Early assurance program – worth it?

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Dr panda

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Hello everyone. My undergrad provides students with an opportunity to reserve a seat at a local medical school (MD) while being in undergrad, they basically require to maintain at least 3.4 GPA to be considered for admission to the program (not the med school), and at least 3.3 cGPA and 500 MCAT to claim your seat after you were accepted to the program. It's not BS/MD, you can be any major as long as you complete prerequisites. This sounds as a great deal: school is in 10 minutes driving from my home, has good match list and very reasonable tuition (since it is in state). My current cGPA is 3.9+ and sGPA is 4.0, and I am thinking about applying to that program since I perfectly fit their mission – working with underserved communities, and I have been volunteering with such organization, and can easily pull strong LOR from them, and speak passionate about this (I plan to apply mostly Rush/Tulane class schools anyway since that is what I want to do), if it was my AMCAS app it would be very raw but already competitive, but for EAP I think I should be very solid given my clinical, volunteer, and work experiences paired with leadership (and my SDN like/post ratio (jk)); I initially planned to apply after senior year to improve the app and better prepare for the MCAT, but they require to take the MCAT during the summer preceding the admission year (if you start med school in 2020, you must take the test in summer 2019), my GPA is nearly perfect and I believe I can pull that 500 MCAT after studying for the whole summer after completing the prerequisites. My question is – does anyone know more about such programs, how hard to get in, what are the catches/drawbacks? Is there any hidden catch that make people avoid these programs like a plague?
Regards

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Hello everyone. My undergrad provides students with an opportunity to reserve a seat at a local medical school (MD) while being in undergrad, they basically require to maintain at least 3.4 GPA to be considered for admission to the program (not the med school), and at least 3.3 cGPA and 500 MCAT to claim your seat after you were accepted to the program. It's not BS/MD, you can be any major as long as you complete prerequisites. This sounds as a great deal: school is in 10 minutes driving from my home, has good match list and very reasonable tuition (since it is in state). My current cGPA is 3.9+ and sGPA is 4.0, and I am thinking about applying to that program since I perfectly fit their mission – working with underserved communities, and I have been volunteering with such organization, and can easily pull strong LOR from them, and speak passionate about this (I plan to apply mostly Rush/Tulane class schools anyway since that is what I want to do), if it was my AMCAS app it would be very raw but already competitive, but for EAP I think I should be very solid given my clinical, volunteer, and work experiences paired with leadership (and my SDN like/post ratio (jk)); I initially planned to apply after senior year to improve the app and better prepare for the MCAT, but they require to take the MCAT during the summer preceding the admission year (if you start med school in 2020, you must take the test in summer 2019), my GPA is nearly perfect and I believe I can pull that 500 MCAT after studying for the whole summer after completing the prerequisites. My question is – does anyone know more about such programs, how hard to get in, what are the catches/drawbacks? Is there any hidden catch that make people avoid these programs like a plague?
Regards

Plenty of BS/MD programs allow you to choose your major; I’m not seeing a huge difference here other than you apply in college rather than as a high school senior. I’d think the same caveats apply to both.
 
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What caveats are there?

You'll probably be locked in to the program; eg if you apply to other schools you will forfeit the guarantee. This is less of an issue if you're dead set on going there anyway though and if you scored really high on the mcat maybe you would be willing the roll those dice anyway.
 
You'll probably be locked in to the program; eg if you apply to other schools you will forfeit the guarantee. This is less of an issue if you're dead set on going there anyway though and if you scored really high on the mcat maybe you would be willing the roll those dice anyway.
I really like the school and honestly I don’t care about rankings or whatever, it is MD program that placed fair amount of people into top programs and specialties. If I will get my acceptance I will not even apply anywhere else.
 
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Go for it; if you are accepted it sounds like it could be a good deal. You have a guaranteed acceptance to medical school with a 3.3/500. If, come application time, you turn out to be a superstar and want to roll the dice, you could give up the acceptance, apply out, and maybe have a shot at a top-20 school.
 
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