<p>I don’t think age factors in when a student is admitted into a school. The reason most people in schools are older is because most people decide to attend graduate school when they are older and not because graduate schools don’t accept students who are comparatively younger. Using age as a yardstick for maturity seems really illogical to me because anyone who was motivated to attend and finish school at such a young age is far more mature than someone who spent 6 years of their life picking a major and deciding what they wanted to do after college. </p>
<p>Also most students who finish college don’t do so because they rushed college. Most finished high school early. From experience, everything you were taught in high school could be summarized in a maximum of two years. For example, I finished high school at 15, came to college a year later, and found out that I was going to spend the first two years of college learning essentially the same stuff I learnt in high school (I did not go to school in the United States). So close to two years of my life is going to be spent reiterating stuff I already know. I am not finishing college early- that would mean that I would be done with college at the age of 19, even though I could. But I would done with my degree by the time I am 19 and I would have to spend a year just taking random classes and completing a minor. Well to cut a long story short- some people are hard working enough to finish school earlier. It does not mean they are less mature. graduate schools know this and would therefore not penalise you severely for this. However I believe it is worthwhile to finish all four years of college. Also med school is really hard to get into. Yes, 4.00s get rejected especially when they apply to very competitive schools.</p>
<p>“that’s not always true” for the most part. In fact, I have seen some statistics that show that most precocious students really do not accomplish much in their adult lives and are actually very mediocre professionally. </p>
<p>“The math genious that started college at age 12, ended up being a regular accountant…”</p>
<p>Psychologists have concluded that lack of maturity and the absence of a normal growing up experiences, hinder full potential as adults.</p>
<p>No, I’m not but I have sat in a graduate school admission office before and they looked at stuff like extracurricular activities, work experience, GPA e.t.c but I never heard anyone say: "hey he is just 20, he is too immature to attend graduate school even though he go a 3.8, lets reject him so that he can take a gap year of 1-3 years. that would definitely do him some good. But lets take the mature 37 year old with a lower GPA and less extracurricular activities, he must be mature since he is older. older= maturity.</p>
<p>work experience which makes most applicants is very , I agree is important when in business schools but not so much for medical school. Except if you worked significantly in the health sector, your work experience is useless for medicine.</p>
<p>So the really important question is why people think being older means you are more mature. Following from that, the case of the above student is an isolated case, a lot of 20 year old and even lower get into medical school. That is why the age given is referred to as an average. The age range in med schools is around 19-47 with the majority of people being around 23-25. </p>
<p>Also there is a student on SDN that is 18 and got into a top school. His GPA is not even over 3.8 but applied early. But his case is also a specific case and I would not use it to generalize about medical school admissions. And concerning the question "if i was on a medical school admissions committee, most people who give advise here have not been accepted into college and I did not say my point was the standard but used the language “I think that age does not factor in” not that “I am sure age does not factor in.”</p>
<p>sefago, life experience is important in <em>any</em> career, including medicine. Work experience in other areas <em>can</em> be valuable for medicine if it is related, but my understanding of what everyone has been saying is that the slightly older age of application (e.g., 21-23+) indicates such things as normal social and psychological development and enjoyment and involvement while an undergrad (likely predicts academic and social success in med school and professional success as an MD, especially when it comes to the business side of things). As I’m obviously not a doctor yet, I can’t give my own experiences here but what I can say is that growing up with a physician for a father, I’ve learned that his life experience are often essential for getting him through sticky situations – especially ones that, if handled without the utmost of care interpersonally, could easily cost the hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees (he directs one of the busier ICUs in the state). So I wouldn’t really say that non-medical experience doesn’t help an MD!</p>
<p>TheRealMD seems like a worthy candidate for any school. By his record on SDN I’m betting he did his North Texas hours while at the School for Math and Science in Denton before transferring to Texas. My D was offered the same opportunity but I didn’t feel it was in her best interest (and she didn’t like the idea anyway). Like all of us I used my own experience to help frame the discussion. As a 19 year old applicant to law school (accepted at 20, graduated at 22) I may have a different perspective than some. ;)</p>
<p>(There are very few instances where I would ever recommend anyone doing something similar to what I did. Some, yes. But very few. I don’t believe it is a “career enhancing” move. )</p>
<p>Unless you saw them assess a 20 year old and not express concern, I think we can safely say that that’s not a relevant concern. Of course, some eighteen-year olds will do very well; one of my classmates is approximately that age. That just means the rest of their application had to be stronger to compensate. And it is completely unreasonable to argue that “a lot” of sub-20 year olds end up in medical school – this is first off blatantly untrue, since you can see for yourself that the average is 24 (so lots of 20’s would require lots of 28’s, too), but second, that doesn’t remotely mean that they weren’t harmed by it. A lot of sub-29 MCAT scores get in to medical school, but that doesn’t mean that the MCAT score didn’t hurt them.</p>
<p>Many experiences are very valuable for medical school, and in fact medical work experience is among the least valuable you can have. You’ll get tons of that anyway. BRM has a great explanation about how waitering is extremely useful experience for dealing with patients, particularly in a busy ER. This is something several of my classmates have expressed.</p>
<p>Most of the main advice-givers in this particular forum have been admitted to medical school, and some of us have completed a large proportion of medical school. If you’re lucky, there are also several practicing physicians, some of which have been affiliated with extremely selective medical schools. You will be well served to remember that you are dealing with an extremely experienced group of people on this board.</p>
<p>Well just going to give up since this would probably not go anywhere. I just decided to respond because I feel that people get lots of wrong information from discussion boards a lot. I would still reiterate that your age is not going to be the main concern when you apply to law or med school, it would be your GPA, MCAT and other soft factors. People are still following the same assumption no matter how much I point it out- the older you are does not mean you have more life experiences and I am sure that people who sit on admission committees understand this. For the most part- yes some older people might have some “valuable” experiences but its very possible that this not the case.</p>
<p>For example, Most people in my class at college are 2 years older than I am, although I run a student group, take a heavier courseload than 90% of the people in the school, have done lots of jobs and met most of the professors in my school. Now when we apply to med school and they see someone barely 20 year old with a lot of job experience and a 22-23 year old with nothing spectacular in college but would assume he has a lot of life experiences though he is older. Seems illogical to me. </p>
<p>Obviously some of the best physicians in the world were previously waiters, from bludevilmike’s argument. Therefore countries in which people go into 6 yr medical school programmes and therefore had no chances of being waiters produce terrible doctors since they were obviously immature. They have to be immature because they are going to be physicians at the age of 23, a time when most people in the US start medical school. Must be terrible at interpersonal relationships too because they did not have the opportunity to hone their interpersonal relationships while being waiters.</p>
<p>“The math genious that started college at age 12, ended up being a regular accountant…”</p>
<p>Regarding this statement, a large percentage of the world is ‘mediocre’ and very few people get “their own wikipedia pages” Success does not always depend on how book smart you are. The 12 year old who ended up being a regular accountant became one because that was what he wanted to do. it does not in anyway make him mediocre. If he decided to go into engineering he might have been more successful. Law may be. But accountancy was his choice. He might never work for the large accountancy firm but the fact remains that he would be a damn good accountant. The same way people who get MCAT scores over 40 are not going to be superdoctors. They would end up as doctors just like everyone else. Some might go into family medicine because they like it. While some could become surgeons. But would be no different from their classmates who scored a 31.</p>
<p>Ok I have to read for my history class so bye</p>