<p>1.) Ah, so she's a sophomore now.
2.) Well, she could always take a year off between her third and fourth years in medical school to live abroad... even work in a hospital down/over there, if she wanted.
3.) The "usual" time to take MCATs (with the idea of "usual" rapidly becoming obsolete) is April of junior year.
4.) I like having a summer open to study. But it's not the end of the world if you can't. An August test works perfectly.
5.) In my opinion, 5 years is pretty bad if it's not normal at your school. Many of my classmates took five years, but they are all -- every one of them -- double majors or engineers, and all from large public schools where graduating in five is pretty normal. If five is pretty normal at her school, then by all means. If it's weird, then it's probably a bad sign.
6.) Taking physics before MCATs is probably still unnecessary, but certainly not a bad idea. With the help of a good prep course to review, she should be okay even without the coursework. But no harm this way.</p>
<p>We usually tell people to do what is normal at their school as far as number of years is concerned. I personally don't think it's an important point, but it's one of those things where you can never go wrong with 4 years. 5 years is certainly not unreasonable assuming she's taking normal credit hour loads. It wouldn't even be bad if that fifth year was mainly fluff courses (though some people might disagree with me on that). </p>
<p>MCAT timelines vary a lot these days since they've gone to computer based testing and increased the number of testing days. In the past, when there were only April and August testing dates, April of junior year was the classic time to take the MCAT. </p>
<p>In general, I tell people to take the MCAT at the time when they're going to get the best score. While a lot of people are pushing for taking it after sophomore year, I know that not everyone goes to a school in which taking all the pre-med courses is the standard. Further, I think the proximity in time between class and MCAT is overblown - exactly for the reasons already stated about even the pre-req classes being more advanced than MCAT concepts. I also taught for Kaplan, so I may be a little biased, but taking a review course is a good way to emphasize the important, high yield stuff, and get the right level of detail. The other thing is that the MCAT tests critical thinking more than it tests the actual scientific concepts. With the exception of the Physics questions that require you to supply the proper formula (and even there are ways around that), there is almost ZERO outside knowledge that needs to be brought into the MCAT. All the answers are in the passage.</p>
<p>No she is just a freshman. The summer program would be after her sophomore year - this summer (after freshman year) she is doing the service job.</p>
<p>She is at a large public and it seems pretty common to take more than 4 years. I seem to recall reading a statistics page where the majority of students seemed to take more than 4 years. Wish I had bookmarked it - can't find it now. She is also planning to double major.</p>
<p>She really needs to hot foot it to the premed adviser and talk all this out.</p>
<p>Spring or fall of her junior year is when she is thinking of the study abroad - one of the reasons for the early plans for the MCAT.</p>
<p>If she does the more than 4 years I think she might graduate in the fall (so 4 1/2) years. Then work for several months to put some more $$$$$s aside toward medical school. is that normal/abnormal/acceptable as far as med schools are concerned?</p>
<p>Totally normal.</p>
<p>shades_children - I mean that the school provides assistance in that department. It's nice knowing that there are people who are there for you, to support you for a specific test. I hate learning for tests, and I think standardized testing is stupid. But I understand your point.</p>
<p>Nobody does that, I don't think.</p>
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I mean that the school provides assistance in that department.
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</p>
<p>I don't know of any school that provides MCAT prep of any sort. Sure, the pre-med club might invite Kaplan to give a mock half-MCAT, but I doubt that's what you're thinking of.</p>
<p>Actually I <em>think</em> I know of a couple schools that do have courses for MCAT prep. It's run by the college, it's a pass/fail course, and you register just like you would for an english course or evolutionary biology...The problem is that I'm not 100% which schools I heard about this happening. I want to say that the University of Kansas has something like this, and maybe Drake? Macalaster? Missouri State? I really don't remember, but I'm most sure (about 70%) that KU does, and I'm sure that I've heard it somewhere else too.</p>
<p>Okay fine. So Undergrad may not help in the MCAT department directly. But I still should go to the undergraduate school that suits me the best. And by suiting me, it needs to have a strong science department. </p>
<p>And additionally, I have looked at practice MCAT tests before, and I was surprised that now even as a high school senior, I know the answers to some of the questions.</p>
<p>At this point, I just really want to get into medical school (four years from now).</p>
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it needs to have a strong science department.
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If that's what floats your boat. Just don't mistake it with being a necessity or even a benefit for everybody. (Depending on what you mean by "strong.")</p>
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I just really want to get into medical school
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Well, hopefully you don't just want to get into medical school. Hopefully you have other goals for college, to say nothing of your life in general.</p>
<p>BRM,
Thanks for another thoroughly insightful thread, cut and pasting into my med file immediately. Like SCM, I have a freshman D contemplating med school. She's interested in working with underserved communities, particularly Latinos and immigrant populations. It's a long ways away, but she'll be getting some clinical experience at UDub this summer, so it will be interesting to see how she feels afterward.</p>
<p>BRM, how does matching into a field like cardiology work? Do you secure a cardiology fellowship as a US senior or do you match into IM first and then apply for the fellowship during residency?</p>
<p>Bluedevil - Well, not JUST medical school. I want to meet awesome people who I click with, and do things I was too timid to do in high school, and just have a really good four years. But the medical school thing is still important. But yes, there are other aspects of college that are important to me. And I would like a college to have a strong academic program in general aside from the sciences, but it's just that the sciences ARE important to me. </p>
<p>But I understand your point entirely.</p>
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BRM, how does matching into a field like cardiology work? Do you secure a cardiology fellowship as a US senior or do you match into IM first and then apply for the fellowship during residency?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You go through match for IM, then during second year of residency begin applying for fellowships. Match Day for fellowships varies extensively by specialty - some about 6 months before you'd start, others a full year in advance. </p>
<p>Here's the schedule of fellowship match days:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nrmp.org/fellow/schedule.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nrmp.org/fellow/schedule.html</a></p>