AACOMAS Application Process

Apply to Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine Through AACOMAS

Applying to the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine (ICOM) begins with the AACOMAS application, the centralized online application service used by colleges of osteopathic medicine across the United States. AACOMAS, operated by the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, allows students to submit one verified application to multiple osteopathic medical schools during a single application cycle.

Because ICOM uses a rolling admissions process, applicants are encouraged to submit their AACOMAS application early and ensure all required sections are complete and accurate.

Application Cycle & Important Dates

Below are the typical dates for ICOM’s application cycle. Always refer to AACOMAS for official deadlines and updates.

Key Dates

• AACOMAS Application Opens: Early May
• ICOM Primary Application Deadline: End of April
• Interview Season: Early fall through summer
• Acceptance Notifications: Begin in fall and continue on a rolling basis

Submitting your AACOMAS application early improves your chances of being reviewed while seats are still available at the school.

How to Apply to ICOM: Step-by-Step Application Process

Follow these steps to successfully complete your application to ICOM:

Step 1 – Create Your AACOMAS Account

Start by creating an AACOMAS account through the osteopathic medicine application service. You will enter biographic information, education level, and basic personal information section details. During this step, you will add program selections and choose Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine as one of your designated programs.

Step 2 – Complete Required AACOMAS Sections

The AACOMAS application includes several required sections designed to give medical schools a comprehensive view of each applicant. These include:

• Academic history section and transcript entry
• Submission of official transcripts from colleges, universities, and (when applicable) high schools
• Coursework reporting, including organic chemistry, non science courses, and science GPA calculations
• Personal statement explaining your motivation for pursuing osteopathic medicine
• Experience entries such as healthcare experience, non healthcare employment, non healthcare volunteer work, leadership, military status, and relevant information
• MCAT scores and other standardized tests
• Letters of recommendation and evaluations, including the ability to release confidential letters from letter writers

Accuracy is essential. AACOMAS applicants should carefully review transcript entry and ensure all materials are complete before submission.

Step 3 – Submit Your Primary Application

Once all required sections are complete, applicants may submit their primary AACOMAS application and pay the applicable application fee and initial application fee. Payment can be made through the AACOMAS system, which may include options such as a PayPal account.

AACOMAS will verify your academic records before releasing your application to ICOM. Verification time may vary depending on volume and completeness.

Step 4 – Interview Invitation

Qualified applicants are invited to participate in an interview. ICOM interviews are typically conducted virtually and focus on communication skills, professionalism, and alignment with the mission of educating future Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine graduates who serve rural and underserved communities.

Step 5 – Admissions Decision

Admissions decisions are made on a rolling basis. Accepted students will receive official communication outlining next steps, deposit requirements, and matriculation details.

Who Should Apply to ICOM?

ICOM seeks students who demonstrate:

• Completion or near completion of a bachelor’s degree
• Strong academic performance and readiness for medical school
• Alignment with ICOM’s mission to serve the Mountain West and underserved populations
• Professional maturity, compassion, and commitment to patient care
• Compliance with program Technical Standards

Non-traditional applicants, career changers, military applicants, and students from medically underserved regions or low-income levels are strongly encouraged to apply.

Prerequisites & Eligibility

Applicants must meet prerequisite coursework requirements prior to matriculation, including:

• Biology with lab
• General and organic chemistry with lab
• Physics
• English
• Behavioral sciences
• MCAT exam

Applicants should review detailed requirements on the ICOM Requirements page to determine eligibility before submitting an application.

Letters of Recommendation

Letters are submitted through AACOMAS and should reflect professionalism, academic readiness, and mission alignment. ICOM accepts:

• A letter from a DO or MD physician (strongly recommended)
• A premedical committee letter, or
• Two academic letters from the science faculty

Confidential letters and evaluations provide valuable supporting information during a holistic review.

AACOMAS Letters of Recommendation

The admissions office requires a letter from a DO or MD physician and two letters from science instructors. Your school’s premed committee letter may be submitted instead if your institution still offers one.

A letter from a DO carries more weight because it can describe specific clinical interactions, your bedside manner during a shadowing experience, how you responded under pressure, how you interacted with patients, rather than offering generic praise such as “hardworking” or “would recommend.”

Letters are requested through the Letters tab in AACOMAS. You enter the evaluator’s email address, AACOMAS sends them an upload link, and they submit the letter directly. Applicants typically waive their right to view the letter, since admissions committees place more weight on confidential letters.

Timing causes problems for many applicants. A student who emails a professor in February for a letter due in March often finds that the professor has already received similar requests from four or five other students that same week. The result is frequently two brief, generic paragraphs with little specific detail. Students should request letters by September if possible, and a short conversation beforehand, explaining specific reasons for pursuing osteopathic medicine, gives the writer concrete material to include.

AACOMAS Personal Statement Guide

The AACOMAS personal statement is a 5,300 character limit, not a word limit. That distinction trips up a lot of applicants every cycle. 5,300 characters including spaces works out to roughly 600 to 780 words depending on sentence length, which is shorter than most people expect when they sit down to write it. Draft in a word processor first so you can see both counts, because AACOMAS will cut you off mid-sentence at the limit and there is no getting that space back.

The prompt itself is broad. AACOMAS asks applicants to explain their motivation for pursuing a career in osteopathic medicine. There is no rigid formula for answering it, but the word osteopathic in that prompt is doing more work than applicants often realize.

A personal statement that reads as a generic “why I want to be a doctor” essay, one that could be copied and pasted into an MD application without changing a word, is a missed opportunity at osteopathic schools specifically. Admissions committees reading AACOMAS essays are looking for some indication that the applicant understands what osteopathic medicine actually is and why that approach to patient care resonates with them, not just that they want to practice medicine in general. That does not mean reciting the four tenets of osteopathic medicine like a textbook. It means the experiences and reflections in the essay should connect to the kind of whole-person, relationship-centered care that osteopathic training emphasizes.

The most common mistake is staying too generic. A personal statement that focuses entirely on a single shadowing experience or a single family member’s illness without connecting it to why osteopathic medicine specifically fits that motivation reads the same as every other applicant’s essay. The strongest statements usually show some genuine engagement with what a DO does differently, often through shadowing a DO physician directly, and reflect on why that approach matters to the kind of physician the applicant wants to become.

ICOM’s mission centers on training physicians for rural and underserved communities across the Mountain West, and applicants whose personal statements reflect a genuine connection to that kind of community-focused, primary-care-oriented practice tend to align well with what the admissions committee is looking for during holistic review.

AACOMAS Activities Section Guide

A student listed 1 activity on AACOMAS: 2 years at a free clinic. Another student listed 12, most of them 1-day events from freshman year. The first student got more interview questions about that 1 experience than the second got about all 12 combined.

Experiences isn’t a checklist meant to be filled out completely. Clinical hours count. Research counts. So does a leadership role, or a part-time job that has nothing to do with medicine, 2 years at a coffee shop, for example. Showing up consistently and handling responsibility means something on its own, even outside of healthcare.

There’s no cap on entries, but more doesn’t make a stronger application. 10 one-day events over 4 years carries less weight than 2 years at the same clinic. Admissions committees tend to dig into the longer experiences during interviews, and a student with 1 long one usually has more to say than a student with 10 short ones.

Hours come up constantly. Is 100 enough? 200? There’s no set number, even though specific figures get thrown around in pre-med groups online all the time. What actually matters is whether the time involved real patients and real situations, not a total that technically checks a box. ICOM’s Requirements page has the actual guidance here, and that’s a better source than online forums.

Shadowing a DO deserves its own mention. Shadowing an MD is common. Shadowing an osteopathic physician specifically, including watching OMM performed on a real patient, is something most applicants haven’t done, and it’s the kind of thing that can come up again later in the personal statement.

AACOMAS GPA Calculation

A student had a 3.7 GPA for 4 years on their school transcript. They submitted to AACOMAS and got back a 3.6. They spent 1 hour going back through their transcript trying to find the error.

There was no error. AACOMAS does not calculate GPA the way a school does. AACOMAS takes every course on a student’s transcript, sorts each course into its own category, and assigns its own value to each grade. The school’s GPA and the AACOMAS GPA are 2 different calculations, and both can be correct at the same time without matching.

There is 1 GPA inside AACOMAS that is worth knowing by name: BCPM, which stands for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Math. AACOMAS calculates BCPM separately from the overall GPA. This is usually 1 of the first numbers an admissions committee looks at, since BCPM reflects the coursework closest to the first 2 years of medical school.

Retakes are another area that causes confusion. A student can get an F in a course freshman year, retake the course junior year, and get an A. Most schools will update the transcript so only the A counts. AACOMAS does not do this. Both the F from freshman year and the A from junior year stay in the AACOMAS GPA calculation.

ICOM’s specific GPA requirements are listed on the Requirements page. That page is the better source to check, rather than general GPA ranges quoted for DO programs as a whole, since requirements can vary from school to school.

Why Apply Early?

Because ICOM evaluates applications as they are completed, early submission improves your chances of:

• Receiving a secondary application sooner
• Interviewing earlier in the cycle
• Accessing a limited number of available seats
• Receiving earlier admissions decisions

Competitive applicants typically submit within the first one to two months after the AACOMAS application opens.