<p>Sorry, skip NOT. That make sense.</p>
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<p>I can’t disagree with this, and I understand how inane this probably looks to outsiders.</p>
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<p>I don’t think it’s the programs that would be the ones who would be upset with this. It’s not as common on the coasts, for peds and IM (and remember that these are the 2 biggest fields in the Match) in the middle of the country they pay for hotel rooms, dinners and lunches with residents. And typically dinners include appetizers and desserts at the better restaurants in a given city. Hell, Children’s Mercy in Kansas City reimburses travel costs up to $250 for each applicant. All that money adds up, so there would be substantial cost savings for these programs and certainly there are a lot of residency coordinators who would sleep easier not having to deal with the stress of scheduling and organizing multiple months of interviews. </p>
<p>But, the outrage from the students would be immense…the way a program appears on paper and on-line, is totally different than in person. And given the amount of time you’re going to be spending with these people, it’s important the fit is at least tolerable. This isn’t like med school interviews where you’re going to have at least a 100 other people to mingle with and find your niche. You’re going to be surrounded by these people for years. And if you happen to move somewhere where you know no one…you’re going to have to find your first friends out of that group.</p>
<p>I’m still mulling over clerkship ideas…will get back to you.</p>
<p>I understand your point about critical thinking. In physics we don’t use textbooks and our teacher (who is a physicists I believe) never lectures. EVER. Not one time this entire school year…and yet I’ve learned the most from his class than any other class I have ever taken. A normal day in his class is him sitting behind his desk with the words “Find the effects of gravity on the cart” written on the board. That’s it. We have no procedures…we are divided into three groups and we all “experiment.” Then we form a circle in the middle of the room (where my teacher remains quiet the entire time) and the three groups debate until we derive a formula and come to a conclusion. Since I’m such a good critical thinker, I’m usually the only one talking…and everyone just nods and agrees with a few people debating me (even though we have a lot of smart people in my class…I’m just the bigger talker I guess you’d say). Then my teacher always buds in and questions me. Even though what I’m saying is right, he always like to make ME of all the people in the room think deeper as if he’s trying to find a flaw…and I always debate with him. Like everything in physics clicks in my head besides Newtons third law. He did a special experiment just to prove it to me, but I still don’t believe it…I’m still trying to find ways to challenge it…but anyways, I’ve developed some intense critical thinking skills in his class, and I see your point of why it’s so important for develop this. Months ago if you asked me what forces were acting on an astronaut floating in space, I would tell you, “None.” Now that I’ve been in his class I would be dumbfounded by how vague of a question that was.</p>
<p>As for the EMT program, it is three years…except we cover MUCH more than an EMT-B course. The entire first year is Anatomy and Physiology. The next year is EMT-B skills…but we also learned weird stuff. Like how to test urine, how to suture, how to make incisions, etc. This year is kind of like a paramedic course. Even though we will never be able to use these skills on a real person (or take the paramedic exam) it’s pretty cool to learn how to intubate and run basic simulations in the lab.</p>
<p>And I know I shouldn’t take the MCAT. 
I get bored sometimes. I have overbearing parents so I never get to do anything interesting unless I sneak out in the middle of the night which I can only do on the weekends to go to parties…(and what accounts for 50% of the reasons that I am graduating early)…so I either read, talk on the phone, text, or if I’m really bored take an MCAT (which I’ve only done once). </p>
<p>As for maturing into an adult, I can mature as fast as I’m required to. There have been some situations that have happened in my life that has made me mature much more rapidly than my peers. If I’m around really mature people, I will soon get to their level.</p>
<p>Also, I agree with you now about why I need to take all of the courses to prepare me for medical school, but I still don’t understand the point of the last two years. I think that’s a debatable issue. I once read an article about a fifteen year old medical student. He turned out find, I suppose. Haven’t heard anything about him killing a patient or doing something wrong due to his immaturity. You know, maturity and age is not directly correlated. I can point out to you millions of 25 year old men that I’m more mature than.</p>
<p>And I probably am going to apply with 90 semesters hours. Just to see what happens. 
If I go to Rice or Emory University and I’m apply to a very bottom tier medical school, I still couldn’t get in?</p>
<p>Also to BigRedMed, </p>
<p>I’m sure the information in the medical school curriculum would be much more relevant than the pre-medical curriculum. A general biology course at a university isn’t designed for just pre-meds…but a general biology course in medical school is designed for future doctors. </p>
<p>To kristin,</p>
<p>I’m sure if I show intense dedication and have amazing EC’s I will have a fighting chance. There’s a reason that I am choosing Oxford College of Emory University over Emory College. The classes their are smaller, the students aren’t as competitive as the Emory college students, plus the campus is only 700 students with maybe 100-150 premeds. The professors are just as highly qualified as the Emory College campus, so I will probably easily get a research internship and amazing recommendation letters. My cousin went to Oxford and got accepted to Stanford for engineering. He said the reason being was probably due to his recommendation that he got from his Oxford professor.</p>
<p>But yeah, I’ve typed a lot. So I guess I will stop.</p>
<p>OMG so many typos. lol…sorry. XD</p>
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<p>Oh, absolutely. Forcing folks to do the match without interviews would be truly horrendous. But I really do think that keeping kids in school for an extra year just for the purpose of interviewing is even more ridiculous.</p>
<p>Fortunately we don’t really have to choose, since I really do think things can be streamlined enough that I think my suggestion is a false dilemma.</p>
<p>So, as for clerkships. I agree they could be streamlined. Some schools out there in addition to requiring the standard five (IM, Surgery, Peds, OB/GYN and Psych) also require neuro, ER, and rural family med rotations. Some schools, I don’t know why, include elective months in the third year, as well as vacation time that can be scheduled as a block (2 or 4 weeks). </p>
<p>If you scrapped all the extra stuff leaving just the big five clerkships that would cut significant amount of time. Then as you said, some clerkships just get ridiculous amounts of time. There’s absolutely no reason why you need to spend 12 weeks on surgery. IM - yeah, I can see that being 12 weeks, but surgery? That being said, I think you could drop all clerkships to 6 weeks and still have a quality educational experience in every field.</p>
<p>IM - 4 weeks inpatient, 2 weeks outpatient</p>
<p>Peds - 3 weeks inpatient, 2 weeks outpatient, 1 week newborn nursery</p>
<p>Surgery - 4 weeks general surgery, 2 weeks surgical subspecialty selective (options could include an “academic general surgery” so that students could make their name known if they were planning on a gen surgery residency)</p>
<p>OB/GYN - 2 weeks Labor and Delivery, 2 weeks outpatient, 1 week GYN Surgery, 1 week GYN Oncology</p>
<p>Psych - 3 weeks inpatient, 3 weeks outpatient (alternatively, 2 weeks Psych Unit, 2 weeks consult, 2 weeks clinic)</p>
<p>Ideally, I’d want every clerkship to have a daily hour long lecture. Use teleconference or whatever to make it happen, but the clerkships where there’s a consistent, defined curriculum work better and are far more educational in my experience.</p>
<p>In terms of call, while med students are covered by work hour limitations, it is a little ridiculous to expect 3rd year students to stay for overnight call. I also question the value of overnight call in most situations, either the student gets ignored, just watches their resident answer their pager, or gets sent to bed at 10pm. Not particularly educational. I had friends who did q4 call for months while medical students, and when it’s for a service you’re not interested in doing, it just makes you end up hating life. So I’d propose that students stay till 10pm or Midnight at the latest. One week of OB/GYN however would be nights because there are way more babies born overnight than during the day (or at least it feels that way). I also think a night of trauma call while on surgery is beneficial. </p>
<p>That would get you down to 30 weeks. If we’d similarly shrunk the first two years to 1.5 (easily doable), throw in 6 weeks for studying/taking Step 1, that would finish all the third year requirements by September of the original third year. </p>
<p>In terms of interview season, there’s plenty of time that could be removed there too. There’s no reason why ERAS opens in August in the present system, but Dean’s Letters go out on November 1st. Especially if some programs out there won’t send out interview invitations until Dean’s Letters are received. Wasted time. Similarly, if the Match Algorithm only takes 6 minutes to run, then there’s no reason why applicants and programs should have to wait 3 weeks to find the results. Run the program, electronically notify everyone, let the med schools print out reports and envelopes and whatever else they want to do for their Match Day Ceremonies and be done with it. Run it on a Thursday, Scramble starts the following Monday, Match Day the Thursday after. </p>
<p>So in our hypothetical restructuring, September - December is for Acting internships/audition rotations/getting LOR’s from clinical faculty. ERAS opens on December 1st, and Dean’s Letters get uploaded that same day. Interviews start first day back in January, run through the end of February, and schools would be allowed to require some sort of rotations during that time, but with the understanding that the time is for interviews. All interviews have to be done by the end of February with Rank Lists due on 11:59pm on February 28th, Match Algorithm runs on first Thursday of March, Match Day is the 2nd Thursday in March. The only thing I might tweak about that is to make it the first Thursday after the first Tuesday of March, so there’s a little breather for Rank Order Lists to be certified/technical issues dealt with. They’d have to upgrade the ROL servers to handle a bigger rush of traffic than what they get even now. </p>
<p>With Match done at the same time it’s always done, the “fourth years” continue their coast out to graduation, and we’ve compressed 4 years into 3. </p>
<p>The only major concern I have with a compacted interview schedule is weather. If there’s only 8 weeks, that really crunches everyone and makes rescheduling harder. However, you could push interview season out farther/Match Day to April if you wanted with no fundamental change of being done by “normal” graduation time frame. I don’t think there’s any appreciable disadvantages in terms of relocation/moving if the Match was done a month later than it is currently, but I didn’t have to worry about things like buying a house, finding a daycare or anything like that.</p>
<p>From a residency program stand point, I think there might be initial concerns about intern readiness, but I think with less “fluff” time, and more recently completed “heavy” academics everything would stay relatively level.</p>
<p>Some schools, those that require their students to do multiple sub-I’s, and multiple ICU months as 4th years would probably cry foul, but other med schools (like mine with no major requirements) would probably welcome the change. </p>
<p>That said, while it’s doable…I would lament the loss of the 4th year. Even at 45k + the huge residency/relocation loan I took out, it was a great, great year. I have one attending who says “everyone should get a 4th year of medical school…even people who don’t to medical school”. It’s a unique time and unlike say, the 3rd year of law school, there actually is some purpose to it.</p>
<p>There are a few medical schools in the USA with a BS-MD 6 year program ie NEUCOM in Ohio…check it out</p>
<p>Don’t know if this has been mentioned to you- but you are describing Tulane’s accelerated med school program [Tulane</a> University - School of Medicine - Office of Admissions - taptp](<a href=“http://tulane.edu/som/admissions/tulane-accelerated-physician-program.cfm]Tulane”>http://tulane.edu/som/admissions/tulane-accelerated-physician-program.cfm)</p>