eh FutureDoc4,
That's a beautiful strawman you've got there....
I wasn't making any claims related to healthcare experience.
Merely pointing out, as observed in numerous studies, that age (memory) is a factor.
Recall abilities in early 20s immediately following college no less (even if taking a year off), are much greater than recall abilities in later years, particularly after multi-year breaks from college.
"The average age for most medical schools are 23-24 now (a lot of people take at least one year off before starting)."
That doesn't necessarily tell us that they took a year off (may be the case, but without data who is to say). It can simply be that they graduated college in 5 or 6yrs instead of the traditional 4yrs, or graduated H.S. later making them older upon graduating college, or spent that year improving their chances by retaking coursework, etc.
I did a quick online search and found an admittedly old study.
"
For every 100 students who started college at 1,385 different 4-year institutions throughout the U.S. in 2001, only about 53 graduated from the same college within six years, according to a report released last week by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank that researches public policy."
In the Sacramento region, Sacramento State University was in the news a few months back because of the time it takes students to graduate - 4yrs is only possible if the courses needed are not already full. If I recall correctly, the average nowadays for state schools is around 5yrs. Probably not much of an issue at an Ivy league university though.
The reasons vary from course unavailability to students that have to work, but the net effect is the same, fewer and fewer are able to graduate in the traditional 4yrs.
Both my wife and I graduated H.S. at 18. Not because we were left back, but because we were born mid-way through the school year, so too young to enter kindergarten at 4 and turned 5 midway.
So, 18+5yrs would put us at 23 had we gone to med school. Nevertheless, whether we're talking 23-24 with or without a year off, that's quite different than someone who goes to college, then a PA program, and then med school which would be unlikely without working as a PA first.
So a traditional med school student range would be:
17 (age at H.S. completion) +4 (years to college completion) =21
17+5=22
18+4=22
18+5=23
(other combinations are possible 16+X, but these likely cover most of the range)
A non-traditional med school student with college, PA, and work may look like this:
17+4+2 (PA program) + 1 (work) = 24
17+5+2 (PA program) + 1 (work) = 25
18+4+2 (PA program) + 1 (work) = 25
18+5+2 (PA program) + 1 (work) = 26
How likely is the 1yr work variable? I suspect highly unlikely though there are always exceptions. Since many PA programs require 1-4k+ hours of experience we can loosely translate to mean 6mo. to 2yrs before the PA program. So we can simply add that.
range 24.5 - 26.5
range 25.5 - 27.5
range 26.5 - 28.5
If we assumed they worked 2 or 3 years as PA before med school (probably more common than 1yr)
2yr work - range 26.5 - 28.5
2yr work - range 27.5 - 29.5
2yr work - range 28.5 - 30.5
3yr work - range 27.5 - 29.5
3yr work - range 28.5 - 30.5
3yr work - range 29.5 - 31.5
I'm not debating the merits of being a PA or their healthcare knowledge base and how it compares to med school students. Simply observing longer time spent away from school and age.
You can make the argument that not all PAs attend college. This would be a fair observation. So they may in fact replace 4yrs of college with 2yrs of an AA, though one may also assume that in many such cases they spent time as EMTs or in other healthcare roles prior to PA, so it might be a bit of a wash.
Net-net: I just think that part of the reason that PAs in med school don't do as well in the beginning may be due to 1. years spent away from theoretical academics, study habits, etc. and 2.
a decline in memory recall which begins in your mid 20s according to Dr. Oz.
(Surely you cannot refute a leading doctor in the profession you hope to join one day)
For the purposes of this discussion, we'll use 25 as the absolute (though we both know that's not how it works).
All else being equal, those that are 23-24 (or younger) have a memory recall advantage than those that are 26-27.
Additionally, they have less time away from academic preparation, and recent exposure to relevant subject matter in academic setting as well as test taking, study habits, etc.
But this entire discussion and speculation as it were is really unnecessary, are there no statistics that show the average age of PAs (when they entered med school) that became MDs?
