AAMC Recommendations for Medical School Applicants

The following recommendations are promulgated by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to ensure that applicants are afforded timely notification of the outcome of their medical school applications and timely access to available first-year positions and that schools are protected from having unfilled positions in their entering classes. These recommendations are being distributed for the information of prospective medical students, their advisors, and personnel at the medical schools to which they have applied.

The AAMC recommends that:

1. Each applicant be familiar with, understand, and comply with the application, acceptance, and admission procedures at each school to which the applicant has applied, as well with as these Recommendations.

2. Each applicant provide accurate and truthful information in all aspects of the application, acceptance, and admission processes for each school to which the applicant has applied.

3. Each applicant submit all application documents (e.g., primary and secondary application forms, transcript[s], letters of evaluation/recommendation, fees) to each school in a timely manner and no later than the school's published deadline date.

4. Each applicant promptly notify all relevant medical school application services and all medical schools with independent application processes of any change, permanent or temporary, in contact information (e.g., mailing address, telephone number, e-mail address).

5. Any applicant who will be unavailable for an extended period of time (e.g., during foreign travel, vacation, holidays) during the application/admission process:

   1. Provide instructions regarding his or her application and the authority to respond to offers of acceptance to a parent or other responsible individual in the applicant's absence.

   2. Inform all schools at which the applicant remains under consideration of this individual's name and contact information.

6. Each applicant respond promptly to a school's invitation for interview. Any applicant who cannot appear for a previously scheduled interview should notify the school immediately of the cancellation of the appointment in the manner requested by the school.

7. Each applicant in need of financial aid initiate, as early as possible, the steps necessary to determine eligibility, including the early filing of appropriate need analysis forms and the encouragement of parents, when necessary, to file required income tax forms.

8. In fairness to other applicants, when an applicant has made a decision, prior to May 15, not to attend a medical school that has made an offer of acceptance, the applicant promptly withdraw his or her application from that (those) other school(s) by written correspondence delivered by regular or electronic methods.

9. By May 15 of the matriculation year (April 15 for schools whose first day of class is on or before July 30), each applicant who has received an offer of acceptance from more than one school choose the specific school at which the applicant prefers to enroll and withdraw his or her application, by written correspondence delivered by regular or electronic methods, from all other schools from which acceptance offers have been received.

10. Immediately upon enrollment in, or initiation of an orientation program immediately prior to enrollment at, a U.S. or Canadian school, each applicant withdraw his or her application from consideration at all other schools at which he or she remains under consideration.

Approved: GSA Committee on Admissions, July 17, 2003
Approved: GSA Steering Committee, July 18, 2003
Approved: Council of Deans, September, 2003
Approved: AAMC Executive Committee, October 3, 2003

Also see: AAMC Recommendations for Medical School Admission Officers