Stay reassured!! There are so many people out there to help you navigate what is already a challenging path. At Long School of Medicine, we’ll all stay flexible while working hard to maintain a fair and consistent process for all of our applicants. See below the most current COVID-19 notices and answers to your questions.
We sincerely hope that you and your loved ones remain healthy, and that your troubles are few!
At Long SOM, our Admissions Committee’s usual process is to continuously review applications throughout the entire season. We do realize that the MCAT testing changes and other things have shifted the application timeline towards the later months in the cycle, and our Admissions Committee will be ready for this.
We will pace our interview invitations throughout the season and will be inviting up until January. We will not fill all our interview spots in the early fall. We like to see how the entire pool is evolving all throughout the season and invite applicants all throughout the months of July through January.
Receipt of the MCAT score is required for an interview invitation to be extended. Our Admissions Committee will require the MCAT as part of the review process.
We are aware that there continue to be MCAT test cancelations. We encourage students to reschedule as soon as they can. We will be able to review an application as long as there is an official MCAT score report that has been taken within the last 5 years.
Long SOM has agreed to accept all courses graded as pass/fail or credit/no-credit as equivalent to graded courses during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically the spring 2020 academic term, winter 2020 and summer 2020.
All prerequisite courses that were transitioned to an online format in the spring 2020 (including winter 2020 quarter term), summer 2020, and the fall 2020 academic terms will be applied towards the education requirements for all TMDSAS member institutions which includes Long SOM. If these prerequisites were taken without a grade, the Admissions Committee will be looking at other coursework for strength in the sciences. Pass, satisfactory, credit or any assigned grade that indicates satisfactory knowledge of the content of the course will be accepted for coursework taken during the pandemic.
At Long SOM we will conduct virtual Interview Days, beginning August 2022 through Janurary 2023. We will provide access to several instructional videos with Virtual Interviewing Tips. We are planning a fun and informational Virtual Interview Day, with lots of opportunities to visit with our Faculty and Students, including a virtual social for games and conversation with our students (“Off the Record”) the night before your Virtual Interview Day.
At Long SOM we are very aware of the many ways that the COVID pandemic has impacted the lives of our pre-medical students and applicants. In fact, the impacts and challenges, we realize, will be around for a long time, even when we are back to normal – and we WILL get back to normal!
When reviewing applications, we know that this was a unique semester (or semesters) for those pursuing medicine. We recognize that your apprenticing (or shadowing) experiences were canceled; we realize that you had plans to continue community service, travel, jobs and other activities that were discontinued. Our committee will be aware, flexible and tolerant of changes or decreased activity of those sorts in the semesters affected by COVID.
There ARE ways to stay busy-learning about medicine and serving. Find ways to help others and spend some time with a medicine related book or You Tube videos of parts of the history and physical exam. Be creative!
