<p>I already read many other similar threads, but my situation is different in that I'm not talking about taking a year off AFTER you graduate but rather BEFORE.</p>
<p>I'm in 5th year.
My fall 2010 semester, I had to withdraw and get 5 Ws due to medical reasons.
I'm taking this spring 2011 semester off.
I'll be applying with a 3.7 GPA (MCAT untaken yet) this 2011-2012 cycle, while still in undergrad, which I'll graduate from in June 2012.
Will this be frowned upon, or will it not matter?</p>
<p>You graduated from high school in 06, and this current school year would have been your 5th college year? Is that right? </p>
<p>So, in the end, you will be a 6th year senior (minus this current school year where you withdrew). And, therefore, you will return to school in fall and then graduate in May 12. And, you will be applying to med schools during the next app season. </p>
<p>Are you taking the MCAT in the spring?</p>
<p>I don’t know how med schools view withdrawals due to health issues. May I ask if the health issue is chronic and will likely return? Or was it a one time serious thing that is/will be resolved? </p>
<p>Do you have medical documentation?</p>
<p>I don’t know if med schools would be concerned about chronic issues that might cause you to have issues while in med school or not. Anyone know?</p>
No. I’ll try applying for the first time this cycle (2011-2012), rather than after I graduate.</p>
<p>
Planning to take it this coming September (or June if taking MCAT late will delay my application and put me at a disadvantage for the 2011-2012 cycle).</p>
<p>
-The condition wasn’t chronic and if they ask about it, I will tell them that the issue has been resolved since then. But I’m not sure if they will believe this and how I can convince this to them without revealing the medical condition.
-I have medical documentation.</p>
<p>*Quote:
And, you will be applying to med schools during the next app season. </p>
<p>No. I’ll try applying for the first time this cycle (2011-2012), rather than after I graduate.</p>
<p>I think I wasn’t clear in my words…I was asking if you’re applying during the next app season …the 2011 -12 app season. And, now I’m certain that you are.</p>
<p>Quote:
Are you taking the MCAT in the spring? </p>
<p>Planning to take it this coming September (or June if taking MCAT late will delay my application and put me at a disadvantage for the 2011-2012 cycle).</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>I could be wrong, but I think Sept is too late. I’m not sure if June is ok…Others can weigh in. I think people start submitting their med school apps in the mid-summer.</p>
<p>*The condition wasn’t chronic and if they ask about it, I will tell them that the issue has been resolved since then. But I’m not sure if they will believe this and how I can convince this to them without revealing the medical condition.
-I have medical documentation.
*</p>
<p>I could be very wrong, but I think that if you don’t reveal what the medical condition is, it won’t be as convincing. </p>
<p>My sister had some C’s one semester because she had kidney failure and was given a transplant (missed a lot of school that semester because of complications and they had to re-do the surgery). She provided that documentation when she was applying to a very competitive grad program at an elite school. They accepted the explanation, and she was accepted into the program. </p>
<p>I think if she had just said that her grades were low because of a medical condition, but didn’t provide more info, the school may have just thought she was making excuses.</p>
<p>September 2011 is very late to be taking the MCAT for the 2011-12 application cycle. It takes about 4 weeks to get your MCAT score back. Some schools have application deadlines as early as mid-October; many of the rest have Nov 1 deadlines.</p>
<p>Not knowing your score makes it extremely difficult to know what schools are appropriate for you to apply to. (IOW, you need to know your MCAT in order to prepare a list of schools where you have a realistic chance of acceptance.) </p>
<p>Also many med schools work on a kind of rolling admissions and by October will be extending interview invitations when they haven’t even read your application.</p>
<p>Better plan to take your MCAT this spring or the very early part of the summer. June is probably the latest you should consider taking it. AMCAS opens June 1 and many applicants will have their files completed and applications sent out by the end of the month.</p>
<p>EDIT: re: the medical issue. You don’t have to reveal personal information, but there will always be questions, even if they go unasked. You can assure people all you want, but unless they see proof, they tend to be doubting Thomases. Med schools want students who are healthy in mind and body. They’ll want reassurances that you can manage the stresses of the heavy workload. I know of an individual or two who were denied admission because of doubts about their ability to manage the physical stress of a medical school education.</p>
Depression and anxiety. If it were a physical illness like kidney failure, then I would have no problem with disclosing it to adcoms.</p>
<p>
Now I’m scared. At the time of withdrawing last fall, I was told by a med student and an adcom (who contributes a lot in SDN) that I won’t need to worry about it if I can assure the adcoms that they won’t have to worry about my dropping out of med school. When they told that to me, they made it sound like not such a big deal so I didn’t bother worrying about it. But now that I hear about how one or two students were actually denied admission due to that, I am scared.</p>
<p>So basically I am left with two options, which BOTH suck:
Disclose my medical condition. Since adcoms are people too, they will be negatively influenced by the stigma attached to depression and no matter how I explain, they might still doubt my ability to finish med school.
Make the condition a secret. Adcoms may think I’m being secretive and so they might not be convinced as to why I also took this spring semester off, and they will still doubt my ability to finish med school.</p>
<p>Better option #1 than #2. People hate mysteries. And any speculation would probably be worse than the truth.</p>
<p>Perhaps your depression would be something you could address in your personal statement. You had a problem, you sought treatment, problem was resolved/managed and you have proof that you can manage it by completing a challenging year or two of college/volunteering/etc. (Deal with it factually, much like someone might explain poor freshman grades.)</p>
<p>I think I saw in discussion on CC that something like 20-30% of all med students sought
mental health counseling/treatment during the course of their medical education. It’s not as uncommon as you might think.</p>
<p>BTW, the individual I know who was denied–it was because of a physical condition and the adcom doubted his/her ability to manage the rigors of clinical training.</p>
<p>I’m on the fence on this one, probably because the profession is so hypocritical with regards to mental illness. I feel like there is still a stigma surrounding mental illness in the medical community. How many stories have we read on here that began with, “I was depressed that semester…and I got a 2.3 GPA.” Medical schools don’t want that to happen. Medical students are expensive investments and they definitely don’t want anyone dropping out. Unfortunately, most adcom members are physicians and know that the recurrence rate of major depressive episodes and mania are really high (70-90% within 2 years). And, yes, many medical students do develop depression in medical school. But, that only makes a school even more hesitant to take a student with history of depression already. </p>
<p>You will have to explain why you took a semester off. But, you don’t have to disclose your medical condition. I’m not sure whether it would be better or not to disclose your mental illness in this case.</p>
<p>It is what it is. You will have to explain it. It’s waay too big a hole to miss. Might as well spin it your way rather than have them assume the worst (which they will). Treat it as a blip on the screen. Don’t overstate it. </p>
<p>Why the break in your education? I just had a personal situation develop that I needed to tend to. I tended to it, and came back stronger than ever. See? Here is proof of that. Look how I did and what I did. </p>
<p>If you doubt your ability to handle the rigor and pressure of med school , so will they.</p>
<p>Well. I re-read my post and that’s just not gonna cut it. I believe you will have to mention that you had depression to explain the break. "It was diagnosed, and treated, and I’m good to go. See? "</p>
<p>There should be no stigma that you attach to a chemical imbalance that likely has a genetic component. I’ve been medicated since I was your age for my chemical imbalance. Young adulthood is when it manifests itself. Don’t use it as a crutch, and don’t put too much emphasis on it. As for what society (and in this case the adcom) thinks? Well, I stick to the part of my advice above that wasn’t crap. Is it what it is.</p>
So you’re basically saying that adcoms would be more tolerant of knowing that I had depression than they would be of secrets? But that may depend on the person, and there is also a tradeoff: You allow them to know about the secret but now you need to worry about any possible stigma.</p>
<p>
That’s essentially option #1, but regarding what you said about completing a challenging year or two, I won’t be able to apply that advice for this 2011-2012 cycle, though I could certainly do that for 2012-2013 if I don’t get accepted in 2011-2012 cycle.</p>
<p>
But as norcalguy said,
</p>
<p>
I can’t seem to find any reasonable explanation as to why I took a semester off after the five W’s last semester. Perhaps one possibility would be to say that I suffered from senioritis/burnout and had to take a break. But I don’t know how acceptable/appropriate this response would be.</p>
<p>
So you are supporting option #1, but again, I need to worry about how to deal with the stigma. There should be no stigma? How can you know for sure? Norcalguy feels that the medical community is hypocritical when it comes to mental illness, and I agree with him on that. I will most likely have to deal with the stigma if I choose option #1.</p>
<p>I am, and the reason I have two accounts is to have a bigger space for my PM inbox. I posted under my ysk1 account unknowingly after being automatically logged out of my todpose account and trying to re-login.</p>
<p>Well, you may very well have to go to the route that curm suggested. Tell them you had depression and that it was treated and you got some CBT to deal with anxiety and that you’re on antidepressants (I hope everything I just said is true.)</p>
<p>The fact remains, medical school can break anyone. I’m taking care of a patient at the psych hospital right now who developed psychosis after studying for the USMLE (he was spending 10+ hours at the Kaplan center/day for months). Med school is no joke. Almost everyone develops anxiety and depression is really common. Unless there is something outstanding about you, I just feel like some adcoms may discriminate. Overcoming depression isn’t exactly the same as overcoming being poor or overcoming going to crappy schools. There’s the sense (and it’s probably true) that most mental illnesses are chronic. You don’t get rid of depression like you get rid of strep throat. </p>
<p>But, as other people have noted, you may not have another choice.</p>
During my 1.5-week hospitalization, I did a CBT (whose result indicated that my brain is healthy and normal), and I was given antidepressants, which I’ve been taking for just a week. I was told to continue it and advised against stopping it suddenly but I quitted it anyway and I only had a minor withdrawal symptom (nausea) which disappeared after a day. My opinion is that antidepressants suck and they are only for people with actual brain chemistry imbalance, not for people whose depression is due to concerns/worries, etc.</p>
<p>
I agree with you 100%. That’s why I feel like I just introduced a new, additional hurdle to overcome if all my other obstacles/weaknesses I already have weren’t enough (eg. not-so-strong GPA of 3.7, good but not great ECs, and possibly low-30 but hopefully balanced MCAT). All of these wouldn’t be a big deal if I went to Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Duke and had a 3.9+ GPA, 35+ MCAT, and great ECs. </p>
<p>
That’s what makes this decision harder.</p>
<p>
Sigh, I’m like someone trapped in a desert and forced to drink his own urine because there is no water. I might as well give up medicine now, rather than going on to take the MCAT and applying and continuing to be a premed. Things look so bleak right now. SIGH!</p>
<p>Well, this would be an example of why med schools would be reluctant to take someone like you.</p>
<p>CBT = cognitive behavioral therapy</p>
<p>It’s not a test. It’s therapy to help you deal with maladaptive thoughts. </p>
<p>Secondly, you shouldn’t have discontinued your antidepressants. No one can diagnose depression from brain imaging. Under MRI/CT, the brains of depressed individuals look entirely normal. There is no good reason for having to be hospitalized. Whether it’s because you have too much anxiety or whether it’s because your grandpa died, if you were so depressed that you had to be hospitalized, then you have depression and you should be on antidepressants. The odds that you will have another depressive episode (possibly requiring another hospitalization) is pretty good (around 70%). So, take the medications that you’re prescribed.</p>
<p>BTW: Did I say you need cognitive behavioral therapy?</p>
Should I take that personally? Would you have said that if you knew I actually know what CBT is about?</p>
<p>
Excuse me for misreading CBT as being CT (CAT scan). In fact, I have also done CBT and I know what it is about. I am meeting a counselor and we recently did some exercises together and it helped a bit. Specifically, I realized that I have a tendency to be all-or-nothing, mind-reading, and catastrophizing.</p>
<p>
You are saying that because there is a missing piece of info I haven’t yet told you. But I think your assessment is a logical and reasonable one for the knowledge you have of the situation. What I didn’t actually tell you was that I shouldn’t have been hospitalized in the first place and I shouldn’t have been given antidepressants, though it was true that I had a mild depression (but most people have some form of depression anyway, as you said). How it happened is quite ridiculous, actually. Long story short, I was on this nightline chat website for the first time and I was chatting with a volunteer (who later turned out to be an 19-year old, inexperienced volunteer). I told her I was depressed and all the things I was thinking at that time. She wasn’t helpful at all because it was obvious she was doing that for her own resume and didn’t seem to have a sincere desire to help me, because she was just parroting and pretending to listen by repeatedly saying “I see you are upset,” “I am concerned about you,” all that crap. I mean, I know that’s the job they were trained to do as a volunteer but come on. Then she suddenly started asking “Are you suicidal?”. I said I’m not. And then after about 20-minutes of chatting, I left the computer for a moment without telling her I’ll be back, with the chat on. After I came back to the computer, I saw in the chat box that she said “Are you there?” like 3 times. I got frustrated with her unhelpfulness and just turned off the computer and prepared to go to sleep (it was like 11pm Saturday at that time). That was also my first experience with the nightline chatting so the quality of help was a huge disappointment.</p>
<p>Then around 12:00am, the police came unexpectedly and I was forced to go to a local psychiatry emergency. Obviously that nightline volunteer called the police and directed them to go to my house. I didn’t even tell her my phone number, address or anything but later it turned out that the chatline people have access to the IP address of users. That’s how it all began. Sorry if this was too long. There is still so much that happened between that and until my withdrawal from five courses, but I’m too tired to write another long account of the incidents.</p>
<p>If it weren’t for that nightline volunteer, things would have been VERY different, and I would have not withdrawn from the semester.</p>
<p>I don’t buy it. I’ve read enough of your posts before on both of your accounts.</p>
<p>If after a 1.5 week hospitalization, the physicians think you need medication, then I’m inclined to think that you should be on medication. From reading your posts, it really does look like you have some sort of generalized anxiety disorder and depression. I honestly think you should get your issues under control before even thinking about applying to medical school. Seriously. Both from a medication standpoint and from a therapy standpoint. You won’t last a week in med school with the degree of anxiety you have. Your post above really tells me you have very little insight into your illness and poor judgment.</p>
<p>So you were committed involuntarily into a psychiatric hospital for 1.5 weeks because of something you said online? What kind of a chat place were you on anyway? Obviously, you were trying to seek help for something.</p>