Help with gap year decisions?

[whateverman1]

Hey everyone! I am a third year premed student who, as a result of COVID, only has 1.5 yrs of a resume with the rest of my undergraduate experience spent in quarantine. I am also a URM with cGPA: 3.95 and sGPA: 4.0. I will be graduating with a bachelor's degree in Biological Studies after 3 years of undergraduate studies in May 2021. Normally, I believe I would have gotten my ECs during UG and applied in the upcoming cycle, but now that seems to be impossible. At the very least, I will have one forced gap year because of graduating early. I plan to attempt to sign up for the MCAT in April. Unfortunately, I have NO clinical or non-clinical volunteering experience because of COVID. As a result of not having a substantial amount of exposure to medicine, I cannot even be 100 percent confident in saying that medical school is for me. You can imagine that there is a lot of uncertainty in my future plans. I am currently trying to pursue a 1-2 yr grad fellowship as a clinical researcher, as an option for my gap year(s).

My questions are: Should I be looking at a clinical research position for my gap year or should I focus on getting a position as a scribe, patient care technician, EMT, Etc? Should I take a second gap year after my first forced gap year and wait until the 2022-2023 cycle to apply? What work/volunteer options are best for someone in my position?

Thank you so much for reading, if you did.

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[Moko]

Hey everyone! I am a third year premed student who, as a result of COVID, only has 1.5 yrs of a resume with the rest of my undergraduate experience spent in quarantine. I am also a URM with cGPA: 3.95 and sGPA: 4.0. I will be graduating with a bachelor's degree in Biological Studies after 3 years of undergraduate studies in May 2021. Normally, I believe I would have got my ECs during my stroll through undergrad and applied in the upcoming cycle, but now that seems to be impossible. At the very least, I will have one forced gap year because of graduating early. I plan to attempt to sign up for the MCAT in April. Unfortunately, I have NO clinical or non-clinical volunteering experience because of COVID. As a result of not having a substantial amount of exposure to medicine, I cannot even be 100 percent confident in saying that medical school is for me. You can imagine that there is a lot of uncertainty in my future plans. I am currently trying to pursue a 1-2 yr grad fellowship as a clinical researcher, as an option for my gap year(s).

My questions are: Should I be looking at a clinical research position for my gap year or should I focus on getting a position as a scribe, patient care technician, EMT, Etc? Should I take a second gap year after my first forced gap year and wait until the 2022-2023 cycle to apply? What work/volunteer options are best for someone in my position?

Unfortunately, many students are in your situation right now. My advice would be to find a clinical job where you can also build connections with physicians that can lead to shadowing opportunities once the pandemic dies down. Everything you listed, including pursuing a clinical research fellowship, are viable options. Alternatively, if there is another non-medical career that piques your interest, now might be a good time to explore it. You can pursue clinical volunteering and shadowing once things open up again, hopefully in the latter half of 2021.. Regardless of which path you choose, find non-clinical volunteering opportunities now, whether it be volunteering at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen, for a crisis hotline, or with kids from low-income districts (e.g Big Brothers, Big Sisters), etc. This will allow you to make the most of an otherwise dismal situation. Best of luck.

 

[whateverman1]

Unfortunately, many students are in your situation right now. My advice would be to find a clinical job where you can also build connections with physicians that can lead to shadowing opportunities once the pandemic dies down. Everything you listed, including pursuing a clinical research fellowship, are viable options. Alternatively, if there is another non-medical career that piques your interest, now might be a good time to explore it. You can pursue clinical volunteering and shadowing once things open up again, hopefully in the latter half of 2021.. Regardless of which path you choose, find non-clinical volunteering opportunities now, whether it be volunteering at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen, for a crisis hotline, or with kids from low-income districts (e.g Big Brothers, Big Sisters), etc. This will allow you to make the most of an otherwise dismal situation. Best of luck.

Thank you for responding! I think I'm a little concerned that a clinical research experience won't give me "clinical experience" for my application while other options would. And it seems that research would be less important for a good application (esp because I am potentially aiming for MD and not MD/PhD). Are these correct thoughts?

 

[FindingPeaceinDecision]

If you want health care experiences, I recommend a clinical position, where you are interacting with patients and/or health care professionals directly, Scribe, Medical Assistant, etc. This is the best experience that you can get to see if you really want to be a doc.

I agree with Moko in that there are lots of ways to gain experiences that schools want to see, including volunteer work, that is needed during the pandemic. Look for online opportunities, virtual tutoring (heck, there are virtual scribing jobs), working at a food bank sorting food, environmental clean up groups, etc. There are lots of opportunities if you look for them. But I would definitely recommend finding something and get going on it now. Waiting is just going to set you further behind. Finding a place in the storm of this pandemic will indeed help to set you apart from your counterparts.

All the best!

 

[Moko]

Thank you for responding! I think I'm a little concerned that a clinical research experience won't give me "clinical experience" for my application while other options would. And it seems that research would be less important for a good application (esp because I am potentially aiming for MD and not MD/PhD). Are these correct thoughts?

You are correct that you will still need face-to-face clinical experience if you pursue the clinical research fellowship. With clinical research, you will at most be dealing with research subjects and not patients per se (and at worst, dealing only with charts, numbers and statistics). Because of this, you will still need to supplement this research gig with clinical volunteering once the current pandemic is controlled. And since physicians are often involved in these clinical research projects, it will also provide the opportunity to network for shadowing down the road.

If your goal is to get into a research-heavy school, then having meaningful research experience is important (and almost expected) even for MD applicants. This fellowship will hopefully provide this research experience, and with some luck, presentations and/or publications. Candidates without meaningful research experience will only be admitted to these research-heavy schools if they have major accomplishments in the other aspects of their application (e.g in clinical experience, non-clinical volunteering, etc).

Importantly, I am not saying that you should pick the research fellowship over the other clinical roles; rather, each of these positions has its pros and cons, and only you can decide how to best proceed.