Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this AMA? Are you currently in school OP?

Hi! Yes, waiting to graduate (finished all my classes and exams) hence the downtime for his AMA.

Congrats!!

^*this

Anonymous wrote:Is this AMA? Are you currently in school OP?

Hi! Yes, waiting to graduate (finished all my classes and exams) hence the downtime for his AMA.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my kid's class (about 120 kids) most are traditional students. There are a few non- traditional students but not that many.

By that do you mean started at 22? I see that as well from my kids friends who are in med school. I believe the median age is 24 for med students.

I have no idea how kids, especially at rural schools, do any premed activities besides general volunteering during the school year. My kid would’ve had to take at least two gap years if they wanted to apply to medical school.

Around age 24. Out of college, one or two gaps years then Med school.

Anonymous wrote:In my kid's class (about 120 kids) most are traditional students. There are a few non- traditional students but not that many.

By that do you mean started at 22? I see that as well from my kids friends who are in med school. I believe the median age is 24 for med students.

I have no idea how kids, especially at rural schools, do any premed activities besides general volunteering during the school year. My kid would’ve had to take at least two gap years if they wanted to apply to medical school.

In my kid's class (about 120 kids) most are traditional students. There are a few non- traditional students but not that many.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, this is an option, but there is a cost. Time and money. A post bacc takes at least an additional 2 years of education. That’s 2 additional years of tuition and living expenses. Probably around $100K. Also wondering if the OP got ALL their medical school required classes while in post grad education. Some medical schools want pre reqs within a certain period of time. A 6 year old biochemistry class might not be accepted.

+1
And 50% of acceptance to medical school is with Biology degree.
Most students choose Biology because the pre med prerequisite and the major requirements are complementary.
In another words it is easier to major in Biology for pre med students.
OP has a good point for alternative way of going to medical school.

This is so helpful, thanks!

Is this AMA? Are you currently in school OP?

Anonymous wrote:Yes, this is an option, but there is a cost. Time and money. A post bacc takes at least an additional 2 years of education. That’s 2 additional years of tuition and living expenses. Probably around $100K. Also wondering if the OP got ALL their medical school required classes while in post grad education. Some medical schools want pre reqs within a certain period of time. A 6 year old biochemistry class might not be accepted.

+1. Possible? Yes. But nothing is free.

Yes, this is an option, but there is a cost. Time and money. A post bacc takes at least an additional 2 years of education. That’s 2 additional years of tuition and living expenses. Probably around $100K. Also wondering if the OP got ALL their medical school required classes while in post grad education. Some medical schools want pre reqs within a certain period of time. A 6 year old biochemistry class might not be accepted.

I am not the OP - but have a good friend who went the non traditional path as well. She went to Divinity School after undergrad.
.... and wound up at Stanford Med School

If you went to HYP, I’d say you had pretty good starting point.

Great post! Well-written and informative and helpful. Thanks for writing!

I know some parents have premed kids and are curious about how to get into medical school. I went to HPY and knew I wasn’t cut out to do premed in those environments so didn’t consider it. Went into public policy - MPP- then decided to give med school a shot. By then my only options was to do a post bacc. I went to a small program with only about 17 people in my class and did really well (we all did) and got into a top 20 med school and later, a top residency program. I’m posting because going this path made me realize a couple things:

1. Med schools care a lot about diversity of experience so being “non trad” is interesting. Meaning, an English major, Econ major, public health major can be more interesting then a bio major. That also means you can take time off and be a stronger applicant. Bonus points if this has some application to medicine. I interview for my med school and one English major wrote a thesis on Chinese conception of midwifery in literature- made her a solid candidate.
2. Major in something that will get you the highest GPA. If you kids are humanities minded, that is great! I was an English major and medicine has a humanities component to it. If you can avoid it, do the science classes later… which brings me to 3
3. If you kids struggles in weed out classes, STOP! Tell them to just focus on high gpa and take the science classes elsewhere later. Post bacc, state school, anything else. My med school does not care where you did your science classes, they care about the GPAs and also about the prestige of where you when to undergrad (to some extent) so we have tons of people who did their science classes at say University of Houston with a 4.0 combined with a high history major total GPA at their undergrad looked amazing on paper. Post bacc to consider are Bryan mawr, goucher, Harvard or literally any state school near you.
4. If you do a post bacc approach, your MCAT matters a lot (it does anyway but even more more so) but I found this to be an easier trade off since I took all my science classes within a year and everything was fresh. My post bacc also geared our lectures toward the exam.

Tl;dr if your kids are struggling right now in premed classes, there is another way. You can have them major in what they like such as a humanities and then take the science courses in a more optimal environment. This works for many many students and I’ve noticed those in the know take this approach.