Graduating college early?

DadTwoGirls
Wed, 20 Mar 2024 17:53:24 +0000

twogirls:

Your daughter is young and there is no rush. A gap year or 2 can only help…

This is exactly my view also.

Like OP’s daughter, I also graduated university at age 20. 20 is quite young to be graduating university. It is also quite young to be figuring out what we want to do next.

Let’s suppose that she graduates in December at age 20. She can work in the medical field (apparently she is already some form of medical assistant) for 8 months and it will be August. 8 months of full time work comes to something like 1,300 hours of work. This will help her applications quite a bit. Then starting in August (which as I understand it would be about 17 months from now) she can send in her applications, to start a bit more than a year later. This still is relatively young to start medical school, and there is no reason to rush. Life is not a race.

I suppose that we never know why we were or were not accepted to any given graduate program. We can give our best guess. My daughter who is currently studying for a DVM and I both think that her academics and test scores were good enough to get her application seriously considered, but it was her relevant experience and the resulting references that got her accepted to multiple programs (with one rejection). One issue is that there will be lots of applicants with strong academics and strong test scores. Experience and the references that come along with the experience is very important.

The one thing that I am not clear on are the consequences (if any) of applying and not getting in anywhere. If a student applies and does not get any acceptances, they can work and gain more experience. When they apply again a year later, it is not clear to me whether their previous applications and rejections will matter.