So You Think You Want To Be A Doctor?: What BS/MD Programs are all about!


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.

Lastly, NEOMED’s accelerated program allows students to take an ‘enrichment year’ between undergrad and medical school.  To do this, you finish all the requirements for matriculation during the 2 years of undergrad (which is standard for this particular program), then you can take the entire year to do (almost) literally anything.  It has to somehow ‘make you a better doctor’, but in reality, you can make anything fit this requirement.  I have to say, this is an absolutely priceless opportunity – I have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to do anything, not just science-related, knowing that I have a spot in med school to go back to. 

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