After you submit your AMCAS application, you are faced with many other decisions and tools you must utilize before you can actually attend a school. One of these is the choose your medical school tool from the AAMC which helps enforce the AAMC applicant traffic rules and help you finish up your decision making. Today, I’m going to explain what the plan to enroll and commit to enroll options are in the choose your medical school tool and give some insight on them based on my own cycle experience. Lets do it!
The AMCAS is the main method of applying for M.D. program medical schools in the United States. It stands for American Medical College Application System and once you submit it, you are faced with a number of options.
First, you’ve got the potential to communicate with the medical schools through update letters, letters of intent, and letters of interest. Each of these are unique and require their own specific approach.
However, once you get towards the end of your application cycle and have some acceptances/waitlists, it is time for the AMCAS choose your medical school tool.
What is the AMCAS choose your medical school tool?
Well, it’s something the AAMC created to keep track of which schools you’ve been accepted to and waitlisted to. Additionally, it was created to help you follow the AAMC applicant traffic rules they set forth.
The tool will show all your acceptances and waitlists along with the option to “Plan to enroll” or “Commit to enroll”.
What is plan to enroll on AMCAS choose your medical school?
As stated on the actual tool, plan to enroll means you are selecting this one school as the one you would most likely plan to attend. All schools who have you waitlisted or accepted will be notified, but your application will not be withdrawn.
Based on AAMC’s rules, you’ll have this option beginning February 18th and until April 30th when commit to enroll opens up.
You can still hold acceptances and waitlists with this designation and it’s just to help medical schools assess how many are planning to attend and if they need to make more offers.
For me, I received three emails within a day of using plan to enroll from other medical schools wanting to know if I was still considering their school and they gave me 24 hours to change my designation to their school. This isn’t every school, but some are ultra aggressive and will retract offers quickly if you choose this, so use it wisely or if you are very sure!
What is commit to enroll on AMCAS choose your medical school?
The commit to enroll option becomes available April 30th and is a way to let all other schools know that you are fully committing to that one medical school. You can only choose one school and by AAMC traffic rules, you must withdraw from ALL waitlists and acceptances at that point,
These schools will be notified that you have selected another school, but won’t know which. You also will not be automatically withdrawn from their admissions cycle, so you must reach out to them yourself and withdraw.
This is considered the final endgame of the admissions cycle and really should be done only if you are sure of the school. The rest of my acceptances notified me they heard of my decision and wanted to check if I would like to be withdrawn. I confirmed and that was that. Down to one medical school, my current one.
Essentially, choose your medical school tool is just AAMC’s way to get applicants to adhere to the traffic guidelines it sets forth while also providing medical schools with some safeguards and enforcement dates so that they can better see where there applicants are going. Without it, they may over offer or under offer because they don’t guess correctly how many students are interested. I think many more students get taken off waitlists with this tool being used and it helps everyone all around.
What if you’ve already submitted your AMCAS primary application? Can you add schools after submitting your AMCAS? Check out my write up on this here.