Things I wish I had known earlier . . .

Exactly, once you start filling in your name, address, etc…via amcas sure you can get secondaries but these are the mass secondaries that most schools send w/o screening. Until you are complete with amcas and that means all transcripts received by them and verified you will not be complete at any school regardless if you sent secondaries or not. I am pretty sure that until your whole application is complete schools will not invite for interviews…

I do not know if you are aware of this but with deadlines coming up your OT (official transcripts) need to be there by X day. If you go to the AAMC web you can see this for yourself…it also states that let’s say amcas has all your stuff and is verifying (which can take up to two weeks) and the deadline passes for that school then you are kind of in a bad position…so try to get your transcripts in ASAP so you will not miss the deadline for your application to be complete (means verified and all). Even though you will get secondaries until the schools have your complete amcas in their hot little hands they really cannot do much. I have seen what is submitted at different times from amcas. Schools can request different stuff like biographical info from all those students applying and this will be available as soon as you start filling amcas out but again, until all your grades have been verified the schools cannot due much after that.