Applying to the MD Program

Before submitting AMCAS and paying their fee, please ensure you meet our secondary requirements. These requirements are non-negotiable and your application will not be reviewed if you do not meet them nor will you receive a secondary application which is required for consideration.

Ensure you can complete the premedical course requirements and earn a bachelor’s degree at an accredited college or university in the United States or Canada by July 15 of the year you will begin medical school.

Take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT)
Review Holistic Review Information
Request letters of evaluation

You do not need to complete all prerequisites before you apply; however, you must complete all prerequisites by July 15 of the year you matriculate.

The 2022 AMCAS Applicant Guide is a great resource and available to help you apply.

Once you have determined you have met or will meet the secondary requirements at some point in the admissions cycle, apply through the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS). AMCAS charges a $170 processing fee for one medical school designation and $42 for each additional medical school designation. If you are in need of financial assistance, learn more about your eligibility by visiting the AAMC Fee Assistance Program.

Our AMCAS application deadline is October 15, 11:59 p.m., Eastern Standard Time (8:59 p.m., Pacific Standard Time).

AMCAS application screening

Once we receive your AMCAS application, our system will check to see if you have met the secondary requirements. This may involve requesting official documentation from you to prove you meet a definition of resident student. If you are applying for admission as a U.S. permanent resident, submit a copy of your permanent resident card to the Office of Admissions and Student Affairs at medicine.admissions@wsu.edu.

Check that your letters of recommendation have been sent.

Your letter writers submit all letters of evaluation through the AMCAS Letters of Evaluation/Recommendation Service. Receiving these is one of the requirements to receive a secondary application.

Submit the secondary application.

If you receive the secondary application, you must submit it by December 1 at 5:00 p.m., Pacific Standard Time to be considered.

When you submit your secondary application, you will be asked to pay a $50 fee using a credit card. Once proof of payment is received, the AMCAS application, letters of evaluation, and the secondary application will be assigned to two screeners who review the full application file (AMCAS, secondary, and letters; GPAs or MCAT scores are not shared with screeners) to make independent recommendations for interview. Your application will remain in review until we have filled all interview seats unless we notify you we are no longer considering your application prior to this time. Those who are not invited for an interview are notified they are no longer being considered as soon as that decision has been made. When reviewing completed applications, the Committee looks for relevant life experiences and personal attributes, and connections to the state of Washington.

*NOTE: We waive the secondary fee for applicants who have been approved for the AAMC Fee Assistance Program.

The secondary application is your opportunity to showcase every aspect of your ability, experience and character that aligns with the College’s mission, vision, and goals. Holistic review is a balanced consideration of experiences, attributes, and metrics that help us meet our mission. Since we have established GPA/MCAT threshold combinations as a partial requirement to receive a secondary application, once the secondary application is submitted, we do not include the GPA and MCAT in any of our decision-making.

After you submit your secondary application, you can log into our admissions portal to check your application status. A final admission decision will be sent to the email address provided in your AMCAS application. Please ensure the email you included on AMCAS and the secondary are the same. NOTE: To ensure you receive all of our correspondence, please ensure medicine.admissions@wsu.edu is a recognized address to receive emails from. If not, our emails may go to your junk or promotions folders (check these regularly if you are an applicant).

The college will email interview invitations as early as July. All communications are sent via email so please include a valid and regularly monitored email address on your AMCAS and secondary application.

You cannot schedule an individual appointment with the admissions office to discuss your qualifications once an application has been submitted and you are under consideration. You may ask general questions during this phase.

Interviews will take place from August through February.

We will continue to conduct an all-virtual interview cycle for EY 2023. This will allow our applicants, faculty, staff, and students to be thoughtful of their health and well-being and allows for applicants to be considerate of their finances.

Our Virtual Interview Day will include the following via our Mixed Structured Interviews (MSI):

Live Virtual Interviews

The first part of our interview modality includes two structured live traditional interviews that are 10 minutes each during our virtual interview day. These two interviews are not scenario-based and you do not know what will be discussed before engaging in them via Zoom. One of these interviews will be conducted by an Admissions Committee member and the other by a non-Admissions Committee or another Admissions Committee member.

Interviews are closed file: interviewers do not review any aspect of your application for the interview.

Live Recorded Interviews

The second component to our interviewing modality, MSI, will be recorded interviews to be rated at a later time. During the live Virtual Interview Day, you will be interacting with a live moderator who will pose scenario or behavioral-type prompts for you to respond to within three minutes; there will be four of these. The moderator is only serving the purpose of providing you with the prompt and listening to and recording your responses. They are not serving as interviewers in that they will not be asking you follow-up questions, providing clarification, or assessing your responses. Instead, your recordings in response to these four prompts will be assigned to trained raters who will rate your recorded responses following the interview day.

Additional Information about the WSU College of Medicine Virtual Interview Day

• WSU College of Medicine has trained interviewers to assess the recorded interviews.
• All individuals involved in the MSI complete implicit bias training. Our Admissions Committee also undergoes bias training annually.
• The Virtual Interview Day will include all we need to assess you further.
• The Virtual Interview Day will also include presentations about our MD program and conversation with current medical students.
• You will be provided with a link to our Virtual Interview Day resource website which will include recorded presentations and information to review prior to your interview day.
• Attendance at the full interview day is required.
• Interview days are held on select Mondays and Fridays from August through February.

CougDoc Applicant Mock Interview (CAMI) Project!

Our medical students, led by Student National Medical Student Association (SNMA), wanted to provide a service to applicants applying to our College of Medicine to help them be even more successful on interview day. Additionally, they wanted to ensure that all applicants had access to this type of resource regardless of their background and access to services.

The CAMI Project is a student-created, student-led mock interview program and was first implemented in the 2020/2021 interview cycle and offered each cycle. All applicants invited to interview with our College of Medicine are invited to engage in mock interviews with trained medical students prior to their official interview day with our college. CAMI student leaders consult with the Admissions leadership on questions, process, and protocol so that it is the most helpful to our applicants.

Check out this flyer for interview tips from our medical students.

If you are invited to interview, contact information will be shared to set up your mock interview.

Following the Virtual Interview Day

Once you have completed your virtual interview day, your full application packet will continue through a review by two Admissions Committee members and discussion at an Admissions Committee meeting where each interviewed applicant is formally assessed.

A complete application file for discussion by the Admissions Committee includes:

• AMCAS primary application (with GPAs and MCAT removed)
• WSU College of Medicine secondary application
• Letters of recommendation
• MSI assessments (six independent assessments)

Await Notification

The college uses a rolling admissions process. The Admissions Committee meets at several intervals from September through March to review applicants and make admission decisions.

If you have been accepted to the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine and decide not to attend, it would be courteous and professional to decline your offer or withdraw your acceptance by emailing medicine.admissions@wsu.edu. This allows the college to admit another applicant in a timely manner. It is prudent to review the AAMC Application and Acceptance Protocols for Applicants, especially as it pertains to holding multiple offers of acceptance. In particular, if you receive an offer of acceptance from more than one medical school on or before April 30th, select only one program and withdraw your acceptance from all other schools from April 30 and after.

If you are on the waitlist and do not plan on attending the college after all, please withdraw your application by emailing Admissions . This allows for the waitlist to include only those who are still interested in attending the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.

Pre-enrollment deposit

We do not require a pre-enrollment deposit.

How admission decisions are reached

The Admissions Committee receives a presentation of the applicant’s file (without access to the GPAs and MCAT) by a member of the committee and discusses the applicant’s experiences and attributes and their alignment with our mission, vision, and goals. Each committee member confidentially provides a score for each candidate discussed.

The Admissions Committee determines which applicants will be granted admission and in what order. This decision is final and free from any influence outside of the Admissions Committee. Furthermore, all committee members are required to declare any real or perceived conflicts of interest for any candidate for whom it applies.

The Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine does not offer an early decision program.

What if you are not selected?

Some applicants may be invited to take a place on the waitlist for admission. Offers from the waitlist occur once all seats have been filled and a previously accepted applicant then chooses to withdraw. Offers from the waitlist can be made until orientation in mid-August.

Questions? Contact Admissions.

For prospective applicants who plan to apply to medical school while in college and hopefully matriculate after graduation, there are many resources on college campuses to assist. We highly recommend that you rely on your pre-health offices and advisors for guidance on how to be competitive applicants.

There are other resources available through the Association of American Medical Colleges. The Premed Navigator page provides many different insights.

We encourage you not to focus so much on when you could start medical school and instead consider how you can gain as much experience and exposure and grow as an individual to be ready for medical school. If this changes your path to add a gap year(s) or to pursue another career first, there is nothing wrong with that!

For prospective applicants who plan to apply to medical school after a gap year(s), we encourage you to be thoughtful about how you want to spend that time and how you hope to grow as an individual. Medical schools want to know how applicants are spending their time between college and medical school.

Be mindful that you may also lose contact with your former professors as you transition out of college. If you aim to ask for a letter of recommendation from a former professor, it is up to you to maintain that contact and keep them informed of what you are doing.

If you plan to pursue postbacc courses or apply to a formal program, this page has some helpful resources.

The AAMC provides some additional considerations if taking a gap year(s) and how to make the most of it.

For applicants who have pursued other careers and/or served in the military, having access to pre-med advisors may not be an option. If you need to take pre-requisite courses, consider taking them at a four-year institution where there would be access to pre-med advisors. However, we understand this is not always possible and support applicants pursuing coursework at community colleges. We encourage you to reach out to us directly for an advising meeting.

Know your value!
We encourage you to share with us on your application how your former career and/or military service has helped prepare you for medical education or the practice of medicine. Often applicants who are transitioning from other careers forget that medical schools are not only concerned about your health care exposure; they also want applicants who have leadership and teamwork experience and skills, among others. Consider how you can highlight what you have learned from these other fields that will help you as a medical student, bring diversity to the class, care for others, and/or help us solve challenging healthcare problems.

Below are links to AAMC resources:

• Questions when applying as a veteran or active-duty military service member
• Medical school costs for nontraditional students