@love4bmsd
Every US medical school will have an interview before offering an admission. Some folks look for BSMD programs with no MCAT requirement, but sadly one can not escape an interview. It seems your DD will do fine with either BSMD or regular route MD.
Again a lot of assertions without any concrete data. Students at Temple do as well as or better than BUâs BSMD in MCAT and UG GPA. Some Temple UGs do go to overhyped medical schools.
Hi everyone,
When we log into ACT website to view score of previously taken ACT test, we only see a page where it shows only scores from the test - like composite, english, math etc. There is no way to see full report (like SAT has full report), there is no way to download the report in pdf, no way to know what percentiles are achieved in composite and individual sections etc, no way to see how many questions were wrong etc. It just shows scores.
Anyone know how to see the complete ACT score report? Is it not available now? May be they took it out when they moved ACT to new platform (new website).
I tend to agree with most of what @rk2017 has indicated.
One more point re: Gap years in traditional route:
Frankly, âyou should take gap years because you are not matureâ is the lamest reason I have heard.
A decade ago, the percentage of pre-med students taking gaps years was minimal. And two decades ago, practically zero. For most part these folks have turned out to be good doctors.
Outside of US and Canada, practically in all countries students start their medical education after 12th grade. Donât tell those doctors lack maturity.
Nearly 80% of students at John Hopkins and Duke take 1-2 gap years. Are you telling these kids who are among the brightest and smartest kids are immature? or is it that the culture in these schools is perpetuating gap years?
It is unfair to paintbrush every gap year student as immature at same level as every direct BS/MD student is matured/more matured than their traditional peers.
Speaking of other countries, what is holistic in their admission process? GPA and marks? Do they even measure other factors equally important to be a successful Dr? A board topper could be a great scientist but can be miserable to be a Dr, a bottom of pile may not be a great test taker but has great other skills to be a successful Dr. That is where US differs from rest of world, they arenât only looking at GPA and standardized test scores. It is unfortunate as ORM parents we only see from what we had experienced and donât see the potential of different mechanism.
I am not adcom, but if you hear stories from adcoms, one would learned what is exactly medical schools are looking for in potential medical students.
Core competencies is not only about maturity and if one pays close attention to it, should realize it is virtually impossible for high school kids to achieve all of them at time of UG admission unless they have resources to accomplish some of those resource based competencies (e.g. service orientation), are truly gifted (those are outliers).
US never had majority direct BS/MD based medical system, yet producing successful Drs. Direct BS/MD hadnât kept pace with overall medical seats increase over period, infact its share is reducing, donât believe that stakeholders are fool or donât know what they are doing. When you see ORM Drs like Sanjay Gupta, Vivek Murthy, Ashish Jha etc, differences are impossible to ignore compare to other ORM Drs from other spectrum.
Bottom line, irrespective of route one takes, medical school student should be checking off most of core competencies boxes AMCAS is looking for.
I am not sure since when maturity become a sole factor? Those 63% and 10% certainly brought more life experiences on table than 27%. From that cohort it is viewed as equal capability for them (whether it is 27% or 63% student) to be a successful Dr.
If trend is indicative of anything, bottom tier of stars with gap years doing much better than superstar w/o gap year in terms of medical school admission.
My daughter is a junior and we will be applying to BS-MD programs next year.
She has a 1550 in SAT and ACT is 36, writing 10. Do east-coast colleges prefer SAT over ACT? Should we attempt to retake the SAT since she has time before we apply or should we just go with the ACT?
We noticed a discrepancy in Penn State supplemental questions for application to PreMedical Medical (PMM) program.
The word limit for the following question is different in Common Application vs Penn State application:
Describe what you think your strongest qualities are as well as weaknesses that you would like to improve upon.
One has a word limit of 500 words or less while the other has a word limit of 250 words or less.
It will be interesting to see how Penn State evaluates the responses to this essay.
The most common thing I am hearing from Adcoms is student maturity with varied experiences.
The data is frankly blowing holes in the maturity argument.
And I was not comparing US and Asia - I had Europe in mind.
Anyway, the fact is 60% of students who matriculate have >=1 gap years.
How many of them took that willingly?
And remember only ~40% of applicants get a medical school seat.
And isnât it interesting that you can vote and drive at 18 but you are not mature at 22 for medical school? You need gap years to prove your maturity, right?
I agree that irrespective of the route one takes, medical school student should be checking off most of core competencies boxes AMCAS is looking for in addition to UG GPA, MCAT scores and ECs. So, one can infer that no one in USA gets admitted to medical schools without these criteria checked off. They still may not be at the same level but probably meet the baseline criteria set by AMCAS.
So, irrespective of whether students have - gap year/s or direct BS/MD students or traditional without gap year - they should meet this minimum baseline criteriaâŠ
I also feel that age is not directly proportional to maturity. Likewise it is not directly proportional to experience either⊠Since it brings up questions about âexperience doing whatâ?
Ultimately, if a student meets the admission baseline criteria set by AMCAS and got into med school, then whatâs the point of questioning their credentials again.
However, I do believe that learning and growing careers is a continuous process. At each stage, you need excellent work ethics to achieve success.
For example, historically we have seen CEO/Presidents in the US that are remembered fondly for their mature decisions when they were in their 40âs.
In other cases, some people in their 70âs holding these designations failed to behave maturely!
I donât think anyone is saying that maturity is a sole factor, it is one of many factors. When AdCom express their opinions, their experience is ultimate truth as they have seen enough n applicants/students to draw conclusion. Certain those conclusions are tickling to med school decision and selection criteria and ultimately common ground at AMCAS level as SOMs may have different mission but candidate core competencies is a perfect common ground, which is a guideline, not a rule and SOMs may deviate here and there based on their mission.
Voting and be a Dr is comparing apple and orange, one is a fundamental right vs another is a earned privilege by proving core competencies. As a right you can vote at 18, but not necessarily every voter is mature at 18 (even WH guy we can debate how mature is at tale end of life). However Dr has to be mature, not an exception, otherwise we will see the cases like Hoverboard dentist all over the places.
Mere gap years count is not a ticket to med school, rather what one does in those gap years make or break at top schools.
Yes, C actually sat for this exam for Oxford med school in senior year HS without much preparation (because heard someone from their HS got in there few years earlier) perhaps wouldnât have gotten anyway even with a lot of preparation considering the sheer number of applications from around the world. Then they have an interview following the test. Anyone selected for that program would be a top notch physician in 6 years, by 24 at most.
Precisely, immature mindset or forced by parents to apply anywhere just because can be a Dr at 24 years, irrespective of desire, realistic planning. Its like everyone applies at HYP because simply they can.
It is same maturity level as to brag about child every other post but donât post their academic progress in experience thread (I guess nowadays audit is a good excuse!). I am glad that US system is not accepting Asian med school degrees without further rigorous training and selection, otherwise every ORM parent will send their kids to motherland so that they can be a Dr much faster pace than US.
So, are we saying folks who apply to UMKC or Howard University and pursue 6 year BS/MD either have an immature midset or are forced by parents?
Interestingly except for 1, 14 of those 15 AAMC competencies could apply to any profession.
It is interesting that we are okay with kids being very sure of doing Comp Science or Business major or Law or Data Science while in high school but have issues when they indicate they want to do medicine.
Also, we celebrate if someone becomes a PhD at 24 but it appears we have issues if that someone becomes a doctor at 24.