Congratulations to those that have submitted their primary application! I know I was still making changes on my personal statement around this time last year. Take a mini escape to Vegas! Otherwise, let's move forward & keep it going--on to secondaries!
You will have to look on each school's website to see what they want you to do in terms of secondary/supplemental application. AADSAS started a new page listing the schools' (that you applied to) secondary/supplemental requirements. But I know my year, it was not reliable because not all schools were using that new system. Some schools do e-mail you the application, but it's safe to make an excel sheet going through each school & checking up on their website (the excel sheet was a check off list consisting of the deadlines each school wanted their secondaries, whether or not they wanted a 2x2 photo, transcripts/DAT scores sent to them specifically, and the amount for application fee). My friend assumed all schools e-mailed and missed most California schools' deadline. Some schools automatically give out secondaries, other schools, you need to meet the minimum GPA requirement, which could be a minimum of a 3.2 GPA. Be sure to check their deadlines, some give you as late as December 1st, whereas others give you a certain amount of days since their email was sent, to submit. I assumed one school's deadline was whenever and ended up missing their proposed date by a month. Your goal is to finish secondaries by the end of July/August to be "early." I think normal/late submission would be September/October. The application fee is on average around $80, or at least for my schools (I paid a range of $35-$85). Supplemental applications are usually automatically found on the website and just consists of basic information about you. Other secondaries can be submitted electronically after making an account, or submitted by snail mail. They can range from 2 pages to 14 pages. It usually asks for short responses about leadership qualities, research, why dentistry, why the school, biggest problems you think dentistry is facing, what you're doing on your year off, misdemeanors, cheating, etc. This is the time to also look at each school's website and figure out why you'd see yourself going to that school (location, clubs, faculty, research, dual degree programs, etc). Now onto interviews!
I relied on Student Doctor Network's interview questions/feedback provided by students (there are interview questions provided for other health schools, too). Click on the name of the school you're interested in and it will give you some brief information about the school, website, and tuition. On the same page to the right, you can click on "view survey results" under Interview Feedback to get interview questions, feedback about pros/cons of the school, how stressful (or not) the interview was, what to expect during the interview, and more! The interview process lasts around half a day, some starting as early as 7:45AM and some ending as late as 5PM. Some interviews will require you to write an impromptu essay. Some schools have a paper with a set of questions they'll ask you during the interview, while others may be more laid back and conversational.
I practiced for my interviews by having my friend, Ben (always always grateful-thanks!), give me mock interviews. He mainly just practiced asking me basic & random questions just to exercise how I formulate my answers eloquently. But I mainly just stuttered with him. It was mainly a tool to practice putting myself in the situation. For my UCSF interview, yours truly Christina and my friend Jimmy gave me mock interviews also (so thankful!). Christina exhausted all the possible questions asked on SDN just to keep me thinking of all the possible questions that could be asked. But when it came to the interview, there weren't really any questions, they were more conversational.
Hope this helps & buena suerte!
-Oli
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