Thank you very much. I created this thread 3 years back to help those conflicted between BSMD and traditional path.
Congratulations
Congratulations!!!
Well deserved.
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It’s been a while since I’ve been on CC. I graduated from Union College in June with a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in History. I finished my last course at Clarkson over the summer and got my MBA in Healthcare Management. I started my first year at AMC in August, and it has been quite the experience. I was worried that it would be a big adjustment, but it is actually much less stressful than undergrad since we are graded on a P/F basis. I have done well so far, while being able to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The only weird part is that I’m much younger than most of my medical school classmates (I’m 21) and the average age of a student in my class is 25. The pandemic has not really affected the curriculum other than us having pro-sections instead of dissections, and only having recorded lectures (no option to attend in person). The professors are still easily accessible and there are tons of opportunities to get involved in some great research.
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Thanks for the update and glad to here that you are enjoying medical school. Besides BSMD candidates how many in your class have no gap years?
So we have 143 students in the class as a whole, and around 45 of those students are BSMD. I would say that there are probably 10 students who did not take gap years while taking the traditional path. Most of my classmates have taken at least 2/3 gap years.
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Wow.
2-3 gap years. Only 10 with no gap years from traditional route.
Yeah, it surprised me quite a bit. The average age of the class is 25, even with the 45 students who are coming in from BSMD programs. A lot of my classmates came in with masters degrees as well. These students who take multiple gap years also come from great schools. Off the top of my head, I know there are students from Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and Yale who got in after 2 gap years.
interesting, however it’s similar to other medical schools i.e. 2/3rds have gap years.
Very interesting.
If you exclude BSMD from equation that seems only 10% w/o gap years, way below national average ~33%.
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My guess is given the # of admits thru BSMD, admissions may have chosen to select more with gap years to balance out the class 
Do they really evaluate medical school applications based on number of gap years ? It is what you do during those gap years, what matters.
That seems a reasonable justification
Certainly they don’t evaluate based on number of gap years rather what activities they have done during those years. At the same time every school has a mission and try to diversify (very broad word from med school POV, URM/ORM is just one subset) their class. In this case it seems BS/MD brings more younger pool and schools tries to balance (diversify) that with higher age group, hence more gap years students through traditional route.
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D received the letter of acceptance to MD program class 2021.
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@grtd2010, that’s a great news! Congratulations to your daughter and the proud parents!
@grtd2010, that’s great news. Congrats to your D and your family !
@mygrad2021 Thanks for your well wishes.
@rk1235rk Thanks for your well wishes.