and hey with all the paperwork you’re doing maybe someone has an answer to a question that you have. 

Find Housing and Plan Your Move
We are lucky enough to already live so close to Conor’s medical school but sometimes you’re going to have to make a cross-country trip. Contact your school and chat with them about this, they’ll often have resources available or recommendations for housing. Also, talk MSII students because they’ll have an insight into the community. I would really recommend moving at least, a month before school begins because you want time to really settle in. Unfortunately for us, we might have to move at the end of September, which means I’ll be doing most of our moving with my mom!

Organize
Organize yourself and what you can. If you’re moving that doesn’t mean your desk but reorganize your computer files and figure out how you’re going to file things, study and keep yourself together. You don’t want missing notes and you will not have time to figure this out once school starts. If you’re lucky enough to not be moving, take the time to totally revamp your desk space, get yourself a new chair, light and anything else you might need. Make sure you have the essentials like highlighters, staplers, and homes for all these things. You don’t want to have a cluttered mess while you’re studying for an upcoming exam!

Enjoy the Rest of Your Time & Summer
I know that you might want to get a start on studying but let’s be real here for a second. You’re going to submerse yourself into studying, you won’t however, have time to just enjoy things. You’re about to have a really fast transition into an intense and rigorous academic journey. You will not have time to just hang out, go on a short vacation, travel when you want to; hey going out on a date is going to be tough, and I bet a night in watching a movie will seem like a very social night during med school.  So do yourself a favor and really enjoy the time you have left before medical school starts in August. It’s going to be stressful and you’re going to miss out on things so try and get them in over the summer.

Is there anything I forgot? Good luck everyone!