I know a great deal of incredibly intelligent people who would have been excellent doctors but didn't make it into medical school. 50% of all applicants do not make it into medical school and that acceptance number is even lower for older adult non-trads. That doesn't mean 50% of all applicants are stupid, not hard working, and unable to handle the rigors of medical study.
For the vast majority of nontrads who are older that I have known over the years, we all agree that it is way more difficult than it is for an 22 year old to do the traditional premedical process and application process for traditional medical schools. Please, do not get me wrong, I am not discounting the hard work you all have done to get where you are at and neither am I asking for a free ride.
Many of us drop out because we don't the support system to keep us going. Or can only afford the application process one year, instead of the require 3 attempts for those who don't get in the first time. Or we can't afford the MCATs, do not have access to student loans, nor have families that can pay for us.
This system is set up with a certain idea of who should be or not be allowed - which until recently also kept out minorities and women as well. So when I say older adults should be treated as a minority, that is why. Primarily because we are a minority in numbers and secondly because we come from a different experience that puts the majority of us at a disadvantage when we try to apply.
And when I say older, I don't mean someone who is 25 and had an History undergrad, did Peace Corp for a couple years and now wants to be a physician. What I mean as an older adult is someone who is a career changer, 30 and older. Chance are we come from lower socioeconomic status, worked hard in our respective careers, and got to a point were we wanted to follow our passions, because we quite frankly couldn't before - like for me for example - was working 3 jobs while doing my undergrad while overseas on an army base. Premed wasn't an option at my university - had it been I would have done it. A couple other friends of mine were discouraged to take science classes growing up because...they are women. Now they are in their 40's and trying their hand, just like me. So do you think it is fair to compare us and our experience and judge us as whether we are worthy or not to be medical doctors?
And I don't think being considered a minority is a mark or stigma. It just means we need to be taken into consideration separately than the way the vast majority of younger applicants. For me to say this, I don't mean to diminish the hard work 22 year biochem majors have put into their application process. I just mean to say don't discount older folks and tell us we are not smart enough because we get C's in school versus your A's.
There is quite frankly not enough slots for all the possible folks who could become amazing doctors. It is a numbers game and if you can't make yourself stick out of the pack, you don't get in. It is hard to stick out from the pack when we aren't on the same level playing field.
That is all I am sayin 😉
Regardless, it would be asking schools to drop their academic standards. Is this really what you want them to do? Think about it.
You have to do your best to stand up and rise to what is required, or decide you won't or can't. You said it yourself. There are limited seats. In any program of study where there are limited seats, it will be more difficult to gain entry. I am a RN. Guess what? There are many programs for CRNA that have limited seats. Age or nontrad isn't a deciding factor. It is academics and the whole application.
Frankly, if a person has too much trouble in the undergrad sciences, the amount and speed with which they will cover sciences in med school will completely overwhelm them. I mean you have many students that did very well in undergrad sciences that struggle in medical school. The amount of material and the speed at which they are covered can be killers.
At some point, you just have to be pragmatic here. People, whatever their backgrounds, have to show that they can do the work well and make a good application. Sorry to use and overused expression, but "It is what it is."
On top of that, if there is a concern that the person will complete medical school or be able to get acceptable scores for licensure and board certification, that person could be stuck with a huge debt for which they may not be able to easily repay without gaining entrance into the field. How is that fair to the individual or anyone else?
Already there is a good number of people that realize medicine is not the glamour and glitz or area of interest for them that they thought it would be by the time they reach medical school or residency. This is why it's important for people to shadow and get clinical exposure around physicians. There are quite a number of folks here on SDN and elsewhere that will tell you if they had it to do all over again, they would have choosen not to pursue medicine. These are folks that made the grades/application and were accepted into med school programs.
The pre-entry work should be something whereby people are tested to see where they will go in the long-term--the longhaul. It really only scratches the surface. As I said, a number of post medical grads are shell-shocked or disappointed in medicine, b/c it was not what they thought it was. Now, they feel locked into it, financially speaking. That is terribly sad to me.
So if a student is whining about meeting the minimal application requirements or in trying to improve them, along with his/her whole application--that speaks of a lack of commitment. If they tried hard, more than once, and could not improve their application, they they need to face the reality that they may not be able to do well enough in and after med school. They are board certification processes and continued education requirements, as well as work related to some type of peer-reviewed research in much of medicine today. People need to consider that they will probably have taken ib major loans, only to be unable to repay them.
A basic approach in medicine is that benefits and risks are weighed in the balance when it comes to treatment options for patients. Use the same approach in what it takes to meet successful application requirements for medical school. Do it with
benefits to risks and losses in mind. Do it with a sense of reasonable probability for you in mind. Be fair to yourself on this, for heaven's sake. It's a huge chunk of debt, work, and time--time away from loved ones and pursuit of other interests (at least to some degree)--time away from providing for yourself and others. One has to work the numbers before approaching this endeavor.
Age shouldn't be viewed as a disability for heaven's sake. That in and of itself is discriminatory in my view. People in medical sciences look at age from a demographic/statistical analysis standpoint; but in a great many cases of people requiring treatment, age should not, necessarily,be a major factor. I have recovered patients out of open heart surgery that were into their 70's and 80's that faired quite well post-operatively in recovery. OTOH, I have had a number of other patients in their 40's or so with serious comorbidities that did not fair as well post-operatively. What I have witnessed was based on comordities as factor more than age as a factor alone. (Although, in general, as one ages, one stands a better chance of having more comorbidities as factors.) My point is that individuals that were otherwise in good health, regardless of age and with the exception of a questionable heart valve or needing a bypass graph, often enough flew post-operatively. So you have to look at the whole picture of the individual.
In the same way, adcoms have to look at the whole picture with regard to its applicants, regardless of age.
Those that are under represented are a different matter, in that they are coming from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. Sadly, when those students don't do well enough in med school programs, the schools and the society eats the loss financially speaking. The potential for such losses is already calculated in. Now you expect schools and society to calculate losses based on simply being a non-traditional student or age? How is that right or fair? I'm non-trad. I say leave my age out of it entirely. In closed conference, they may or they may not. But it is my whole application and work that I want them to review and consider. To me, everything else is nonsense. Frankly, anything else is insulting to me.
