<p>I am going to attend loyola university chicago this fall as a freshman and i currently have biology premed major which i am going to change to bioinformatics as soon as i get a chance. I am absolutely certain that i want to become a surgeon and therefore, i have decided to give summer school a try every year and graduate in 3 years from loyola. </p>
<p>However, some of my friends told me that graduating in 3 years may leave a bad impression for med school since its just seems rushing through college and i really want to save 1 year if possible because i know its going to take long before i finish my residency.</p>
<p>When you rush through things like this, you run the risk of burnout. In the end, whether you end up practicing for 41 years or 40 years, it won’t matter. But, I think many physicians and med students recall college as being one of the best times of their lives. There’s no need to rush through college. It’s a long journey. Enjoy it.</p>
<p>Top schools seem to frown on kids graduating from HS early, med schools seem to frown on students graduating early. In both cases this is not always the case, but is a good general rule.</p>
<p>If you do decide to graduate early, you will need all three years of grades to apply, so you would still have a gap year, you won’t save any time. Now you might be saving a lot of money by finishing early or you might have an amazing gap year activity and that could be fine, but don’t do it to save 1 year in school. And whatever you do, don’s load up your classes and finish early with less than stellar grades.</p>
<p>so even with good MCAT and high GPA my chances are low? because i am entering as a 17 year old freshman in college and if i can manage it, i will be 20 when i enter med school.</p>
<p>Why on earth would you do that? It is not a race. Nobody will think it’s cool. And it will hamper your chances at admission even if you managed to get a good resume built up.</p>
<p>Med schools like students with more experince, not less. You are going the wrong direction.</p>
<p>OP, I’m a rising sophomore and am currently in the last weeks of an absolutely AMAZING summer internship. I have learned more, done more(much of it on my own, working in a cancer research lab), and had more clinical experiences than in any previous full academic year. I suggest that you spend your summers away from the classroom. There’s a whole big world out here, :)</p>
<p>@somemom, “Top schools seem to frown on kids graduating from HS early”
I was 15(finished HS in 3) when I applied for college admittance, (including many top schools). I was denied at Princeton and WL’d at Harvard, but accepted everywhere else. I was told at the time that applicants in their mid teens are becoming more common every year and that there is currently a debate raging in academic circles about if this should become the norm. MSs are a different story. In this case I was told that the average age for MS1s has been drifting upward. (but not in MSTPs, which is my goal)</p>
<p>Colleges do not want to run the risk of having to take care of “babies” who are statistically less mature due to their lack of life experiences. That is the reason why they are in general not interested in taking in younger students, no matter how much they have achieved in the classroom or test room.</p>
<p>Physicians are supposed to take care of patients and “lead”/advise their patients so that they can have a better/healthier life style. Fair or not, it is generally believed that those who are younger are lacking the experience to even take care even themselves (e.g., more reckless teenage drivers result in their higher insurance rate), let alone others.</p>
<p>MSTP is more like PhD than a typical MD. It placed more emphasis on academic medicine or even basic medical research. So, they tend to care less about this. After all, many research breakthroughs were done by people even in their 20s. A famous example is Einstein, who achieved a lot when he was like 25 (BTW, he was a very “bad” father/husband who even could not take care of his wife or eldest daughter in his mid 20s. He actually has a daughter who had a very short life and she was taken care of by his first wife’s family for almost all of her short life (maybe her life is as short as Caylee Anthony, maybe even shorter. I do not know what kind of doctor he would be when he was 30 if he were one. I am glad he was not one though.)</p>
<p>I heard of a rumor that, one medical school tends to recruit more younger students who do not know anything outside of classroom but have high stats, and then in the next year, they recruit older students who actually know something outside of classroom In this way, they balance both of their goals: maintaining the higher numbers needed for the US N&R’s rank and also having students that are more “useful” rather than just those number-grabbers…)</p>
<p>plum- the Doogie Howser’s of the world aside, and knowing there is going to be a news story every year about some 13-14-15 year old in some prestigious university and also acknowledging that there are some amazing genius kids out there, for the BWRK who graduates at a young age, with strong GPA & solid MCAT and strong experiences, there are another dozen kids out there who have had another year or two to mature, to amass experiences that led them on to new self-discovery, to be even more impressive.</p>
<p>One of my kids graduated HS at 15 and has a bachelor’s at 20, so I am not against it at all, but I am not in support of pushing to move ahead by a certain age just to do it. We strongly encouraged DD to take a gap year after her Bachelor’s and experience other things besides education which she did before moving on to a funded masters.</p>
<p>A HS GC I respect highly says the same thing, in a class that sends kids every year to Ivies and other top schools he feels some one who skipped a year of HS and did not have the full four years to explore and accomplish seems to be at a disadvantage. No bonus points for “oh you are younger and skipped a grade and are still top 10”, rather he senses it is “why did you skip that time?”</p>
<p>It’s not that graduating early is bad, it is that graduating early means less time to do things, less time to learn more about yourself, less time to prove to the Adcom that you have fully investigated a life in medicine and understand your choice- shadowing, research, etc.</p>
<p>Also, why be so young in med school that you cannot even go to the pub with classmates? Med school classes are usually averaging 24+ for MS1, you will find more awkwardness with the social grouping. DD who is young for her accomplishments never mentions her age because people get weird once they know how much younger she is.</p>
<p>I actually know a kid who managed to graduate college in 3 years (he had a lot of AP credit), scored a 32 on the mcat, had a 3.75 gpa, and is now at a decently ranked medical school in Texas (one of the UTMB schools). He also had a couple of publications on his resume. Don’t know the exact amount but it was around 2-3.</p>
<p>Look. I think 70-80% of the med school admits in any given year were kids who could have skipped a year or two in high school and a year or two in college. Had mine wanted to she could have been applying at 18 (skipping two in high school when it was offered and starting college as a sophomore) . It is simply not very impressive. I think the OP thinks it is something to be proud of, in and of itself.</p>
<p>To show you just how unimpessive it is, I applied to and was accepted to law school when I was 19. Graduated when I was 22. See? Nothing special and I have regretted my choice. The social part was true. The maturity part was true. Did I have the academic horsepower? Sure I did. But it was still a mistake. For me. Maybe not for everybody, but adcoms know the odds.</p>
<p>I agree that there is no reason to speed up the process unless it is for purely financial reasons. The kid I know that did it came from a disadvantaged family so for him to take out an extra 15k in loans to spend 1 more year at A&M when he didn’t have to, it wasn’t worth it in the long run.</p>
<p>DD feels that she can finish her requirements for undergraduate in 3 years but wants to take one more year to do a masters in a dual degree program. Is that OK? That would give her four years of college before Med school.</p>
<p>QT- that would probably be just fine. I think our point is that one thinks somehow (TV? News?) that being a prodigy is impressive and in many cases it is not impressive to an Adcom nor does it lead to the very best results in life (like Curm said) </p>
<p>You can see that person who finished early and think, “Wow, look how great they did” but I (now) think “Hmmm, what could that kid have done with even more time to develop?” Of course, that assumes the person was fully invested in the HS/UG experience and would have actually achieved more!</p>
<p>It may be right in some circumstances, but it is not a bonus point, as a matter of fact, i would bet that adcoms see it as a weakness that those high achievers have to overcome, not a bonus for extra EC credit.</p>
<p>With my early graduating DD we made her stay home and do CC, felt she was just too young to go away, even though she was an old soul. She transferred to a university, did great, made friends in her own age group who were new freshman and had a great time. If money were no object she would have stayed an extra year, but they were not giving any freebies so she graduated and then moved on to a (funded so we are definitely $ ahead) masters. </p>
<p>Her early HS graduation was a result of decisions made over the prior 15 years and it was the right thing to do, but no one set out to have her done at 15, it just happened.</p>
<p>It’s not that you cannot do it, it’s that it is not a plus in your app and life is not a race to get there first, it is the journey you should enjoy. Don’t skip just to skip.</p>