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Well I think its because it is a lot harder to get into medical school than it previously was. Having the right grades or test scores no longer cuts it. In undergrad it can be hard to provide evidence of those skills especially in a pretty closed off setting like university. Only in the real world do you begin to understand and appreciate others as well as yourself.

Also if other applicants are like myself then they have interests outside of medicine that they are serious in pursuing.
 
It reflects a shift in the kind of people that medical schools want in medicine. It's a big factor contributing to the new MCAT. Medical schools want to train physicians who are not only academically strong but also mature and socially adept. Taking a year (or two or three or ten) off after college and living in the "real world" affords people experiences that you will never learn in college. It not only gives you time to work on ECs, but it also allows people to grow as human beings outside of the constraints of academics.
 
Aside from the benefit (though it could be a disadvantage if used incorrectly) to ones application, I think a majority of people on the fence about taking a gap year(s) understand that once your medical career starts, the rest of your life will now be on the back burner. You will never have a better opportunity to enjoy hobbies or gain life experiences than during this time.

Although, of course, this is just my 2 pennies.
 
kittycat007 said:
Is it true that once you get into medicine, you basically will never have free time again? Many doctors / residents have mixed opinion on this. Also, are doctors severely underpaid, like will I be able to buy a small house, drive a car, and pay off my bills if I become a doctor? (I am thinking some specialty in internal medicine).

I simply don't understand why we can't just increase amount of doctors we have, and as a result, reduce all doctor's workload so they will stress less. We can probably even speed up appointment process and provide better care.
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No, all of your free time does not disappear completely. You'll be fine financially. Not like... super rich, but you'll be able to live comfortably. There are a finite amount of residency spots... which are funded by a finite amount of money.
 
kittycat007 said:
Many schools have close to 70% students who have taken gap years. Does this trend reflect something about our society, and why are so many students premeds?
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Citation?

I think more people take gap years because applications are becoming more and more competitive every year, and people want the best chance possible to get accepted.

There are a lot of premeds, sure, but you are also on a website full of them, and probably take classes that are pre-medicine track. I think the college population of premeds is actually pretty low. There were 730,000 MD applicants in 2014, and a quick google search yields a projected 21,000,000 students enrolled in college as of fall 2014. So essentially, 3.4% of all college students will apply to medical school. Add some on for DO, probably somewhere around 4-4.5%. Not too many.
 
kittycat007 said:
Is it true that once you get into medicine, you basically will never have free time again? Many doctors / residents have mixed opinion on this. Also, are doctors severely underpaid, like will I be able to buy a small house, drive a car, and pay off my bills if I become a doctor? (I am thinking some specialty in internal medicine).

I simply don't understand why we can't just increase amount of doctors we have, and as a result, reduce all doctor's workload so they will stress less. We can probably even speed up appointment process and provide better care.
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Beca
kittycat007 said:
Is it true that once you get into medicine, you basically will never have free time again? Many doctors / residents have mixed opinion on this. Also, are doctors severely underpaid, like will I be able to buy a small house, drive a car, and pay off my bills if I become a doctor? (I am thinking some specialty in internal medicine).

I simply don't understand why we can't just increase amount of doctors we have, and as a result, reduce all doctor's workload so they will stress less. We can probably even speed up appointment process and provide better care.
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Because 1 million mediocre doctors will never be able to provide the level of care the 900 thousand or so doctors today can. We probably do need more doctors but if any and everyone became one they would have even more of a workload
 
kittycat007 said:
Is it true that once you get into medicine, you basically will never have free time again? Many doctors / residents have mixed opinion on this. Also, are doctors severely underpaid, like will I be able to buy a small house, drive a car, and pay off my bills if I become a doctor? (I am thinking some specialty in internal medicine).

I simply don't understand why we can't just increase amount of doctors we have, and as a result, reduce all doctor's workload so they will stress less. We can probably even speed up appointment process and provide better care.
Click to expand...

:corny:
 
kittycat007 said:
I am not saying we should let everyone become doctors, but there are lots and lots of bright, intelligent, hardworking students that can be excellent doctors if they receive the necessary training. Rather than investing in them, the whole system is turning them away. This is bad for hopeful premeds, our society, and patients overall.
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dude that's what the whole medical school process is tho 🙄 they are turned away because experienced professionals do not believe that even with proper training would they be capable of handling lives one day. Medical schools believe they can train you but you need to come with the right set of basics. You being bright or smart has nothing to do with it if you are not the type of "bright and smart" required for the medical field
 
Yea it's the bottleneck effect on residency spots that trickling down to the med schools. There's only but so much money to train new physicians in theses residency spots; It's the rate determing step, if you will.

But to more directly answer your question, it really is due to the fact that med schools want more seasoned individuals who have lived life outside of the microcosm of college as @Doctor Strange stated above.
 
Most people I know are taking gap years because of the MCAT. They are either shooting for a better score or took it too late to apply. I'm almost certain these people would prefer to start one year earlier.
 
Hospitalized said:
Citation?

I think more people take gap years because applications are becoming more and more competitive every year, and people want the best chance possible to get accepted.

There are a lot of premeds, sure, but you are also on a website full of them, and probably take classes that are pre-medicine track. I think the college population of premeds is actually pretty low. There were 730,000 MD applicants in 2014, and a quick google search yields a projected 21,000,000 students enrolled in college as of fall 2014. So essentially, 3.4% of all college students will apply to medical school. Add some on for DO, probably somewhere around 4-4.5%. Not too many.
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There were not 730k MD applicants in 2014. The total number of applications was about 730 thousand. Last I checked, most people apply to more than one school.
 
mimelim said:
There were not 730k MD applicants in 2014. The total number of applications was about 730 thousand. Last I checked, most people apply to more than one school.
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Good point. So the number is even smaller. 😉
 
Wow, things are getting much more competitive on the MD side of things. I can't wait to see the stats for this coming year, it might drop below a 40% acceptance rate, looking at the trends.
 
Mad Jack said:
Wow, things are getting much more competitive on the MD side of things. I can't wait to see the stats for this coming year, it might drop below a 40% acceptance rate, looking at the trends.
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People wanna get in before they have to take the new MCAT.
 
kittycat007 said:
Is it true that once you get into medicine, you basically will never have free time again? Many doctors / residents have mixed opinion on this. Also, are doctors severely underpaid, like will I be able to buy a small house, drive a car, and pay off my bills if I become a doctor? (I am thinking some specialty in internal medicine).

I simply don't understand why we can't just increase amount of doctors we have, and as a result, reduce all doctor's workload so they will stress less. We can probably even speed up appointment process and provide better care.
Click to expand...

Oh, increase the amount of doctors? Just increase the amount? Why don’t we strap on our doc helmets and squeeze down into a doc cannon and fire off into doc land, where docs grow on little dockies?
 
kittycat007 said:
I know the gap year is beneficial for many, many students before they enter medical school, but the numbers are SO high right now! Many schools have close to 70% students who have taken gap years. Does this trend reflect something about our society, and why are so many students premeds? And yet, at the same time, we have a shortage of physicians in many areas...
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I just thought a year of being young and free is better than just jumping into the next 4-year intense phase of my life.

Also I wanted life experience. In my experience, I was planning on teaching for a year, and teaching is hard, and life is gritty, and having come from a relatively comfortable background (lower middle class parents), I wanted to know what it felt like to have to provide for myself and do everything on my own. Essentially, I wanted to take some ownership.

This all changed when I got awarded a Fulbright, and now my plans are so radically changing that I can hardly keep up with it all. I still plan on a gap year, it might even be two.

People say, well that's fine and dandy but you're giving up on TWO ENTIRE YEARS OF PAY. Well, I don't really care. Even with loans, if I am working as a physician and making the same amount of money as a teacher, I'd be just fine. So, losing out on that pay comes secondary to me having some life experience and taking risks so that I might not regret not taking every opportunity that was handed to me.
 
ConfusedFulbrightScholar said:
I just thought a year of being young and free is better than just jumping into the next 4-year intense phase of my life.

Also I wanted life experience. In my experience, I was planning on teaching for a year, and teaching is hard, and life is gritty, and having come from a relatively comfortable background (lower middle class parents), I wanted to know what it felt like to have to provide for myself and do everything on my own. Essentially, I wanted to take some ownership.

This all changed when I got awarded a Fulbright, and now my plans are so radically changing that I can hardly keep up with it all. I still plan on a gap year, it might even be two.

People say, well that's fine and dandy but you're giving up on TWO ENTIRE YEARS OF PAY. Well, I don't really care. Even with loans, if I am working as a physician and making the same amount of money as a teacher, I'd be just fine. So, losing out on that pay comes secondary to me having some life experience and taking risks so that I might not regret not taking every opportunity that was handed to me.
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😱😱 congrats on the award! Which country will you be in? I plan on applying for a research grant in china in the near future.
 
It's the same thing that is causing most business students as well as students in other fields to have diminished chances at getting hired out of school without work or internship experience. Jobs are getting more competitive and people are adapting to make themselves stand out.
 
I think the most important factor is the applicants credentials. Someone's not going to apply if they don't have a competitive score and just was money. They'll take the gap year to study for the mcat or even to improve their gpas or Ecs.
 
If I take a gap year, it will be to improve my MCAT score and to make the money for the application process. I am on scholarship at school and also have loans. Paying for this process will take all the money that I will make from my summer job as well as my family taking precious money from a retirement plan. Working for one year would make a lot of sense, but I am still intending to apply this cycle as an incoming senior.
This process favors those with the money to apply early, and it favors those with money to have interesting experiences during gap years. People like me will have to get real jobs during gap years to pay student loans and then fit in volunteering, etc on weekends.
 
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Currently on a gap year because I didn't get in last cycle. Having said that, I am very glad I took it as I was able to learn more about myself, my goals, and fine tune my application for an acceptance. When I looked back at the stuff I wrote for last cycle, I was appalled at how immature I sounded. I've been working retail for almost 8 months and it's definitely opened my eyes and given me the experience I needed. I highly recommend this route to anyone who feels the need to take a break or get real world experience.
 
Yeah, just because everyone wants to be a doctor doesn't mean we should open the flood gates and let everyone become a doctor... It is not a terribly hard concept to understand.
 
Mad Jack said:
Same. Man, there were even 18,000 DO applicants last year for 6,192 seats, it's getting crazy.
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I wouldn't be incredibly concerned over this number. At my UG I've seen people with 2.5 GPA's and 20 MCAT's fill out application for DO schools. There seems to be an erroneous rumor that DO admissions are SO lax, which is not the case.

Most of the people applying are severely under qualified.
 
ConfusedFulbrightScholar said:
I wouldn't be incredibly concerned over this number. At my UG I've seen people with 2.5 GPA's and 20 MCAT's fill out application for DO schools. There seems to be an erroneous rumor that DO admissions are SO lax, which is not the case.

Most of the people applying are severely under qualified.
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I'm not concerned. I think it's great. The more applicants the better. There were over 11,000 applicants with 3.2 or higher sGPA and a 25+ MCAT, so that is a deep enough pool to glean some quality matriculants.
 
Mad Jack said:
I'm not concerned. I think it's great. The more applicants the better. There were over 11,000 applicants with 3.2 or higher sGPA and a 25+ MCAT, so that is a deep enough pool to glean some quality matriculants.
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For DO Admissions? Really? Honestly, I am surprised. That seems like a pretty qualified applicant to me.
 
ConfusedFulbrightScholar said:
For DO Admissions? Really? Honestly, I am surprised. That seems like a pretty qualified applicant to me.
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Things are so competitive nowadays that anything sub-30 gives you an uphill battle on the MD side. Most DO schools have average MCAT scores in the 27-29 range nowadays, with GPAs around 3.4-3.5. Those were numbers that would get you an MD admit 20 years ago, but now just aren't competitive, so there's a lot of great students getting shunted down the DO path. I'm really hoping that applications and average stats continue to increase, further narrowing the MD/DO matriculant gap.
 
Mad Jack said:
Things are so competitive nowadays that anything sub-30 gives you an uphill battle on the MD side. Most DO schools have average MCAT scores in the 27-29 range nowadays, with GPAs around 3.4-3.5. Those were numbers that would get you an MD admit 20 years ago, but now just aren't competitive, so there's a lot of great students getting shunted down the DO path. I'm really hoping that applications and average stats continue to increase, further narrowing the MD/DO matriculant gap.
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You'd said 11000 applicants with a 25+ and 3.2+ applied for DO only, right? Or am I misunderstanding that?

Because those stats are not competitive for any MD school. More like 3.6+ and 30+
 
ConfusedFulbrightScholar said:
You'd said 11000 applicants with a 25+ and 3.2+ applied for DO only, right? Or am I misunderstanding that?

Because those stats are not competitive for any MD school. More like 3.6+ and 30+
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We don't know which ones apply DO only, nor what their average score spread is, since they don't poll who only applies DO versus those who apply DO and MD. Yeah, that's not competitive for MD nowadays, obviously. There were over 3,500 30+ MCAT and 6,126 3.6+ cGPA applicants. Unfortunately, the score breakdown in their statistics has very broad categories, so it makes it difficult to ascertain how many were on the low side versus the high side of the 25-29 range and the 3.2-3.59 cGPA category. They could be mostly 3.5s or mostly 3.3s, there's no way to know. What we do know is the average matriculant numbers are MCAT 27.21 with an average sGPA of 3.39, non-science GPA of 3.6, and overall cGPA of 3.51. The average MD matriculant has an MCAT of 31.4, a sGPA of 3.63, non-science GPA of 3.71, and overall cGPA of 3.69. So the difference in today's DO applicants versus MD applicants is 0.24 sGPA, 0.11 non-science GPA, 0.18 cGPA, and 4.19 points on the MCAT.

But what is interesting is the trends. I'm betting that, with the way things are, eventually you're going to start seeing much higher qualified applicants in both schools. Sure, DOs won't have as high of scores as MDs, but they likely have higher entering scores than many of their MD attendings had when they matriculated. Look at the average MD applicant in 2003- Average MCAT 29.6, sGPA 3.55, non-science GPA 3.7, cGPA 3.62, a difference of only 2.39 MCAT points, 0.16 sGPA, 0.1 non-science GPA, and 0.11 cGPA. I'm looking for historical papers on it, but I would bet money that today's DOs have higher score than the MDs of some point in the 90s. What are the ramifications of that? Well, if the chair of your department had the same entering numbers as the current crop of DOs, it means they're at least decently qualified students.

Another thing to keep in mind is that average matriculating DO numbers have continued increasing despite the massive increase in DO schools. If we had 14 less schools, we'd probably be seeing much higher numbers, but, due to the increase in seat supply, our numbers haven't risen as sharply as they easily could have. We've damn near tripled our number of graduates in less than 20 years, without suffering any drop in matriculant stats. That's damn impressive.
 
Mad Jack said:
We don't know which ones apply DO only, nor what their average score spread is, since they don't poll who only applies DO versus those who apply DO and MD. Yeah, that's not competitive for MD nowadays, obviously. There were over 3,500 30+ MCAT and 6,126 3.6+ cGPA applicants. Unfortunately, the score breakdown in their statistics has very broad categories, so it makes it difficult to ascertain how many were on the low side versus the high side of the 25-29 range and the 3.2-3.59 cGPA category. They could be mostly 3.5s or mostly 3.3s, there's no way to know. What we do know is the average matriculant numbers are MCAT 27.21 with an average sGPA of 3.39, non-science GPA of 3.6, and overall cGPA of 3.51. The average MD matriculant has an MCAT of 31.4, a sGPA of 3.63, non-science GPA of 3.71, and overall cGPA of 3.69. So the difference in today's DO applicants versus MD applicants is 0.24 sGPA, 0.11 non-science GPA, 0.18 cGPA, and 4.19 points on the MCAT.

But what is interesting is the trends. I'm betting that, with the way things are, eventually you're going to start seeing much higher qualified applicants in both schools. Sure, DOs won't have as high of scores as MDs, but they likely have higher entering scores than many of their MD attendings had when they matriculated. Look at the average MD applicant in 2003- Average MCAT 29.6, sGPA 3.55, non-science GPA 3.7, cGPA 3.62, a difference of only 2.39 MCAT points, 0.16 sGPA, 0.1 non-science GPA, and 0.11 cGPA. I'm looking for historical papers on it, but I would bet money that today's DOs have higher score than the MDs of some point in the 90s. What are the ramifications of that? Well, if the chair of your department had the same entering numbers as the current crop of DOs, it means they're at least decently qualified students.

Another thing to keep in mind is that average matriculating DO numbers have continued increasing despite the massive increase in DO schools. If we had 14 less schools, we'd probably be seeing much higher numbers, but, due to the increase in seat supply, our numbers haven't risen as sharply as they easily could have. We've damn near tripled our number of graduates in less than 20 years, without suffering any drop in matriculant stats. That's damn impressive.
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Do you mind providing the link where you got the info that 11,000 applied with a 3.25 sGPA ect.

Is that an official AAMC Poll? 11,000 qualified applicants for something hovering around 22,000 seats seems off.
 
ConfusedFulbrightScholar said:
Do you mind providing the link where you got the info that 11,000 applied with a 3.25 sGPA ect.

Is that an official AAMC Poll? 11,000 qualified applicants for something hovering around 22,000 seats seems off.
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That 11,000 was for DOs, not MDs.

DO applicant and matriculant data is here: http://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/2014_Mat.pdf?sfvrsn=12
MD applicant and matriculant data is here: https://www.aamc.org/download/321494/data/factstable17.pdf
 
I can speak for myself and a few friends. I took a gap year because I didn't finish my pre-med requirements in undergrad (I knew I wanted to do medicine but I put the pre-med track on hold so that I could focus on sports).
I have a friend who took a gap year because she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life for a while; living with mom got irritating and she realized that working dead-end jobs wasn't going to be enough for her.
I have another friend who is planning on taking a gap year, just because she thinks it will give her more time to prepare for medical school (including applications, etc).
I have a third friend who took a gap year because he did not get accepted the first year he applied.

Generally speaking... Pre-med is hard. Applying to medical school is hard (and expensive). Medical school itself sounds hard (and really expensive). Everything that's involved in commiting to medicine makes it easy for a person to reconsider, hesitate, or self-doubt.
 
I think it's crazy that people think a 25 and a 3.2 is doctor worthy. How the heck do these people do in class, even if it's at a DO school?
 
ridethecliche said:
I think it's crazy that people think a 25 and a 3.2 is doctor worthy. How the heck do these people do in class, even if it's at a DO school?
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I think it was Goro who said he noticed the students who struggled were the ones who had an MCAT below 24.

In the pre-DO thread you will see every once in a while someone who had 3.2/25 and then went on to do exceptionally well on Step 1 (240+)

I was shocked to see SLC had a GPA ~2.7 but got a 230+ on Step 1.

I have seen a person with 3.6+/30 MCAT struggle while a guy with 3.4/25 worked his butt off to get to the top 25%.

15 years ago my state MD school gave an interview to anyone who was a state resident and had an MCAT above 23. A few years later it changed to ~27 and now that policy is gone.

I used to believe that anyone below 3.6/28 just wasn't smart enough for medicine. Now, I believe that numbers don't tell the whole story.
 
cthorburn said:
The application costs are crazy. Its even worse for vet school, where the primary app costs $100 per school applied to, instead of $36 per school. It blew my mind when my girlfriend had to spend over a thousand dollars just for the primary app

And that's without considering the secondary app or the cost to travel to interviews :/
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I never understood how someone could convince their sane mind to go to vet school considering the ROI (they make <100k/yr and vet school isn't cheap either).
 
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