At what point are you considered non-trad?

[inhiding]

Hey, so I got bored and started wondering about this.

Is non-trad status determined by age? Or if you have kids? Or if you've dropped out of school?


I'm 24, finishing a master's program -- will enter 2009. Does that make me non-trad or within the range of trad or something else?

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[Haemulon]

Hey, so I got bored and started wondering about this.

Is non-trad status determined by age? Or if you have kids? Or if you've dropped out of school?


I'm 24, finishing a master's program -- will enter 2009. Does that make me non-trad or within the range of trad or something else?

I think people use the term in different ways. For me, I take it to mean a person with a path to medical school that is not traditional or typical (ie. high school --> 3/4 year college --> directly to medical school). Individuals who have pursued other careers after college and who are older than the typical starting med student would certainly fall into the non-trad category. Even more so if they have already settled down, started a family and such in the interim between college and med school (since even fewer MS1's fall into that category).

I am not sure if going the college --> MS --> med school route is really non traditional by itsself. Since after all it is just a matter of a couple more years of continuous schooling and one's age would still be in line with the average MS1. Plus, grad degrees are becoming increasingly popular and more common among med students it seems. "Non-traditional" is really just a general label though, and I doubt there are any hard boundries to its definition. Is 24 nontrad just by age? Eh, maybe or maybe not. Since presumably a typical college student would graduate in the neighborhood of 21, but still there are very traditional ways of being a 24 yo MS1. Plus, I think the average age of MS1 is around 24/25 anyway, so its not like 24 makes one an old student. I try to avoid getting hung up on labels though. In the end it really doesn't matter so much.

 

[Law2Doc]

Hey, so I got bored and started wondering about this.

Is non-trad status determined by age? Or if you have kids? Or if you've dropped out of school?


I'm 24, finishing a master's program -- will enter 2009. Does that make me non-trad or within the range of trad or something else?

Well, by the strict definition, traditional is someone going directly from college to med school without substantial time off. In that case you are a nontrad. But you probably have a whole lot more in common with the folks right out of college than the folks who worked for years, took time off for kids, served in the armed forces etc. So while you are nontrad, you probably needn't think of yourself as one and adcoms probably will lump you into the same group as the straight out of college crowd. The average age of matriculants for allo is 24, and for DO is 27. So if you are under these benchmarks then you can probably look at yourself as fairly traditional.

 

[pancakesyrup]

Well, by the strict definition, traditional is someone going directly from college to med school without substantial time off. In that case you are a nontrad. But you probably have a whole lot more in common with the folks right out of college than the folks who worked for years, took time off for kids, served in the armed forces etc. So while you are nontrad, you probably needn't think of yourself as one and adcoms probably will lump you into the same group as the straight out of college crowd. The average age of matriculants for allo is 24, and for DO is 27. So if you are under these benchmarks then you can probably look at yourself as fairly traditional.

It could be that the average age is skewed upwards because of the people that are in their late 20s, 30s, and 40s, while on the other hand, there are VERY few matriculants below the age of 21. So the median age of matriculation is probably still 22 for MD schools.

 

[Haemulon]

Well, i'm over 30 with a previous career, so I guess that's pretty clear cut.

 

[Law2Doc]

It could be that the average age is skewed upwards because of the people that are in their late 20s, 30s, and 40s, while on the other hand, there are VERY few matriculants below the age of 21. So the median age of matriculation is probably still 22 for MD schools.

AAMC only seems to provide the mean data on their website, not the median. From what I can see, there is a pretty tight grouping around the 23-24 range, with most of the folks not straight out of college having done a year or two masters, postbac or taken a year off. But yeah, there will be someone over 30 in every med school class, probably more than one. These folks balance out the handful of 20 year olds who get in each year, and probably don't drive the number up as dramatically as you think. In a class of 150, one or two outliers isn't going to move the mean that much.