Adding on to @MYOS1634 's post, here’s an article from the AMA about taking gap years:
From the article:
“According to a 2019 survey of incoming medical students conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges, 43.9% students who enrolled in medical school took one to two gap years. Of the students surveyed, 13.4% also took three to four gap years and 7.9% took five or more gap years.”
" The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wrench into many best-laid plans. For some undergrads, the pandemic has cost them the chance to build up their medical school credentials with volunteer and shadowing experience."
My math tells me only about 1/3rd of students do not take at least one gap year, and I suspect many of those were in direct admit programs from high school.
Then too, I think Covid will cause more to need gap year time to create better applications partially due to lack of opportunities for the expected ECs and partially due to more applications submitted making admittance even tougher now than it already has been.
A pp mentioned not needing research. Note that is med school dependent. Some like to see it far more than others, so while I doubt it is a requirement at any (or very few), it’s definitely helpful at some.
The University of Rochester puts out a med school profile each year. It’s extremely helpful for many to see what types of applicants have been successful. If you read them you’ll soon see it’s a template - they look for similar attributes year after year. I doubt they are the only med school looking for the same things. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth a read. (I tend to have all pre-med hopefuls at my high school read these for a realistic look at what they are heading for.)
It’s ironic that in the “Best Colleges for Pre-Meds” list linked above 7 of the 25 schools (Bowdoin, Swarthmore, Carleton, Hamilton, Amherst, Middlebury and Williams) are top-10 LACs. It’s additionally ironic, in consideration of the OP’s comments, that these schools may have made the list partly because of their early assurance programs with associated medical schools.
This is where I felt mislead as an HS senior when applying to and committing a college. What you read online about the LAC pre-med experience is very lackluster. The med school acceptance rate that my college brags about has a lot of fine print. The pre med program is very small, and it’s really hard to build a resume while you are at the LAC. Pre-med students from LAC graduate and with their own effort work to get into med school. LAC itself doesn’t contribute to why these students get into whatever med school. Honestly, I feel like being at LAC put me at a disadvantage because my friends at other institutions have a variety of opportunities and programs to support them throughout their pre-med journey in undergrad. With hard work they can apply to med school during undergrad. Advice to anyone looking into LAC for pre-med is how you should go to an LAC because you want that type of education. Just because articles say it’s good for pre med doesn’t mean that it will be a great fit. The stories that I heard from alumni showed me a trend of how only after they graduated is when they began to focus on shadowing, research, volunteering, etc. I’m not trying to rant, but I feel that there is a big misconception about LAC and pre med.
If I’ve interpreted @Creekland’s post as intended, this may apply to students from various types of undergraduate institutions, not just those from liberal arts colleges. This notwithstanding, top LACs tend to offer excellent opportunities for faculty-mentored research in science disciplines.
Seems like some of the problems you are finding are specific to the specific LAC you are attending, rather than every LAC (e.g. not every LAC is in a location where getting to expected pre-med extracurriculars is difficult).
Yea that’s what I’m saying. My LAC was a poor choice for pre-med, yet I still committed there. That was a mistake on my end that I intend to fix on top of the fact that I am extremely unhappy there(the environment is just not for me). At other undergrad institutions, there are local hospitals for you to do a bit of volunteering and more labs available to get experience in research. The pre-med advisor at my specific LAC told me that pre-meds here just study all semester and do a little activity during the summer. That is something that I personally disagree with. Pre-meds don’t do crucial activities while at college. So I ask myself what’s the point of paying $80k a year if we’re only supposed to just do academics during the semester. Basically, I want to go to a college that allows me to involved inside and outside the classroom for pre-med.
As with any single example, this student may not be typical of those who reach medical school through liberal arts colleges, but her path shows she found engaging premed opportunities as desired:
I reach out to her and she got in through the Early Assurance Program, which only takes 3-4 students from a class each year. She is apart of the 10% of pre-meds that get into med school during their junior year(which I mentioned above). Putting all hope into getting into that program is very risky. Most people at LACs take a lot of gap years to get into med school.
Before you make assumptions, please check the hospitals near where you plan to transfer and see if they are even taking volunteers. The hospitals around here are not. It’s one reason why those wanting to apply to medical school might be waiting. They can take a CNA or medical assistant certification course and actually get a job. And with CNA actually have patient contact…which is good.
My daughter needs to shadow in a medical setting for PT, she couldn’t find anything. She contacted my uncle who happened to know the head of surgery at a hospital by us (retired hospital CEO), and she got in the door that way. PT centers, schools, hospitals- she tried everywhere and they weren’t letting anyone but staff in. Fortunately her university has a great PT center on site, so she works there once a week.
If you are really concerned about admission to medical school straight out of college, you should focus on your GPA and MCAT preparation over extra research opportunities. I have two close relatives who have recently gone on from LACs to medical school, one straight out of college and the other after one gap year. She took that gap year because she WANTED to, not because she HAD to. She was Phi Beta Kappa from a top 10 LAC. Her only extra research experiences were a summer research position in the chemistry department of her college between junior and senior years and her senior honors thesis. Neither were directly related to medical school preparation. The other relative, who went straight to medical school, did neither research nor a thesis.
Bottom line, you are unhappy with your school. It’s not the right fit for you. So move on. However, the school IS the right fit for many, and DOES prepare students for medical school admission.
Thanks for all the responses. I wasn’t trying to bash LACs and sorry if I offended anyone. After my first semester, I just realized that my LAC wasn’t what I thought it was. Academics aside I was very sad at college, which caused my grades to suffer. I wanted to get advice to make sure I wasn’t making a bad decision by applying to transfer.I just wanted to explain my personal observations at my LAC because every LAC is different.
Honestly, I think a lot of colleges are sad right now. I honestly don’t think you can get a feel of most of them, especially here in the NE. Everything is so abnormal. I feel awful for current freshmen, my daughter is a sophomore, off campus, with a big friend group, sorority… Her experience went from best time of her life to not terrible. My HS seniors can’t even visit colleges to get a feel for the campuses.
Hmm, it might help to know that no college of any sort gets a student into med school. All students have to use their own effort to get there. Perhaps some students have contacts who help, but it’s not the school that does anything creating “special” applicants. I’ve seen students get into med schools from all sorts of undergraduate places. They do it with their own effort, finding opportunities, etc.
You’re correct that some schools have hospitals nearby giving students some opportunities during the school year and not just over summers, but no school I know of sets things up for students. The student has to take the initiative, making contacts, etc. And… as others have said, this year that has been difficult everywhere due to Covid.
Research certainly doesn’t have to be medical related even for schools that consider it more highly than others. It can be anything. It’s skills they are looking for, not content (unless doing an MD/PhD program).
You will not be making a bad decision in transferring to another school, but you should be aware of the ways in which you could work against yourself. For example, you might currently attend a college with one of the highest 4-year graduation rates in the nation. In transferring to UPitt, your surrounding rate would drop dramatically to 65%. As you have stated (perspicaciously), lists, rankings and statistics require interpretation and analysis if they are to offer meaning. Nonetheless, you appear to be at some risk of climbing a ladder downward. Transfer, but use caution.
Graduation rates are mostly related to the students, so colleges that are more selective and where students have less financial difficulty have higher graduation rates.
But the OP is still going to be the same student in academic capability at whatever college, so unless they transfer to one that is worse financially, their personal graduation rate is unlikely to change significantly.
But that is not the point of the link you previously posted ( https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate ) which is raw graduation rate. Of course more selective colleges where students are less financially stretched have higher graduation rates. But that does not mean that a specific student would have a better chance of graduating at one college versus another if net prices were the same.
In any case, USNWR’s rankings give 17.6% to raw graduation rate but only 8% to graduation rate performance (i.e. relative to that expected from student characteristics, although in USNWR’s case, a 1999 paper indicates that they use only student SAT scores and money spent per student). For some reason, a USNWR list of colleges by graduation rate performance is not available or easy to find.
The quotation in reply #57 refers to absolute retention and graduation rates (although based on 6-year graduation rates), so it generally would apply to the link previously posted. USN offers a separate and distinct assessment of the importance of performance relative to expectation (graduation rate performance).