Do you wish Medical School were direct admit from HS?

[Anonymous]

I’m am expat from a country where the norm is direct admission to medical school from high school. The first year is brutal and is supposed to weed out more than 70% of the candidates. It’s very common to have a university where you have 500 kids in the first year of medicine, then have only 150 , the second year and they end up graduating 130. So even just getting in to the program is no guarantee you’ll become a doctor.

[Anonymous]

No, but medical school doesn’t need to be four years. My DH (physician) strongly believes three years is plenty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, but I do with they didn’t need hundreds upon hundreds of hours in clinical, research, and volunteering to prove worthiness requiring a new norm of gap years. Mine doesn’t need one, but as the age increases worries it’s a negative not to even if ready. It’s a long path, don’t want it to be longer.

Anyone worth the admission to med school can do all of the prereqs as well as research, volunteering, clinical/shadowing and apply summer after junior year of college, taking the MCAT once in the late spring. MCAT prep is not hard for capable students who are at rigorous premed programs. ECs are easy to knock out during the school year at colleges with a med school on or close to campus, plus the summer after freshman year and the summer after sophomore year. Gap years are only necessary for those who cannot balance it all and still get 3.9+. Our ivy does not encourage gap years for anyone unless they need to spread out courses or they decide to be premed later (and miss the ability to start the ECs as a freshman, which makes a gap necessary).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, but medical school doesn’t need to be four years. My DH (physician) strongly believes three years is plenty.

Maybe they could cut down to only one year of preclinical but require a pass on step 1 for admission. That way students don't have to pay $100k for the privilege of studying off of online resources and can instead do so for free.

[Anonymous]

This entire thread is silly. Do you actually want your physician to get licensed as quickly as a physician’s assistant?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This entire thread is silly. Do you actually want your physician to get licensed as quickly as a physician’s assistant?

PAs are not assistants to a physician. They also learn quite a bit of medicine - more than NPs in general.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This entire thread is silly. Do you actually want your physician to get licensed as quickly as a physician’s assistant?

I was just about to say this. This system exists already just become a PA. Problem solved
.

[Anonymous]

There are high school pipeline programs such as this: https://www.uh.edu/honors/programs-minors/curricular-programs/premed-academy/index.php

But the school is nationally ranked magnet school with a premedical focus.