Take one gap year?

[ditritium monoxide]

Hey everyone. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think its starting to come to light how important pedigree is not just for med school but for residency programs as well. As a second-year pre-med in undergrad (please hear me out), I would post this in pre-allo, but from what I've noticed, this forum believes that academic pedigree makes a huge impact on residency matching, and this idea seems to differ from what pre-allo believes to be true. Given the firsthand experience you all actually have with residency matching, I'm thinking that you all are probably correct and that they perhaps find out too late about this.

Let's just say I'm at a top 75 school (ranking is not necessarily between 60-75), and I've done very well in my classes (4.0 gpa thus far), organizations I'm a part of, and having a social life. I could plan to take one gap year, and this would do quite a bit for my application: increase my chances of being on 1 or more publications from my research lab, let me perhaps scribe during my gap year to acquire more meaningful clinical experience than just shadowing, and give me the chance to carry out certain initiatives in my job and student organizations and be able to show that I did these things. Or, I could just apply junior year and have less for my application.

It's not that I'm interested in a "top 5" program or academic medicine necessarily, its more that I would just like to do what I can to have more options for specializing or even sub-specializing down the road. There may be some residences that I would prefer a little bit less than others.

I'm not sure how early it is to think about this, but I don't want to risk thinking about it too late either. Any honest insight you have would be invaluable. Thank you.

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[WedgeDawg]

This still has to be posted in pre-allo because you are a premed. Don't worry - plenty of medical students and physicians frequent pre-allo and will comment.

To answer your question, pedigree matters more for where you're matching and less for what specialty you're matching into. It's very possible to match into neurosurgery from any USMD school, but it's very very hard to match into neurosurgery at MGH or Hopkins coming from a random non-"prestigious" or feeder school. At the same time, you won't be locked into primary care by going to a primary care-oriented school.

 

[Glandzburg]

Residency programs place far more weight on your accomplishments during medical school than what you did before medical school. Taking a gap year for the purpose of boosting your residency application does not seem like a wise thing to do.

 

[ditritium monoxide]

Residency programs place far more weight on your accomplishments during medical school than what you did before medical school. Taking a gap year for the purpose of boosting your residency application does not seem like a wise thing to do.

I meant taking one for the sake of boosting my med school application, which, by virtue of an increased amount of acquired pedigree, would boost my residency application.

 

[Glandzburg]

I meant taking one for the sake of boosting my med school application, which, by virtue of an increased amount of acquired pedigree, would boost my residency application.

Got it, misunderstood your post.

In that case, doing research and getting clinical experience during a gap year could indeed make your medical school application more competitive.

 

[ditritium monoxide]

Great! Does anyone else have any thoughts? I'm surprised there's not much response here.

 

[dinotso]

I wouldn't take a gap year *just* to get in to a top med school so you can get into a top residency. That really is putting the cart before the horse... Even at a top school you'll need good grades, high step 1, research, LOR to match into a competitive specialty.

Are there other reasons you'd want to take a gap year? Do you enjoy research or scribing? Would you be happy doing that for a year? Do you think you'd enjoy having some time to just work a job and have a regular schedule and time to see friends / do hobbies before med school? If you'd actually enjoy a gap year or feel it would be personally enriching (outside of enriching your app), then by all means do it!