Please explain what you mean here? I would argue almost the opposite. It is extremely difficult to enter med school right after college bc you would essentially be taking multiple science classes along with your majors/undergrads required courses, while trying to take the mcat and prepareing your application. Lets not forget continueing your EC's while at it.
The system is set up to help non-trads. Post-back can almost rewrite your undergrad gpa and masters can add your resume while enchancing some aspect of your "gpa".
In addition, the low gpa high mcat trend is also more likely to come from a non-trad, who despite having a lower gpa in undergrad, could kill the mcat and add to his or her CV extraordinary EC's/previous jobs.
If you are pointing out that non-trads must continue their work/family life while trying to get into med school, yes that's also difficult. I could see how time becomes a huge factor here. I would say it's much less stressful however.
I've actually done both routes. I don't want to give away too much information that might identify myself, however, so I'll unfortunately have to refrain from being too specific on my personal experience.
Going to classes while studying for the MCAT is no different than working a full-time (40-60 hours/week) job while studying for the MCAT. The main difference is that as an undergrad you can work your schedule to accommodate dedicating an entire summer to MCAT study. While that's not possible for every student, it is more common than not. It's extremely difficult to take more than a couple of weeks off from a career-type job in order to study. Of course the material will also be fresh in a traditional student's mind from undergrad courses. MCAT study wasn't really what I was referencing, however. A non-trad in my opinion should have to perform at the same level as a traditional student on the MCAT before attending medical school... or otherwise he/she is obviously not ready.
The bias against non-trad students comes from what is emphasized on applications. It's all very undergrad-student specific. For example: volunteering activities, extracurriculars, GPA, research, academic letters of recommendation. Imagine yourself for a minute working as an attending physician, and going for a job interview at another hospital. Could you ever imagine someone asking you about your extracurricular activities in college? Or even your undergraduate GPA? That how it feels to a non-trad. How about I instead tell you about all of the amazing things that I've done at work?
Admissions committees do want to hear about your work experience, but they shoehorn it into a system that gives equal weight to less-relevant (undergrad-focused) experiences. While a non-medical career may provide excellent quantitative data of exactly how good you are in comparison to peers, and you may have many awards and achievements to show for it (in addition to references), it's still only one category on your application. You don't get a GPA from professional work, even if you learn far more academic knowledge in the workforce than in academia.
You cited examples of post-bacc's and masters programs. Any traditional applicant can do those as well. In my mind, that kind of just makes you "traditional" again, in a way. The bias that I mentioned was more against people coming from the workforce.
You also cited GPA's. It's important to keep in mind that people that know that they're about to apply to medical school will generally take better care of their GPA's. Given that new grades are averaged in with old grades, it's not something that you can go back and change after you decide to apply to medical school later on. They're not even a good indicator of what you know, since average GPA's vary dramatically by school and major. It's a very suboptimal way to do things, although I understand that medical schools are simply trying to make the best decisions with the data that they have.
Anyway, I don't want to get into some long debate over this. I just wanted to post my observations as someone who has seen the issue from both sides. I hope this post was helpful in some way.
