By Jessica Chan
Have you known since you were
little that you want to become a doctor?
Do you have trouble visualizing a future for yourself in a field other
than healthcare? Are you just so drawn
to poking people with needles and injecting them with biological components
and/or cutting people open, digging around for a little bit, then sewing them
back up that you are absolutely positive that you want to spend years of your
life in stress and potentially go thousands of dollars into debt to pursue a
career for the higher good of the well-being of others? Or perhaps you want to serve those who are
underserved in our country and abroad, and you feel the best way you can put
your interests and talents to this cause is by training to be a physician…
If your answer was a resounding
YES! to these, then a preadmission, combined Bachelor of Science (or Arts) and
Doctor of Medicine (BS/MD or BA/MD, but I’ll be referring to them as BS/MD for
the duration of this post) program may be for you! What this is, as the name suggests, is an
amazing opportunity to have a reserved seat in a medical school right out of
high school. This means next to no
stress about keeping a 4.00 GPA, acing the MCAT, doing insane amounts of
extracurriculars and research through undergrad, and, after all that, still
having the uncertainty of acceptance into med school. With the BS/MD program, you know exactly what
you have to do in order to keep your name on that seat, and, with this, you
will experience much (MUCH) less stress throughout college. As a side note, some schools also have
programs where you apply during freshman, sophomore, or junior year of
undergrad – which is a wonderful option, too, but here I’ll be talking about
the programs you apply to during senior year of high school.
Now, let’s touch on some of the practical
things. But first, as a disclaimer, each
program is a little bit different – most notably, the way the application
process works varies a bit and the requirements to be kept (and the benefits
received) during undergrad are specific to the schools involved. However, I think it is accurate to say that
the gist of each of these programs is very similar.
The Application Process
For these programs, the student typically
applies to the program itself. Within
this application is a portion that the medical school admissions committee will
look at and a section that the undergraduate school will look at. From my experience, if the medical school
wants to admit you, you will get in. (i.e. the undergraduate university cannot
reject your application if the medical school wants to accept you into the
BS/MD program) Interviews are fairly important for these applications, but each
school does it differently. Also, nota
bene that application deadlines for BS/MD programs are often earlier than for
regular college admissions – mid Novemeber/early December is standard – and the
early admissions round often has significantly higher acceptance rates than the
regular admissions.
I am in the program at Kent State
University and the North East Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), so the
following applies to that program’s application, but my understanding is that
others are similar. When I applied to
the program, the application was essentially a full app for a medical school –
a few recommendation letters, the typical essay questions about why you want to
be a doctor, why this medical school, what field you hope to go into, why an
accelerated program, and similar jazz – including the interview process. Approximately one third of the applicants
were invited for an interview at the medical school, and, of these, about 50%
were admitted. The interviews at the med
school were scenario based – read a prompt before walking into the room, talk
with a professor in the room for about 5 minutes, walk about, and repeat in
different rooms about 6 or 7 times – and at the undergrad universities were a
typical panel of 3 or 4 professors.
Sound intimidating? I’ll admit it
was a little bit, but it was much lower pressure than applying during senior
year of college.
Here are a couple links with lists of schools with BS/MD
programs: http://www.ivyplanners.com/documents/BS-MD-IvyPlanners.pdf
Undergrad Life
Say you’ve been accepted and are
living the college life. Congrats! You’ve entered a small community of fellow
students aspiring to become physicians, just like yourself! You will be around these people for at least
the next 7 or 8 years, so you’d best be nice.
I’m sure that won’t be an issue for any of y’all, but in all
seriousness, this group of students is the perfect place to form friendships
that will last forever. Since you all
have a seat in med school, you won’t (or at least shouldn’t) be competing with
each other, constantly and viciously vying for the best grades. You can all take a step back, relax, and
learn for the sake of learning, enlightening yourselves and tackling issues
that the medical field faces before you are completely immersed in the field
itself and your perspective changes.
Additionally, when you all matriculate into medical school, you will be
with your best friends amid a crazy-intense academic life, and you will
absolutely need these friendships to make it through in a good state of
mind. This isn’t to say that it is impossible
to make new friends in med school, but only to point out that it can be a
wonderful thing to have known people for a few years prior to endeavoring into
unchartered waters together.
As far
as requirements that you must maintain to keep your seat in med school reserved
for yourself:
-
Classes: You’ve gotta take all the premedicine core
courses, and whatever else the school prescribes for the major you will receive
-
GPA: Usually pretty decent – not nearly a 4.0, but
closer to a 3.25 or 3.5 (i.e. high enough that you need to study, but not high
enough to be completely occupied with worrying about grades)
-
MCAT: Some programs do not require you to take the
MCAT, but some do. Of those that do
require it, the score needed is typically very doable – nowhere close to what
you would need to normally have a prayer of gaining acceptance.
-
Extracurriculars: Extracurriculars will never hurt, but
typically you do not need a certain number of volunteer hours/patient contact
hours/research things to matriculate.
However, although these are not required, they are excellent things to
have on your curriculum vitae when applying to residencies after medical
school.
Medical School Life
Once you’re in medical school,
you’re pretty much back on the normal track of MD pursuers. If the BS/MD program you did was accelerated
(some, like the one I am in, cram undergrad into 2 or 3 years), you will
probably be younger than a lot of the direct entry students (students who were
not in the BS/MD program and applied through the traditional route). The classes you take will be the same as for the
rest of the students, and you will need to build a resume and score well on the
standardized exams (namely the USMLE Steps 1 and 2) in order to be competitive
for residency spots after graduating from med school.
Apart from the obvious benefits of doing such a program, I
thought I’d lay out a few of the things I have found with a little bit of
hindsight/things I wish I had considered before committing.
Drawbacks:
-
The curriculum during undergrad is fairly
inflexible, especially for the accelerated programs.
o
Also, with the accelerated programs, you
typically take classes during the summers, so traveling/working is not really a
possibility – you do have winter breaks and a few weeks between sessions,
though, just not the regular 3 or 4 month summer break.
-
If you get into the program, and attend, but
then have doubts about wanting to become a doctor, then it can feel as if you
have no choice but to stay. This can
lead to several existential crises, which in turn lead to periods of personal
growth. However, if you are absolutely
positive (i.e. >95.73% sure) you want to become a doctor, then this would
not be an issue for you.
-
Different programs have different requirements –
some of them are not greatly beneficial, and you still have to work very hard,
do research, score well on the MCAT, and practically apply to the med school
again after 4 years of undergrad. Beware
of these – if the program does not absolutely guarantee a seat, but instead
advertises ‘preferential admittance’, look into their acceptance rates, etc.
and compare them with acceptance rates of other colleges’ premedicine
programs. (‘preferential admittance’
sometimes refers to programs where the medical school automatically invites
applicants from a certain college for interviews, or has other slight
advantages to applicants from a certain background)
-
A good number of these programs are at State
universities, so the college experience itself would be very different from
that at a small liberal arts school or at a more highly acclaimed school.
-
Since you enter a community of other premed
students, you kind of have to go out of your way to make friends with other
majors, interests, and aspirations – not a bad thing, per se, just something to
be aware of.
Benefits:
-
Much, much, MUCH less stress about keeping
grades, studying for the MCAT, and doing a billion other things to ~hopefully
gain acceptance after undergrad. You’ve
got an invaluable peace of mind, knowing that if you get a B- (or maybe even a
C) in a class, you haven’t blown your life plan. You also know exactly what you need to do to
keep your spot – it’s not a shot in the dark where even if you think you are
doing everything you possibly can to create a strong application for med
school, you may still not get in.
-
Sometimes the program creates opportunities for
its students to hear certain speakers, have certain research opportunities, to
take special classes, etc.
-
You’ve entered a large community of people
willing to mentor you, provide advice, and to help you succeed – not a group of
uber-competitive people trying to get that same spot that you are. This allows for more open and honest
conversation about the experience itself, and for less sugar-coating about what
you are in for. Also, you will know
these people through med school, and will probably keep in touch after that, so
this support system is really a great way to get to know people and to go
through life with them.
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