I"m confused! with postbacc programs

[AwaPremed]

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I"m confused with how these postbacc programs work. Do students that do postbacc, have a glide year between medical school and their postbacc year? OR are they assessed by the school that they are doing postbacc at for acceptance to the medical school based upon their performance? For example - if someone goes to Columbia for postbacc what does that guarantee them??????

 

[FirestarterSG]

Most programs have a glide year between when you complete the post-bacc, and when you start medical school. Others have "linkage programs" which can be formal or informal, where you can get accepted to another medical school PROVIDED you perform well in the post-bacc.

These are usually linkages with OTHER medical schools, except maybe Georgetown's SMP unofficially linking their top 20% Master's in Physio students to their own medical school. Most just do the post-bacc for other schools to take them in.

Search the post-bacc threads for more information, or ask if in doubt 🙂

 

[Phil Anthropist]

Postbac programs vary w/ respect to having a glide year or not. I'm assuming you haven't taken the prereqs.

With linkage programs you usually get to skip the glide year. There are postbac programs that will give you a guaranteed acceptance if you meet a certain gpa and MCAT (and sometimes SAT/ACT scores too).

Edit: Thunder stolen AGAIN! 😛

 

[Johnny_D]

Columbia has linkage agreements with several med schools. Thomas Jefferson is one of them. If you do well with your GPA and meet their MCAT requirements (usually a 30), you will automatically interview with them. These linkage spots are competitive, as the med schools only allocate a small number of seats.

 

[NYCmed]

There is a linkage program at Columbia, but as Johnny_D says, it's rather competitive so students in general shouldn't count on being accepted. For reference, the linkage programs there are Brown, Jefferson, MCP/Drexel, SUNY Brooklyn, SUNY Stony Brook, Temple and Trinity (in Ireland). I think there's one in Israel too, but I'm not certain. If a student doesn't link into any of those programs, they have a "glide" year like everyone else. Other postbac programs may (and probably do) vary with their mode of operation, so if you're interested in a specific program you may be better off asking them directly.

On a side note the advisors at Columbia say the "glide" year isn't necessarily bad, and can be used to get more experience under your belt either by upper-level science courses or a research position--either of which may catch the interest of med schools you're applying for.

 

[Crake]

Remember that some of the linkage programs are very specific. For example, I was interested in the Brown linkage, because I'm from RI and Brown says that they are looking for RI residents (because RI has no state med school--damn!) but my advisor told me that the linkage is strictly reserved for URMs and older non traditionals.

A link year won't be that bad, Columbia offers a lot a great research opportunities, there's plenty to keep busy. On the other hand, I think I'll probably shy away from taking upper level classes here because its so expensive and doesn't offer a masters degree. I mean, it would appear to make a hell of a lot more sense to do columbia post bacc and then do GT SMP or BU SMP, at least that's my take.

Good program all around though--CU is kinda competitive in my opinion though.