Students say the process is taxing on their schedules as well as their wallets.

"It's really time-consuming and it made taking a language class impossible for me this spring," Shepard-Sawyer says.

However, traveling to medical schools gives students the opportunity to learn more about the schools they are seeking to attend.

"It's important to emphasize that interviewing trips are mostly about learning about the school rather than the school learning about you," says a Winthrop house senior, who asked to remain anonymous. "It's important to find the right match."

However, Kalnakis says students tend to take the reputation of a school more into account than the school itself.

"Reputation's the foremost concern," he says. "For many, reputation's important because that's the basis of how residencies are chosen."

Although some seniors say they are stress over the admissions process, they keep it to themselves.

"People don't talk about it a whole lot," Shepard-Sawyer says. "Certainly not the same way they talk about recruiting," she added.

At the same time, some seniors say that applying to medical schools is not as difficult as it appears to those not part of the process.

"Overall the process is not that bad because it is not as high stressed as people make it out to be," says Micheal M. Takamura '97.

However, some students say that the process can be tiring.

"I guess I'm just sick of traveling," Shepard-Sawyer says.