Med schools that seem to like nontrads

[wannabe_doc_]

Hello!

I'm applying to med school in June and will be 28 when I matriculate if all goes according to plan. I was wondering if there are med schools with reputations of liking nontrads and some who rarely take nontrads? Thanks

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[Ell19]

I don't have an exact answer to your question, but the admissions of med school have been shifting to preferring "non-traditional students" with multiple gaps years of experience instead of traditional students straight out of undergrad. I believe the average age of students starting medical school is around 26.

At my school for example, we do have students who did an accelerated BS-DO program or applied their sophomore year for a guaranteed admission. But besides those students, that vast majority of students have taken at least 2+ gap years.

 

[deleted1119327]

University of Rochester. The interviewer directly told me they like "older" applicants.

 

[DocJanItor]

28 is probably not even 2 SDs from the mean age of matriculants anymore. I'd just apply to any schools you want to go to.

 

[BritainKittenMittens]

28 is probably not even 2 SDs from the mean age of matriculants anymore. I'd just apply to any schools you want to go to.

What I've learned is that anyone over 24 thinks they'll be the oldest one in the class.

But then when they talk to someone older they say "Oh you're not old at all!"

 

[deleted367183]

Cincinnati!

 

[gramnegative]

Get access to the MSAR and take a look at which schools take a lot of older students. I was 34/35 during my application season. Some of the common nontrad-liking schools are BU, NYMC, and Dartmouth. I also got some love from Cinci. Your IS school or schools are probably a good bet. I wouldn't completely restrict yourself to nontrad friendly only; your application as a whole matters more than your age. PIus, you aren't really that old. I got into a school with a scholarship that I was told both didn't like reinventors or nontrads - but that is anecdotal, to be fair.

 

[thatonegrrl]

Hello!

I'm applying to med school in June and will be 28 when I matriculate if all goes according to plan. I was wondering if there are med schools with reputations of liking nontrads and some who rarely take nontrads? Thanks

Look at MSAR data, and pre-req requirements. I only applied to MD schools with a history of admitting students in their 30s and even 40s according to MSAR. Some schools you can also tell by their pre-reqs if they are not non-trad friendly (EG - if grades "expire" after 5 years). For DO schools I didn't see any stats on ages of admitted students like in MSAR, but had been told that most DO schools are non-trad friendly.

 

[Newtonian21]

Any school with sane mind I repeat with sane mind would prefer a nontrad with experience.

 

[vc7777]

Any school should, indeed, value nontrad students. But also - as a proud "Bent Arrow" from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine I'll tell you CWRU should be at the top of any such list. Since the mid-1940s CWRU has been bucking admissions standards and selecting what is now called "non-traditional students" into medical school. This all started when the former dean of Student Affairs the late Dr. John Lyon Caughey coined the clever (and cooler term) of a "bent arrow" to describe a medical student who "does not take a straight path to medicine".

An excerpt from his entry in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History:

Between 1945, when he first arrived at WRU, until his retirement in 1974, Caughey served as the primary interviewer of prospective medical students and continued to assist the medical school by interviewing students through 1995. Early on, Caughey broke with conventional practice by considering students with non-traditional backgrounds, including older students, women, and minorities or those with non-science undergraduate majors. Caughey gained a reputation for being a "one-man admissions committee" and his commitment to the potential of his so-called "bent arrows" (non-traditional students) rested on his assessment of an applicant's potential for delivering quality patient care.