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How to Apply to a Osteopathic Medicine School?
The American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) operates
AACOMAS, a centralized application service for the osteopathic med-ical schools.
The service reduces the number of initial application forms, transcripts and
fees required, and streamlines the verification of your personal and academic
information.
After you have consulted with your health professions advisor and determined
that you wish to apply to osteopathic medical school, you should use the college
information section of this book as a reference. It contains a profile of each
college of osteopathic medicine, including a brief description of the campus and
the curriculum, admissions criteria, minimum entrance requirements, class size
and enrollment, supplemental application material requirements and application
dead-lines.
Osteopathic medical schools require scores from the Medical College Admission
Test (MCAT) to consider applicants for admission. You should arrange to have
your MCAT scores forwarded to AACOMAS. Admission to an osteopathic medical
school is competitive. The schools are able to select their entering class from
a large number of highly qualified applicants. For 2011, there were
approximately 92,500 applications designated by more than 12,600 applicants for
approximately 5,100 seats.
APPLY EARLY! The application cycle begins in May. The schools operate on a
rolling admissions basis, so classes may be filled before the deadline dates. By
applying early, you can ensure that your materials will be processed in a timely
manner.
U.S. Transcripts
You must request the registrar of each U.S. institution you have attended to
submit one complete set of official transcripts directly to AACOMAS. Include all
institutions in foreign countries and U.S. territories and posses-sions that are
operated by U.S. institutions. If an official transcript is unavailable, a
letter of explanation from that school is required.
Student copies of transcripts or copies sent to AACOMAS by the applicant are not
accept-able. Requests should be made to the registrar of each U.S. institution
you have attended. Transfer credit(s) appearing on a transcript cannot be
accepted in lieu of an original tran-script from the institution where the
course-work was completed. See the AACOMAS instructions on
https://aacomas.aacom.org for more details on Study Abroad Programs, Canadian
Transcripts and Other Foreign Transcripts. Transcripts should be mailed to:
AACOMAS
5550 Friendship Blvd., Suite 310
Chevy Chase, MD 20815
Phone: (301) 968-4190
E-mail: aacomas@aacom.org
Application Fees
The fee for using AACOMAS is based on a graduated scale that varies according to
the number of colleges you designate when you submit your application. You may
request that we send a completed application to more schools for an additional
fee. Payment may be made by credit card or money order only.
Application materials will not be processed until payment is received.
1 - $175
Add $32 for each additional designation at the time of submission.
Additional designations after the initial submission of the application are $50
each.
Money orders should be made payable to AACOMAS and sent to:
AACOMAS
5550 Friendship Blvd., Suite 310
Chevy Chase, MD 20815
Phone: (301) 968-4190
E-mail: aacomas@aacom.org
Application Fee Waiver
A limited number of fee waivers are avail-able to those who apply early and
qualify. Fee waiver requests must be received and processed prior to submitting
an AACOMAS application. Processing for fee waivers takes approximately two to
four weeks from the date of receipt, so applicants should take this into
consideration when planning submission of an AACOMAS application.
As a rough guide, you may wish to apply for a fee waiver if your annual income
level is within the U.S. Bureau of Census low-income threshold for your family’s
size. The number of fee waivers is limited, however, and finan-cial need does
not guarantee a fee waiver.
The AACOMAS application fee waiver is for the AACOMAS fee only. If you receive
an AACOMAS fee waiver, your name is forwarded to the osteopathic medical
colleges (some may grant a waiver of their supplemental application fee).
Applicants who apply for a fee waiver and qualify financially, but whose
materials are received too late to receive an AACOMAS waiver, also will have
their names forwarded to osteopathic medical colleges requesting such
information. Meeting AACOMAS’ eligibility criterion for a fee waiver, however,
does not guarantee a waiver will be granted for the supplemental fee.
Learn more about the application process here.
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