Most 6- and 7-year programs increased their length by 1 year when the last MCAT changes happened.
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I have 2 examples from CORNELL this year.
One student with a 3.85 GPA and an MCAT of 521 got into Harvard without a gap year.
Another student had a 3.75 GPA starting senior year and had decided to take 1 gap year, and then messed up her first semester in senior year and the GPA fell down to 3.5.
Most likely she will do a Masterâs program before applying to med school. Adding at least 2 gaps years.
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Is NeoMed still a 6 year BA MD program or is just a early assurance now ? if so what duration ?
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Neomed scrapped its BS/MD
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My daughter is currently in the UMKC program and is overall very happy with the curriculum. We have been impressed by how well integrated the formal medical education is with the rest of their undergraduate studies. In fact, the students do start their clinical hospital experience from the first week of their freshman year. This is very different from other combined programs, in that the pre-medical years are completely separated from the med school. Of course if the individual is not definite in wanting to be a physician, then it would be better to go to a traditional college/university.
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Adding my own reference points which are a bit old since I dont know any recent Cornell graduates.
I know someone who went from Houston to Cornell, went to UTSW without gap year and now in third year of residency. Texas residents who attend Ivies get brownie points for GPA (still needs to be over 3.7) at least at UTSW as long as they have a good MCAT score. UTSW averages for GPA are close to 3.9.
Someone else took a gap year, went to Cornell med, residency at Stanford, going to fellowship at Hopkins. Not sure why gap year.
Cornell is a big school comparatively to other Ivies which means there is much more competition for grades. There will always be classes where they curve and where they say 90+ is an A, they will make the exams harder to still get to only 40% or below As. One canât underestimate the competition at these schools since most of them are getting there being overachievers and definitely those who want to be on premed track. This is what is truly the problem at these schools - 50% will not get As in some classes.
Not that same people always miss the A which might be a good thing but some people do well in Biology while others do well in Chemistry and so you might get the As in some classes while missing them in others which is why GPA goes down from being close to perfect.
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It is truly brutal to have that happen to anyone in final year. Usually final year is when they are doing classes in primary major and have a chance to improve their GPA because they give 80-90% As in advanced classes compared to the weed out ones. Both my kidsâ GPAs actually went up in the last year quite a bit, close to 0.1.
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If not mistaken UCSF also 1 year
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Fully agree.
Another aspect is that Cornell has a committee letter and they have not told her if she will get one if she decides to apply this summer.
She is devastated. Hopefully, the path we have planned works out.
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I was surprised to hear Stanford still has 2 years of classes.
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Disclosure : Last year , My D looked at UMKC (so I scoped the college for her) but she felt not her âflavorâ with location, asks (questions in application), etc., (she is in normal BSMD 8 years.)
Cornell - Grade deflation ( or many skilled players competing for a piece of pie so tough to have a great GPA)
6 Year BSMD is altogether a different species than regular BSMD⊠you need to more focused with âless breaks or more fast pacedâ ( I heard even they do stuff during the holidayâŠnot sure).
TBH , your kid need to be determined/focused âanywayâ (Ex: my friend kid in Seton hall got weighted GPA 4.3 , MCAT 523, ORM, took a gap year and now enrolled in tri-state Med school). So itâs not âeasy in either pathâ if in particular your kid want to be in Medical program.
For 6 years your kids need to be more focused (as its 6 vs 8 with less chance of error) , determined and like location (and other stuff⊠i believe itâs cheaper too)⊠then UMKC⊠though I would rather prefer normal BSMD (as itâs more even paced for 19 year olds IMO)
A lot of med schools now donât require a committee letter on the AMCAS, but there are still around 50 that favor it. I donât know what that means if one applies to those schools with individual LORs. Do the schools just treat those LORs sub-par to the committee letters?
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The medical schools are not the ones enforcing committee letters.
They know which schools issue committee letters vs not. So if an undergrad school has a committee letter as their process and if a student does not use it, that triggers a question mark.
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So those schools treat individual LORs as sub-par to the committee letters. This is such an archaic process!
My guess is Ivies issue committee letters so they have control over who gets to apply/know who is applying to med schools and get results back. If students apply on their own, the premed office may never know who is applying, their stats and who got in where.
OTOH, in cases like the one @NoviceDad mentioned, they can block students saying your app looks bad and so we canât issue a committee letter until you remediate your GPA. These schools are ensuring their applicants to admittees as close to 100% as possible because those are the numbers being given out to the public who want to attend. It ignores how many never got to this step, only how many applied vs how many got in.
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Vanderbilt issue committee letter and I havenât heard any complaints. They need personal statement and write up of all the activities (basically draft of the application) and LORs and meeting with premed advisor. You need to plan well and take appointment early. DS took March appointment and used Spring break (in Hawaii) to work on all the stuff needed. Itâs a good process if premed advisor is good and rationale. At Vandy they help with school list and maintain data from previous years.
My one kid who didnt attend an Ivy had individual letters while the other who attended an Ivy had a committee letter.
I dont believe there are issues with committee letters unless they are blocked which your kid wouldnât have had any issues with. 
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In general they block if they think chance of getting As are less but that requires good premed advisor and not all schools have good ones.
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Like @texaspg indicated, medical school know which colleges issue committee letters.
Your application without a committee letter versus your undergrad peers from the same college with committee letters puts you at a disadvantage.
In the case I mentioned, the fact that Cornell is still taking its time to communicate to its student whether they will issue one or not nearly a month before June 1 does not give me confidence they will issue one. And that means she is going to put herself at a huge risk if she applies.
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