What I wish I knew before going to the SMP

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GraciousMind

SMP was definitely the hardest year of my life but ultimately it was all worth it. I look back with a lot of gratitude for what I learned despite a lot of ups and downs. I encourage anyone having a difficult time to keep their head up. Find a good group of people and support each other as best as possible.
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Sorry to hear this but thanks for sharing. Hope it works out for you
 
As someone who is on Faculty for a SMP, I feel the obligation to chime in.

By it's nature, an SMP is a not a risk-free proposition. You HAVE to do well to redeem any deficits from undergrad. Really well, like > 3.7 GPA. Doing well is on you.

SMPs do NOT guarantee admission to med school, except for those programs with guaranteed linkage, providing you maintain a certain GPA and/or MCAT score. They are auditions for med school, nothing more.

Just because the OP didn't get into Gtown, it doesn't mean that s/he can't get into other med schools.

If one does poorly n a SMP, this is a wakeup call that it's time to get on with your life and do something else. And a better an $80K debt than > $200K+, which is what you'd be looking at if you flunk out of med school after ~2 years.

This statement says a lot. This has everything to do with the OP, and nothing with the SMP. I firmly believe that Medicine is a calling. Not knowing the OP's background, I'd surmise that s/he didn't get enough patient contact experience before deciding upon the SMP.

"Though I learned a lot and got a feel for what it is like to be a first year, I have to admit that it just was not worth it in the end, even if I were to eventually get into med school."
 
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I feel for the OP. He's right to a certain degree.

This is what I think future applicants need to know.

Many of the students that enter the SMP have grades in undergrad at about a 3.3 to 3.4 range and alot have 31's to 34's even a 36 on the MCAT. This would have given them a good chance of going right into a DO program after under-grad.

You can put in your very tough, long year at Georgetown, "kill it" and get a 3.8 or even over a 3.9 and NOT get into GT or any other MD program. Its hard to get in that same cycle when you are in the SMP due to fall grades but even after a second cycle you STILL may NOT get into any MD school. That's a fact. I know many who haven't. This is a tough process.

Basically they say it could be a 2 year process well it could go into a 3 year process and you may never get that MD and may just have to go DO, which you most likely could have right after undergrad. Its very expensive, its a risk and anyone applying should think long and hard before doing it.

With that being said I still think its a great program for many. If you come out of this program with a good GPA you will get in somewhere eventually even if its a DO program. You will still be a doctor which is really all that matters. Future SMP'ers need to realize that just killing an SMP will not get you that MD. You need to constantly work on your application. Its a chance you take and if it doesn't work out, sadly it just adds to your student loan debt. This is true. You just need to know that upon going in that its a very expensive chance your taking. I knew this and I took that chance.

I had to join SDN to share my feelings about the program after reading this thread. I feel for the OP because there are alot of SMP'ers left with no acceptance that year and even years later. I am not bashing the program by any means it opens doors for many but you also need to work at it. You just should be aware of the risk.
I wish the OP the best of luck in this cycle and in the future!
 
piii said:
No offense but you're not supposed to apply until after you've completed the first academic year. Bad decision.
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They tell you to apply and honestly a good amount get in that year.
 
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what makes me a little sick is if you're good enough for DO, why not go DO? only reason I can think is that you're not "called" to medicine in the way that I think makes sense to me

I agree with Goro medicine is a calling, but a calling to what?

if you want to obtain a medical professional degree, whether it's DO or MD, and you are not comfortable providing primary care, you could not see yourself being happy in family practice, pediatrics, psychiatry, pathology, anesthesiology, radiology, or any list of most needed / least competitive specialties, than I don't think your "calling" to either serve people in a health related fashion or your passion for medical science justifies you getting a degree

it's fine people go into neurosurgery or derm, or go to medical school and discover a love for cardiology,
but the "safest" route for all involved are candidates that just have that calling for medical service
we do need candidates with that "surgery or die" mentality to be surgeons don't get me wrong
I understand people wanting to keep their "options" open, but plenty of things take the wrong turn during med school and the people at least risk of being made miserable are the ones who could settle for doing Fam Med in Alaska

just tired of people set on the "prestige" and money and lifestyle and certain specialties... those are the ones who can't "settle" for DO
IMO, if you want to be doctor for the right reasons, which is not only a love of SERVICE (but a particular kind of service, as teachers & police officers "help" people too) but a love of health science as well, then you can be happy in a number of fields which will be great given what the match percentage realities are for MDs & DOs alike

if I hear one more person say they would love to be a doctor but they don't like science....

if you are having to go to extraordinary lengths to try to get an admission, I hope it's with an eye for primary care, in which case there is no reason not to go DO

this is where I think a genuine love of science, biology, and service will do you well
if I had not gotten into medical school, I would not have regretted a single college course I took or a single extracurricular activity I did (exception of the pre-med club... those meetings were booooooring, but I enjoyed what I got out of it with shadowing/health fairs)

OP, I'm sorry you didn't get the results you wanted with your SMP
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the money/time trade off to do anatomy on a real cadaver, or any of the rest of the educational experiences

with any gamble, you have to ask yourself how it will feel to swallow the consequences of losing your gamble
 
to me, the ideal pre-med who won't end up unhappy,
*majors in something that can help them with career love #2
*is someone open enough to other interests to *have* a career love #2
*enjoys science/math, on some level will always cherish mastering o chem
*has an innate love of excelling, meaning if you told them they were *never* going to medical school they still would have pushed for the A always (let's say they have a touch of perfectionism/competitiveness in their nature)
*has a sense of altruism/service so strong that they don't regret the hours they spent in the hospital just being helpful (even as an MD I still get *enormous* satisfaction out of bringing a patient ice chips to this very day)

I was proud of the resume I built for AMCAS and it would have served me well for my career choice number 2.

I say all of this because I think it also belong in a thread, "what I wish I knew (can I add considered?) before going to the SMP"
 
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GraciousMind said:
...like most of the students in this program, we did not get into medical school this cycle. It can be really devastating after all of the hard work you put in and demonstrating that you truly were capable of succeeding in medical school modules. But this program loves to remind you that it's actually a "2 year" program which I find to be a clever way of trying to make their acceptance rate seem more impressive than it is
...But the added burden and pressure of having to make this year count took quite a toll that not many other people could relate to. Each rejection felt like another reminder of a tragic mistake.
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OP, I had the exact same feeling nearing the end of my SMP year. Not having anything to show for it when you did everything right really sucks the life out you---even if you objectively knew that there was a sizable chance you'd have to reapply from the start.

The anxiety factor plus having to make time for endless essays and EC's made it about 20x more stressful than my actual M1 year. On your worst day as a med student, you're still a med student. On your worst day as an SMP student, you're back to square one except with a massive amount of debt and an unmarketable degree.

While having a solid SMP performance under your belt is undeniably an asset when applying to medical school, I think what the 80-90+% SMP success rate actually reflects is that 90% of people who are determined enough to tough their way through an SMP are unwilling to give up on their dream of becoming a physician. Chin up--it's not game over yet!
 
OP thanks for sharing your thoughts, I can understand where you're coming from as I have a couple of friends in the same situation as you are in.

A lot of students who do SMPs are trying to overcome a lower science GPA and to demonstrate that they can handle tough science classes they would have as a medical student. An SMP provides you with the opportunity to do so. However, students should really do their research and talk to those that have gone through SMPs to understand what they are getting themselves into before signing up for an SMP.

These programs tend to be expensive, and this is an even greater concern if you'll be paying for the majority of the costs through loans. There's also a lot of pressure with SMPs, knowing that you have to perform well in order to succeed and improve your chances of getting into medical school. As you pointed out, SMPs are also risky in the sense that you are investing all of this time, money, and energy in and still face the realistic possibility of not getting into medical school at the end of the day. SMPs are becoming more popular options nowadays, only a top percentage of students at some SMPs end up at the host medical school or accepted to medical school period. For example, the number of spots in the EVMS SMP has grown while the number of linkage spots has not really increased in recent years. In other cases, only 10-20% of SMP students actually get into the host medical school (Georgetown or BU) and a number of students don't get accepted to any medical school.

Rejection sucks and especially more so after you've invested so much into doing this SMP. However, I would say that you may have a better application now that you've completed the SMP (as opposed to your application prior to the SMP). Medical schools will account for your SMP performance in evaluating you, and if you've done well enough in the SMP, you'll have a better shot of getting interview invites than you would have if you had never done an SMP to begin with or in comparison to last year while you had just completed a small portion of the SMP. Ideally, you would apply after you complete one year of the SMP so that schools can see your SMP performance (as opposed to applying at the beginning of your SMP).

Doing an SMP can be a risky choice, but if it helps you get into medical school, then it would have been worth it in hindsight. This is particularly true for students that applied and had no acceptances prior to the SMP, and end up with an acceptance after doing the SMP.
 
Sorry to hear your woes OP. But honestly, your story is one of many reasons why i shy away from recommending SMPs to anyone and instead heavily emphasize grade replacement + DO route. Yes US MD has more advantages than US DO, but in the end, you are a US-educated and US-trained physician. That in itself is great privilege.

So i agree with @Goro and @Crayola227 . If i were in your shoes, i would not have cared about SMPs and would apply DO without regrets.

Hindsight is 20/20 i know. In your case, try to apply broadly to MD and DO and hope for the best.
 
@GraciousMind & anyone else who ends up regretting a high income decision: you will find that there are many decisions you make in life going in with high ambition, good intentions, and should have prospectively positive outcomes. Some of us make far less intelligent decisions with our lives knowing that the likelihood of a positive outcome is low and still choosing to throw the dice simply because they've somewhat felt that they've placed contingencies and mitigated the risk in their own terms.

Nothing is guaranteed in life, absolutely nothing. The downside to being from an economic disadvantage is not that you are handicapped in your mental prowess, but more often that you are punished far more for making a wrong step because you are working with less time and resources than people who come from more affluent family that is willing to support them. The upside is that you are likely still young and have decades of life on you. Whether you choose to see that as a curse or as a blessing, it means that you still have time to make changes and to plan ahead.

What I have found to never fail me is to always plan for failure. I'm not stating that you go into a passion with a back up plan. But that you prepare a back up plan in the contingency that someone goes wrong with your Plan A. It's not belittling your passion to think of a back up plan for what happens when your passion fails, but rather it's protecting yourself as a person from the brief period of shock of not having anything left in life when your passion doesn't pan out in the real world. I'd like to agree with @Goro that not all people are meant for medicine, however a far greater portion of people should have the intellectual sense to plan for a bad break up and begin to pursue the next best option given their talents, references, and connections.
 
I think what OP is describing is a very common feeling even amongst people who successfully do an SMP and get into an MD school. SMPs are grueling draining and at many times just incredibly taxing due to their workload and pressure that comes from them. The days of SMPs only being 50-60% of an MS1 workload and linkage to host institutions being 75%ish are over. After you spend a year at a U.S. MD school in an SMP studying endlessly with US MDs in an MD school curriculum you really don't want to have to hear about spplying DO. Many successful SMPers I know had this same self doubt at one point.

Having said that the solid majority of people at the best SMPs end up at US MD schools. It's around 75% at the best ones. This is what people forget and why SDN often overblows the idea of "risk" associated with an SMP. The process leading to that often isn't pretty. Many of these acceptances are from waitlist late in the year. Many have to reapply. But the solid majority do get in. And for those who don't get into US MD schools the vast majority get into DOs. Perspective and thinking long term really are key. It tends to work itself out even though it often feels like it wont. An SMP in and of itself is a test in mental stability and maintaining your composure and perspective im the face of adversity more than anything and that often isn't easy on people

You really have to tank an SMP for DO not to be a viable option: people tend to forget the number of DO schools that have average MCATs in the 25-26 range and routinely take people who even after grade replacement only have 3.2s. Let's not pretend these are better candidates than even the mediocre SMP students. If you really truly do poor enough in an SMP that DO isn't even an option then yes it often is for the best you didn't get into med school

Everything in life is a risk and nothing is guaranteed. About 10% of those who start out as DOs never make it to graduation. That's honestly perhaps less than the rate as those who start at SMPs and stay wanting to do medicine by the end of it but did poor enough so they can't. So in that sense an SMP really isn't the risk its made out as. It's just the thought of not surviving is more frequently on your mind and leads to insecurity. It's a program that that is grueling demanding and often leads to self doubt along the way. But it usually works itself out even when you don't think it will. I tend to often think the MD vs DO discussion on SDN is a bit jaded and the differences are a lot more real and limitations of DO a lot more real as well which is why I have no problem with SMPs in theory. It's just they are demanding in a way nobody can predict coming in. Thats what often leads to threads like this. But most of the time people like this make it through to med school in the end even of the path isn't always pretty
 
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I sincerely appreciate everyone's thoughts on the matter. Honestly, I did not expect many people to even notice this thread. I gained many perspectives from your posts that I would have otherwise been ignorant to. Best of luck to everyone 🙂
 
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What is your opinion on the USF SMP (non-thesis MS in Medical Sciences program) as far as strength of program is concerned? You do not take classes with med students but the program is designed to help students become competitive for professional programs.
 
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