Graduating College in 3 Years & Going Directly to Medical School

Hello!

I am a first year pre-med undergrad, and I am thinking about graduating college in 3 years and matriculating into medical school during what would be my fourth year of undergrad. I have heard so many mixed things from advisors and peers about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. For context, I have a full scholarship, so graduating in 3 versus 4 years wouldn’t really save me any money. I can graduate in 3 years pretty easily (i.e. without taking summer classes or anything), but I don’t know if this is something I should do or not. I also don’t want to take a gap year or time off between undergrad and medical school.

Currently, the options I’m looking at are:

  1. Graduate in 3 years and go straight to medical school
  2. Get a BS and a MS in 4 years (through a combined program at my university) and go to medical school
  3. Double Major, graduate in 4 years, and go to medical school

I’m looking to attend pretty competitive medical schools like UNC Chapel Hill, Emory, NYU, or Columbia, and I don’t know if graduating in 3 years would hurt or help my chances of getting into these schools. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

RE: Option #1

Graduating in 3 years will likely hurt your chances.

The med school application process takes a full year. You apply in June to begin med school in summer/fall of the following year.

This means you will need to have finished all your pre-reqs and taken your MCAT before spring of your sophomore year in college. Unless you have substantial dual enrollment credits, it just isn’t possible to finish your pre-reqs in 3 semesters. (Particularly the chem sequence which is 5 semesters long. You do NOT want to take the MCAT without having first mastered biochem.)

Additionally, you will be applying to med school with only 2 years of ECs. There’s a saying about med school admission–your stats get to the door, but it’s your ECs that get you invited inside. Your ECs will be compared against students who have 4 years (or more) of ECs on their CV and quite likely will be found lacking in comparison, especially for the med schoosl you’ve mentioned, all of whom expect substantial clinical and non-clincal service experience from applicants.

Lastly, you will be 19 or 20 when you apply to med school and this will raise questions with adcomm members about your maturity level and lack of life experience. (A lack of life experience and appropriate gravitas is a serious handicap when dealing with patients–all of whom will be older than you.)

RE: options #2 and #3

Neither will impress adcomms. Neither will have any influence on the likelihood of gaining a med school admission.

Also, any grad school coursework will not be included when computing your GPA and sGPA for a med school application. Grad GPAs are calculated and reported separately from your undergrad GPAs and are not considered by adcomms when making admission decisions.

Do a MS only if it supports your Plan B career. Add a second major only if it’s field of strong personal interest to you OR if it improves your post-college employability should you not gain a medical school acceptance.

BTW, ALL premeds need a Plan B career path because 75% of freshmen pre-meds never get to the point of applying to medical school. Of those who persist and apply, less than 40% gain an admission.

Personal take (based on stat n=1). Experts may weigh in differently.

A. Medical school care less, whether you did UG in 3 or 4 or 5 years. Neither advantage nor disadvantage.
B. If you are going with your options 2 or 3, nothing wrong. But ensure your GPA remains competitive for MD admission.
C. Doing MS or MPH or MBA before getting in to MD is good. Because MD itself is intense and hence getting this during UG has its own benefits. (keep point 2 in mind)
D. If you going with your option 1, here are key points. It is not GPA and MCAT gets your admission. What else you have done (of course you need to have strong GPA and MCAT so that some one looks at your resume)? There it needs time and clear planning NOW. Since when you start your application cycle on June / May 1st of your 3rd year, it leaves only 2 years to take care of all other things. Here are some of the minimum you need to take care and what it takes to get admission.

  1. Solid sGPA, cGPA
  2. Solid MCAT
  3. Shadow at least 60-100 hours with 3-8 different specialty (than shadowing with the same 1 or 2 resources).
  4. Clinical Volunteer hours at least 250+ hours with patient interaction.(target 400-500+). More the better. Not for admission purpose but more for you to validate - is this the profession you want to live with, is these population you want to meet and deal with day in and day out.
  5. Non Clinical volunteer hours at least 150+ hours (target 250+). Help under-served / low income / no-insurance folks to know their challenges and perspectives.
  6. Research - Great if could do for 4+ semesters; Plus if have a poster or pub. This is not that critical unless student plans MD/PHD or keen on T20-30 research medical schools.
  7. Leadership / unique - Nothing to do with academic or medicine etc. If has any hobby or passion or holding some position in college clubs or groups or even outside college.
  8. Do any course or any activity in their college with their interest (and not for admission or as a checklist). It could be some literature or constitution or origami or newsletter or bicycle club etc.
  9. Prepare a solid personal statements for the MD applications
  10. Interact and establish a rapport with Prof and others so that later you get a super LOR
  11. Prepare well and ace interview.
  12. Enjoy your current life in your UG school also. MD and beyond takes toll. One thing no one , ever get back in life is time gone by.

The challenge later you have to plan is how many and which college to apply. Need to apply at least 20-30. There are lot of myth and luck plays in this. 3 points.
You need to take Orgo1 in the first semester itself and complete all other key science pre-reqs and take MCAT latest by or during 4th semester.
Attending interviews going to take away your time (5th semester - but still you need to attend and make sure your grades are not impacted when you miss classes)
Don’t take too hard on which school you will join. Because it is hard to predict. So apply broadly and don’t close any door on any assumptions.

OP
The chances are not good if you ONLY target those top med schools. The acceptance rate for those schools maybe a bit over 5%.
And do you know NYU is tuition free to med student as of 2019? That will increase competitiveness in that school.

I dont know alot about med school. Howver, my college graduate, graduated early from college at a young age and no one questioned her maturity or had an issue with her age in terms of interviewing for jobs or being offered jobs.

@scubadive

Med school is different from a job application. Because its competitiveness, more is asked to perform other than academic excellence.

Graduating in 3 years does not equal going to medical school right after.

As Goldenrock lists, there are many things you must do to get to medical school. Most of those are unrelated to graduating college in 3 years or doing a doing a dual degree or a masters in 4 years.

Stay for all 4 years since they’re paid for and really make the most of these years. Don’t take just the basics, dig deep, take graduate courses, find complement classes such as bioethics or advanced biostats, become a leader on campus.
To get an idea, look at the tumbler by Afrenchie36 .

It’s possible, but that also means you have one less year than regular traditional applicants to beef up your ECs, and non-traditional applicants will have even more years over you. Non-trad applicants are becoming more and more common, and top schools are starting to drift towards making their classes into majority non-trad. For example, the entering class to Penn was ~60% non traditional, and at Emory it was ~70%!

If you REALLY want to graduate in 3, that’s fine, but I would still consider taking a gap year after that to focus on building up ECs, and tbh if you aren’t going to accumulate debt by doing 4 years, I think it’s an even better choice make your college experience less of a sprint and graduate in 4 years.

I don’t have any high ground in persuading you against not taking gap years, since I was a trad applicant this past cycle who’s heading to a top med school this fall, but I do think that it’s important to understand that it’s getting more difficult for traditional applicants to put together the same quality application as their non-trad counterparts. You’re going to have to work incredibly hard both inside and outside the classroom in order to be sufficiently well-rounded to successfully apply to the top schools.

Also, don’t get too attached to the idea of applying to top schools at this point in time, because an average MCAT score will torpedo those dreams in an instant.

Thanks everyone for your insights! I really appreciate it!

  1. Think about who you are competing against. What classes are they doing? What research are they doing? What volunteering?
  2. You would probably need to take a gap year…you could do some volunteering then.

I realize that but it depends in what you do given that time. My child worked countless hours outside of school. Had med school been on the radar they would have done the equivalent of what would be needed for med school.

This is the answer.