The AMCAS “disadvantaged applicant” question is no more. This year’s AMCAS application has introduced a new question in its place that asks more broadly about an applicant’s “impactful experiences.”
The 2024 AMCAS application will now include the following question and guidance:
Other Impactful Experiences
To provide some additional context around each individual’s application, admissions committees are interested in learning more about the challenges applicants may have overcome in life. The following question is designed to give you the opportunity to provide additional information about yourself that is not easily captured in the rest of the application.
Please consider whether this question applies to you. Medical schools do not expect all applicants to answer “yes” to this question. This question is intended for applicants who have overcome major challenges or obstacles. Some applicants may not have experiences that are relevant to this question. Other applicants may not feel comfortable sharing personal information in their application.
o Yes o No
Please use the space below to describe why you selected “yes.” [This text and the textbox only appear if “yes” is selected for this question.]
In a pop-up box, AMCAS provides some helpful examples. It reads:
The following examples can help you decide whether you should respond “yes” to the question, and if so, what kinds of experiences you could share. Please keep in mind that this is not a fully inclusive list and any experiences you choose to write about should be ones that directly impacted your life opportunities.
Example Experiences
Family background: serving as a caretaker of a family member (e.g., siblings, parent/guardian), first generation to college
Community setting: rural area, food scarcity, high poverty or crime rate, lack of access to regular health care (e.g., primarily used urgent care clinics or emergency room, no primary care physician)
Financial background: low-income family, worked to support family growing up, work-study to pay for college, federal or state financial support
Educational experience: limited educational opportunities, limited access to advisors or counselors who were knowledgeable/supportive of higher education requirements
Other general life circumstances that were beyond your control and impacted your life and/or presented barriers (e.g., religion)
Why the change?
The AAMC made the revision in response to “limitations” identified with the previous question, which asked a candidate if they wished to identify themself as a “disadvantaged applicant.” Research into the text found that applicants found the question ambiguous, and that many had a negative reaction to the use of the term “disadvantaged applicant.”
However, AAMC’s research also found that both applicants and admissions officers found value in the intent of the question, which was “to provide rich contextual information about an applicant’s journey and how their lived experiences align with schools’ missions and/or the communities they serve.”
The revised question and associated guidance was piloted using the Summer Health Professions Education Program and the supplemental Electronic Residency Application Service. And both the question and guidance received “generally positive feedback” from administrators and applicants.
Should I respond to this question?
As with the question that preceded it, this question text states that not all candidates are expected to respond. Rather, it is intended for those who have had “major challenges or obstacles.”
That being said, this updated question provides applicants with a broader scope for responses. So, we urge you to consider any significant challenges that you have faced, using the following questions:
Did this experience impact my life in such a way that it provides meaningful context to my application?
Examples of such adversity include: Facing a significant health challenge such as cancer or a disability; serving as the guardian to your younger siblings, while also attending classes (likely, negatively impacting your resume); living in an underserved medical community that made it difficult to gain shadowing or clinical experiences, but also inspired your interest in rural medicine.
Alternatively, more typical experiences that likely do not represent significant adversity (but potentially belong in your personal statement or secondary essays) include: Breaking a bone during high school athletics and going through a difficult recuperation process; facing a life-impacting food allergy, the dissolution of a romantic relationship, a domestic move, and/or your parents’ divorce. While these experiences likely impacted you greatly, they may not belong in this response.
2. What did I learn from the experience?
Your essay response should detail the adversity, but should center on what you learned from going through the experience. Did this experience provide you with an “ah-ha!” moment that changed your perspective and impacted your life? If the take-aways from the adversity do not feel relevant to your application (i.e., your learnings do not clearly make you a stronger candidate for a medical school), you should reconsider the take-aways or including the experience.
3. Have I already spoken to this experience in my personal statement?
You will want to avoid redundancy by sharing different stories and anecdotes in this essay and your personal statement. If you fully explored the experience in your personal statement, do not feel compelled to re-write about the experience here. Not all applicants are expected to have responses to this question.
Your writing approach:
Overcoming adversity makes for a stronger medical school candidate and this is what you will want to emphasize in your response: Provide the reader background on the situation in the first 20 percent of the response. But the remaining 80 percent should be devoted to what you learned from the adversity.
How will your future classmates and patients benefit from the lessons you gained from the adversity? Keep in mind the qualities that medical schools are looking for in prospective students and show the reader how your experience improved your dedication to medicine and resilience and/or your abilities in leadership, teamwork, empathy, and critical and creative thinking.