Gap Year Recommendations

[HopefulHero]

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Hello all,

I am a senior studying Biology with a concentration in Human Biology and I will be graduating this May. My current plan is to take a gap year to gain more clinical experience and study to take the MCAT before applying to med schools (allopathic and osteopathic) next year. My GPA is currently around a 3.4 and I've maintained several leadership positions, jobs, and extra curricular activities while in college.

I wanted to know what advice any of you had for a gap year before applying to medical school. What have some of you done to be as competitive as possible for applications?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance!

 

[QuantumFlame]

Hi Hopeful. In general, people take a couple different strategies for gap years. One is to look at a deficiency in your application, and use the gap year to strengthen that area. Options include formal post-bac programs if GPA is an issue, or a research year (NIH postbac for instance) if that is an area of interest and/or weakness. Others use the time to explore an interest tangential but perhaps related to medicine such as service (AmeriCorps, CityYear and TFA come to mind) or consulting/business (pharma, working for an EMR company like Epic etc.).

Ultimately, I took 2 research gap years and have loved it. Hope that was helpful

 

[deleted577188]

Whatever you do, make sure it raises your GPA.

(P.S. I'm just another pre-med.)