Accelerated medical programs

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
1

A few things:

If you are sure that you want to be a doctor, would it be smart to do a seven year medical program, or just do the traditional 4 year undergrad and 4 year medical school. Do employers after med school care if you did a 7 year program, or do they prefer the traditional method?

Also, which seven year medical programs are the best? Are some better than others? Will any 7 year program land me a job in the medical field upon graduation?

If you are accepted into a 7 year medical program, are you tied to it for the full 7 years, or are you allowed to apply to other medical schools after you take the MCAT?

Thanks

2

@shrimpyshrimper,

To answer several of your questions:

  1. Employers after medical school do not care if you did a 7 year Bachelor/MD program or not. Residencies want to recruit the best medical school candidates they can get, regardless of the amount of total time after high school that it took for you to complete undergrad and med school. Same with getting a job after residency and/or fellowship completion. In some instances, doing a 6/7 year program may be looked at as a negative in terms of maturity for residencies, but this can vary a lot by person, specialty, familiarity with Bachelor/MD programs, etc.

  2. The best 7 year program that comes to mind is probably Northwestern’s HPME program. After that, I would say it’s probably Penn State/Jefferson (it has now expanded to 7 years and no longer offers a 6 year program option for students), Boston University’s Seven-Year Liberal Arts/Medical Education Program, and Miami-Miller’s HPME program (it has expanded to 7 years for a while now and no longer offers a 6 year program option like it used to when it initially started a long time ago).

  3. With regards to holding a seat in the program while applying out for med schools, this can vary a lot by program, so it’s good to find out the policy for each one.