March 15 has come and gone. After almost a full calendar year of applying to med school, the 2013 application cycle is finally over.

Finally.

To recap how much the past year has sucked, please see the list below of Things Applicants Had To Do This Year While You Were Out Having Fun. It begins in April of 2012. It’s long.

• Study for MCAT
• Take MCAT
• Wait the nonsensically long month to get MCAT score back
• Weep/bawl/faint from MCAT score
• Write personal statement
• Edit personal statement
• Start over on personal statement after your friend points out that it is terrible
• Submit AMCAS primary application
• Vomit
• Wait
• Fill out 4958331 secondary applications
• Write a gazillion 100-word essays on diversity, life, and why Med School X is awesome
• Wait
• Wait more
• Receive interview offer(s), vomit again
• Receive pre-interview rejections, vomit third time and sink into deep depression

If you’re keeping score, it’s now July.

• Book $600 plane ticket to interview
• Convince boss to let you take day off for interview
• Travel to interview while trying to maintain minimum suit wrinklage
• Get to hotel room and decide if ironing suit against suit instructions is a bad idea since it wrinkled
• Go to interview day, try to pay attention to opening presentation while your heart pounds out of your chest as you realize that in thirty minutes the fate of your future at Med School X will be decided by a pediatric gastroenterologist who asks what kind of vegetable you would be, if of course you had to pick a vegetable
• Vomit
• Realize that at future interviews it is worth the risk of being judged to actually eat the food provided
• Realize that your competition is equally as terrified, and the arrogance of some is simply camouflage
• Hate the arrogant ones anyway
• Especially hate the one who derided undergraduate institution because he sucks
• Now wait
• Wait
• Keep waiting

Still keeping score? It’s September.

• Beginning October 10, five days before schools operating under rolling admission can notify, stop sleeping
• Beginning October 12, three days before schools operating under rolling admission can notify, stop eating
• Beginning October 14, one day before schools operating under rolling admission can notify, get and remain drunk for the next 48 hours
• Hear nothing on October 15
• Break out in flop sweat
• Vomit
• Begin exploring career prospects as a dockhand and/or taxicab driver
• Gain admission to med school on October 16
• Collapse with relief and turn phone back on
• Repeat cycle of hemorrhaging money, energy, and time by interviewing and waiting to hear back for six months

Now we’re almost up to present day, early March:

• Get rejected from a top choice, which feels like being told your parents are giving you up for adoption at age 17
• Get rejected from other top choice, which feels like the twenty minutes before Zero Hour after eating bad sushi
• Get waitlisted at third top choice, which feels like being hit in the face with a full sealed can of red paint (red is for failure)
• Rationalize by saying you actually have five top choices (this is happily true)
• Feel glimmer of hope at being on waitlist at third top choice
• Look at waitlist statistics and realize odds of getting in off waitlist max out at 1%
• Die inside
• Progress through five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance
• Acceptance looks like a pope-themed party on Saturday night involving decidedly non-pontiff-like activities
• Vomit one final time

So there you have it. Pour a little out for your med school applicant friends. They’ve had a rough year.