Graduating college early?

Pre-Med & Medical School
21

Graduating early really isn’t an issue. The question is: Does she have a strong app for the upcoming cycle.

If the answer is, “it could be better” then she should delay applying.

Minimum requirements? What are the “minimum” requirements? No school publishes its minimum requirements.

If she has a good GPA and MCAT score, does she have the necessary ECs? And the EC game has been upped as more and more gap-year students apply.

The EC hours needed to get he app looked at have doubled in the past 3-5 years. 200+ hours for clinical exposure, community service with the disadvantaged are pretty much the bare minimum now. For service oriented schools, successful applicants often have into the 1000+ hours range. For research oriented schools, the same amount hours (1000+) devoted to research plus productivity (publications, posters, presentations) are expected.

I will be the first to admit that working with your undergrad advisor post graduation is can be hit-and-miss for availability and access, but I wouldn’t apply hastily just to have access to an advisor.

As for re-using materials for a second round of applications…that’s pretty much a no-no.

  1. She will need to rewrite her personal statement completely.
  2. She will need to get new, fresh LOEs (LOEs have to have a current date on them. At the very least she will need to contact all her letter-writers and have them “refresh” their letters with new dates and updated activities.)
  3. She will need to completely rewrite all her secondary essays
  4. She will need to update and change her list of activities and rewrite her MME essay
  5. She will need to rethink and update her school list

I don’t see much of anything she can reuse. In fact, one of the first things any premed advisor will tell you is that if your initial application didn’t get you any attention/sucess, you need to scrap it and start over from scratch.

Both you and your daughter should know that med schools keep old applications and they will pull them out to compare when the same applicant reapplies to see what’s changed.

Plus, your daughter will need to answer additional secondary questions as a reapplicant. “Why do you think you were rejected in your last application cycle?” and “What have you done to improve your application since last time?”

Lastly, you and your daughter need to know that many med schools will only consider a limited number of applications from the same applicant. Several schools say this explicitly on their admission pages they will only consider an applicant twice. For those that don’t say specifically, they still will pull out the app and see it’s their 2nd or 3rd or 4th round of applications–and wonder “what’s wrong with applicant?” and often pass on them because if they were worth accepting, they would have been accepted before now.

You never, ever want to apply just to see what might happen. You want to apply once with the very strongest application you can.

There are diminishing returns with each round of applications. While ~40% of first time applicants get accepted >30% of second time applicants get an acceptances and >10% of 3 time applicants get accepted

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22

My daughter is in a hard place :sweat_smile:

She has a 4.0 GPA for both cGPA and sGPA. She also scored 524 MCAT on the 1st attempt. In term of ECs, she has a decent research hours (500 hrs), enough dr. shadowing hours but bare minimum clinical and non-clinical. My thinking is she will get a few secondary invites and a couple interviews, and she will need to conveys adcoms and/or why she is a great fit for their schools. That will be some thing she needs to prepare when it comes.

The hard question is: should she apply or not? I think she should, but apply broadly.

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23

Thank you very much for your great advices. I was worry about graduating early, but I guess that is non-factor.

24

Limiting applications is seldom a winning strategy. If she’s going to apply regardless, she needs to go all out and apply broadly.

She’s got great stats but I don’t see her profile as being particularly attractive to either research oriented schools or service oriented schools. She should apply to her in state public school. ( And UMD is a really tough admit due to the high level of competition instate. MD actually is worse for applicants than CA—and that’s saying something.)

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25

Thank you for great suggestion. She will apply to our instate, private, and OOS friendly public schools (about 25 to 30).

26

IMO: If she interviewed with basic science faculty, they will ask why she didn’t do more clinical. However, if she interviews with a clinician, they won’t care, they be more interested in her research.

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27

There’s no reason to guess. She should ask the advisor what the policy is at her school. At some schools the services of the career center are available to recent grads, at some the day you graduate you’re done with them unless you pay for access.

With zoom and email it’s relatively easy these days to work remotely with someone.

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28

Secondaries at most schools get sent out automatically once the school has been notified a student has applied. They get sent out even before the school has received the application.

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29

And to add to Mikemac’s fine post- a kid cannot be shy in asking the advising team “based on the recent grads you’ve worked with over the last few years- is my graduating early a problem, neutral, an advantage? And what’s the best use of a gap semester or year? And what does a successful “second go round” application strategy look like?”

Daughter of a friend just got in to several med schools on the third go round. They are all thrilled of course. But as her mom explains “she almost ran out of schools”, i.e. not a single school was a repeat. Entirely new list, application, recommendations, strategy. But third time’s a charm-- this one was a focus on community medicine/public health type programs (not prestigious, high on the food chain research oriented programs) which is consistent with the work experience of the last few years.

So was it overreach the first two times? Probably just reflects the applicant pool- increasingly older, more robust experience working with actual patients, more maturity in the essays. Plus ramping downwards-- “top tier” programs were non-existent on the list by the third go-round. But the kid WILL become an MD, even though the training will be 1500 miles away from the initial desired location!!!

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30

Also, applying “broadly” may mean she should add a few carefully selected DO schools to her application list if she wants to have the best chance for a cycle with a positive outcome.

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31

Thank you for great advice. However, she only applies to MD this cycle:state school, a few reach, several mid tiers and several “stat loving” schools.

32

How about significant volunteering with an underprivileged population? Does she have that? This is something most medical schools want to see in their applicants.

Re: secondaries…she will get requests for secondaries from just about everywhere she applies. They really don’t mean anything in terms of your chance to be invited for an interview or be accepted.

I guess cost doesnt matter to you either. It can cost a couple thousand dollars to apply to medical school.

Really, applicants should apply when they think they are totally ready to do so.

Her stats are strong, but getting accepted to medical school takes a lot more than strong stats. Those will help her make the stats first cut, but they won’t get her in the door, necessarily.

Does your daughter have MA certification?

@WayOutWestMom posted above a few times. Please read those posts again.

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33

All medical schools and DO schools should be considered reaches.

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34

Another statistic that is important…

Acceptance rate for 3.85+ and MCAT >517 is only 82.9%.

IOW per AMCAS almost 20% of those with GPA> 3.85 and MCAT> 517 fail to get accepted anywhere.

SO…having a 4.0 GPA and a great MCAT score doesn’t guarantee admission to any medical school. Applicants need the whole package! Not just great stats.

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35

Students who have taken 1, 2 or even 3 gaps are not considered “non-traditional” any longer. Gap years are the norm, not the exception.

You seem to believe that your daughter will only be compared against students who are applying directly from undergrad–and that just isn’t the case.

I don’t think you understand exactly what is meant by a non-traditional students. A non-traditional student is someone whose educational history is not HS–>college w/ full time attendance. It’s someone whose educational pathway was interrupted for military service or child-rearing. It’s someone who entered college at an older age, or who was only able to attend college part-time over the course of numerous years due to other obligations that required them to work in order to afford their education. It’s someone who has finished college and had a career that was unrelated to medicine. It’s someone who has earned an advanced degree (like a PhD) before applying to medical school. It’s someone had a low GPA in college, or who had dropped out, and needed to do significant transcript repair to demonstrate they have matured and have found their direction in life.

Your daughter is a traditional med school applicants and so is almost everyone else, even if they have taken 1- 4 gap years after graduation.

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36

You have already gotten great advice but I would add: Has she taken all “recommended” courses for the med schools she will apply to? Examples include genetics, cell biology, statistics, computer science. To maximize chances, she needs all “recommended” courses. If she has, then use the semester to build up clinical hours or other parts of her resume. Apply very broadly. She has the stats to be successful but it is not a certainty and she should apply to as many as possible and spend a lot of time getting her application in top shape.

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37

Physician here. I don’t think I would advise her to apply this upcoming cycle. Unfortunately it has become extremely competitive and I really think her age and lack of experience will hold her back. Many applicants are not getting in until their second or third try AFTER they have their Bachelor’s plus a lot of clinical experience and volunteer experience. She has excellent grades and MCATs but they are going to be looking for that “wow” factor in order to be called for interviews. Grades and test scores just will not cut it anymore. As others mentioned, she can become a scribe or consider doing a paid research, something that will make her stand out. In the grand scheme of things considering you do not start your real job until 29 or 30, one extra year will not make a difference. It is really hard when I see qualified kids spend thousands on the applications and not get any interviews. My two cents are that she needs more experience and one extra year to improve her chances. Good luck!

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38

Thank you all for great advices. First off, I have to disagree with @thumper1 with the following:

All medical schools have their own missions and they are looking for applicants, who are “fit” for their programs. Using msar data, students can find out about “mission fit” and all the requirements, including median GPA, MCAT score. Using that info, I don’t think all medical schools and DO are reaches for her, except for a few “brand name” schools , service focused schools, or low yield schools. I don’t understand the reason of blindly applying to DO schools unless that what she wants to choose or her stats are not that great.

There is no such things as guarantee unless students were admitted to BS/MD or early assurance programs. Statistically, sitting at 82.9% have greater chances for admission vs 4.3% ( < 486 MCAT) or 60.9% (all applicants). Data is here: https://www.aamc.org/media/6091/download?attachment

I do appreciate the great suggestions from everyone here, but I still believe the process is holistic with several factors required for admissions. It’s not just stats or ECs. To be able to get accept, adcoms will look at everything from stats, ECs, LoRs, PS, interview skill, and most importantly why the applicants choose medicine path and will he or she be able to handle it. My main concern is her age of being a bit younger, but I will encourage to apply. She has worked hard to be competitive and will continue to work on improving on her application before she applies.

By the way, I didn’t want to do “what are my chances.” Just want an input on her age and concern about finish college earlier.

39

Many students work hard to be competitive… and they are. I think your daughter still has some work to do to reach the level that others have achieved by taking gap years.

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40

Maybe this is a little more to answer your question, when I was a medical student everyone went directly from undergrad to medical school. I was a little younger than the average student since I finished college in three years but i have an early bday so I was 21 when i started. The older students definitely were accepted but there was a difference. I would wonder if the opposite would happen now. Since most students have been out in the world at least a few years and have more experiences, she may be a little socially out of place.

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