I’ve known for my entire life that my path is to become a doctor. I have no doubt about it. I volunteer at the hospital, along with many other medical related extracurriculars that confirm my dream. Would a BS/MD program be worth it?
bump
Depends…
Which ones are you looking at?
What are your stats?
They’re extremely hard to get into
I think you really need to look at the costs. If you can get into a competetive 6 or 7 yr program, you can get into a regular med school too.
The combined programs are mostly at expensive private schools. I encourage you to look into your in-state med schools. In the end, you will end up in the same place without the same level of debt.
I went to my state med school…really glad I did. I did my residency at a competetive and highly ranked program. No difference between the kids from the state schools and the expensive private schools.
This thread is in the parents forum on the same topic. Different perspectives
For my older son, we seriously considered the BS/MD route for him. After much thinking on it, we decided not to pursue this route. This program is really made for those who are: 1) 100% absolutely positive that the career in medicine is for them; 2) academically very strong so that they can maintain the often required GPA average, which can be pretty high at some schools (for example, at Washington University in St. Louis, it’s 3.8 or 3.85 or something like that) AND they’d have to have a certain MCAT score.
In the end, I thought having flexibility for my son was a wiser choice. He’s a pre-med and will apply to medical schools but without the added pressure.
I’m old school on this one. I take with a grain of salt the life ambitions of an 18 year old. No offense, but young people are the most likely (and entitled) to change their minds. You really have no idea what it takes and you have not proven that you are suited for it despite motivation. Going the European route and forcing (or enabling) young people to make very long-term decisions is generally a bad idea. I think there is great value in getting a broad university level education before going into medicine. If you become a doctor you will deal with a wider gamut of people than in virtually any other profession. You need to know something of the world.
Okay, so I won’t tell you that you don’t know what you want in life and that these programs are legit commitment or whatever, pretty sure you’ve already considered that. Here are a few things to keep in mind though:
With these programs, you will probably be with the same 60 (or even less) people for the next seven years. I know this may not sound that bad, but trust me when I say you really need to consider becoming sick of the same people. It happens.
In order to encompass 8 years of education into 7, most programs are year-round with no summer breaks. And almost never are you allowed to take a semester abroad. Keep this in mind. Once you enter the field of medicine, you rarely, if ever, will have time off anyways. Do you really want to lose your chance that you have now to experience the world?
Most programs also require you major in the sciences undergrad. This may or not may affect you, but it’s worth knowing.
If you can get into a selective accelerated program now, then you can definitely get into medical school later on if you went trad. Don’t choose this route if you’re worried you don’t get into medical school traditionally. The associated “security” of these programs comes with the misconception and self-doubt that students will not get into medical school the traditional route. My answer to that is, if you can get into a program that accepts 35 students, what’s stopping you from getting into a med school that accepts 200 students?
The further up and more specialized in education you become, the more you become disconnected with the general public as a whole. If you want to go into medicine, you meet patients from all walks of life with all sorts of views and limited knowledge of medicine. By restricting yourself to these programs, you (somewhat) lose an opportunity to meet these people who are different from you and will challenge your beliefs.
If after SERIOUSLY considering all this ^^ you still would prefer the security of a BS/MD program, then my one piece of advice to you is: do NOT choose a program if they require you maintain anything around a 3.7 GPA or a certain MCAT score. At that point, those are the requirements for regular med school anyways, so why stress yourself out and lose your summers to just have to maintain the same requirements as if you went undergrad?
Just my two cents on this.
D is considering the BS/MD path, but she is treating that as a potential additional option rather than “the one path” forward. I am recommending that she not apply to a BS/MD program unless 1) She would want to attend undergrad there anyway, 2) There is a chance of significant merit, and 3) The med school is top-30 or better.
On top of that, she very much wants a normal undergraduate experience, so that rules out 7-year programs like BU and Northwestern. So that only leaves a handful of BS/MD programs that she will apply to.
@coffee-and-cramming that is excellent advice.
Just to expand on one point - the apparent joys of spending 4 years with a diverse group of students who love learning for the sake of learning in a LAC - that is out the window in the medical track. You will more likely be in a group of very competitive people who are ambitious and have no hobbies and few outside interests. I exaggerate slightly but the point above that spending 6 years with a small group like this doesn’t do much for personal growth or prepare you much for dealing with patients.
On the other hand, I know one woman who did this and she was happy with it in the end. Of course, she was two years younger than the rest of us and looked her age - not always a good thing with patients to look like you are in high school. She was able to start her economic life two years earlier which I am sure she appreciates nowadays.
@coffee-and-cramming you brought up a lot of points I haven’t thought about! Thanks for the thoughtful response.
You can choose to stay for 4 years at Northwestern if you want to. Just because they give you the option to finish undergrads in 3 years (by requiring less credits so you also don’t need to cram) doesn’t mean you have to get out in 3 years. In addition, you can take a gap year or apply to other medical schools. NU also doesn’t require you to maintain unreasonably high GPA. All the cons that people cited here so far don’t apply to Northwestern, which is why it’s the best of all programs, IMO.
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The med school is top-30 or better.
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???
Why would THAT be an issue? That should be a non-issue.
I believe that matters if she wants to spend a good fraction of her time working with a research hospital, but not for clinical practice.
Don’t the 48 US MD med schools that have MSTP programs have research hospitals?
Sure they do, but I was talking about after she finishes, not while in school. We have a relative on Upenn’s medical school faculty, and that was her recommendation on how to improve the odds of working with research hospitals after receiving the MD degree.
I agree that Northwestern is outstanding at both the under-grad and med-school level. But there were two things that were against it.
First, D didn’t care for the school during the campus visit. We both thought the info session was just horrible–yes we get it that Julia Louis-Dreyfus attended NU, but we didn’t care for that or the 40 other names they kept dropping.
Second, as a full-pay family, NU BS/MD means 8-years of high college costs. We parents are willing to cover ~$270K whether for undergrad, graduate school, or a combination. In that situation, NU’s BS/MD would leave D with crippling loans. Contrast that to Rice/Baylor where an undergrad merit scholarship is possible, and med school is cheap. If she hits that lottery ticket, she could graduate from med school debt free.
NU HPME is doable in 7 but the 270k wont cover it for a full pay. It is more like 500…
It’s expensive to pay for any private college and then private med school regardless whether it’s a combined program or not, barring merit scholarships. So that’s not an issue peculiar to BS/MD programs.
A child who is competitive for a BS/MD program also has several options for a full tuition undergraduate scholarship. This ranges from guaranteed at the level of Alabama, to quite likely at the level of Pitt and BU, to highly competitive at the level of Vanderbilt.