SMP questions

[combatwombat]

The more I think about it, the more it's looking like I will be doing one of these in the next year or two. I still have 2 questions though I was hoping someone could help me out with:

1) If you get into a special master's program, but don't still don't get into a medical school afterwards, are you left with a useless degree and a ~30K bill?

2) How much work are these programs (relative to the typical undergrad pre-med workload)? I get the impression they are among the most competitive academic programs you can enroll in.

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[DrMidlife]

Best advice I got: "if there's a career other than medicine where you think you'd be happy, for goodness' sake do the other thing." Pay attention to whether you're willing to do ANYTHING to get into med school or not, because if you don't REALLY want to go, then don't.

1) If you get into a special master's program, but don't still don't get into a medical school afterwards, are you left with a useless degree and a ~30K bill?

Yes, this isn't a degree that opens too many career options up to you, and it's more like $50k. If you can use the fear of wasting your money to stay motivated, that's always useful.

The alternative is to stay in undergrad until your GPA is where you want it, which is equally pointless (from a career-making standpoint) and at least as expensive.

2) How much work are these programs (relative to the typical undergrad pre-med workload)? I get the impression they are among the most competitive academic programs you can enroll in.

The average premed carries a full load of, what, 15 hours, where maybe 10 hours is science. The average med student carries a 25-30 hour load that's ALL science. The SMPs such as Boston, Georgetown, Cincinnati etc. are about a 20-25 hour load - they do the med school curriculum minus clinical stuff. Of the 30+ that I found in January (listed here), only about 6 are "true" SMPs where you're taking the same coursework as medical students. The rest are programs geared towards improving your credentials under a variety of coursework loads.

And yep, they're competitive. You'll always find kids who drop out or are more than happy to waste their parents' money, but the rest of the class is made up of folks with something to prove.

Best of luck to you.

 

[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

I'd had a few adcomms mention the benefits of SMPs to me as a reapplicant; personally I feel it is inappropriate for an adcomm to "require" something like this, or even to refer to it in a way that indicates that to be competitive, one must complete this type of program. Specific examples provided to me by the adcomms were SMPs where one would take 1st year med school classes, alongside med students, and obtain a class rank; to be considered favorably by the med school, one would have to hit the 80th-90th percentile in that class or classes.

This in my opinion is over the top for two reasons. One, it seems repetitive and costly to anticipate taking 1st year med classes twice, just to prove one can do them. Why not recommend that applicants take 1st and 2nd year classes and pass the step 1 exam prior to being admitted to med school? Then there would be no question that one would succeed. Two, the cost burden on the student (even 30K seems steep to me, + relo costs, + opportunity cost of not working). My concern is that some schools seem to feel that given the number of applicants, they have substantial freedom to recommend application enhancements similar to this, and some students will acquiesce.

My suggestion (and what I did and am doing) is to enroll in undergrad courses at an inexpensive, 4 yr accredited local school. A number of states offer very inexpensive alternatives; to me it seems more realistic to enroll in similar number of science courses as an SMP would offer provided this would boost one's GPA or prepare one better to take or retake the MCAT.