Only if robots learn how to catch babies.
Or AI can determine who’s lying and faking to get narcotics. And some of those drugs seekers are pretty damned convincing…
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Looks like they’re still struggling with shoveling snow, so not sure about that baby catching ability quite yet.
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Neither of my kids (nor any of the 30+ current and past med students I know) used an application service.
None of them had pay-to-play clinical positions either. Although one student I know did do a medical experience trip to Mexico sponsored by her university which her family paid for. (Student got college credit for the experience so the family paid for the credits as well as their travel expenses. Trip turned out to be quite valuable in multiple ways. Student improved their Spanish language skills, got some hands on experience with patients, and met their future spouse who was an attending physician who worked with the program.)
Both Ds did a MCAT prep class, but both also hours and hours doing review on their own.
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I think some families who can afford those services are panicking and paying for them. Likely the same families are the one who pay for college application services to help get their kid into “elite” schools.
The trouble with most of the services is that the application often get over massaged and over managed so the student’s authentic voice doesn’t come through and the application “reads” as disingenuous or incredibly bland.
Also some of advising service give just plain bad advice. There’s one paid You Tube advisor who tells med school applicants how to write the PS. So tons of students have used his approach. The style is quite distinctive. Adcomm say they can spot one his advisees just by reading their first paragraph of their PS–and they hate it. Both the style he recommends and the fact his clients paid to get their application “improved”.
As for paying to get placed in a clinical position----I think a lot of med school admission officers are pretty savvy about those. Just like college adcomms now recognize that 17 year olds creating self-sustaining non-profits really isn’t happening.
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But it’s also hard to ignore that some applicants do get a boost, especially more traditional applicants who use the paid advising strategically. My daughter prepared her application entirely on her own and even refused our help reviewing her personal statement or secondaries, which honestly made us question that decision at times. She had a solid application, so it does make us wonder whether extra guidance might have helped her get accepted a cycle earlier. At the same time, I agree that over-managed applications can lose authenticity, and that’s a real risk with paid services.
Sample of one here…paid for an MCAT prep course after undergrad. Shadowed for two plus years with a doctor…night shift. Worked EMS in a paid position (let’s just say, it was good she was living for free at home). Zero assistance preparing medical school applications, secondaries, etc. No pay to play anything except one trip abroad with her university with Student Medical Corps or something like that…to assist with medical things in a third world country.
@ttb1263 you have no way to know why your student didn’t get accepted the first time they applied. It happens to lots of folks.
The thing that should concern every student considering a career in medicine is the cost of medical school…federally funded student loans are now limited to $200,000 and that won’t fund most OOS or private MD or DO schools.
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In my opinion, medicine can feel like a career for the rich, since the path into medicine often favors people with financial security. Many students are able to rely on their parents to cover the $400,000+ cost of medical school.
Or will take the federally funded $200,000 limit on student loans…and then private loans cosigned by someone.
My opinion…it’s never been easy to fund medical school for students with less financial resources. Many may have student loans. Many.
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This is true for many other careers, not just medicine.
Finance. IB. IR. Law. Consulting. Banking. Politics/government. Certain business fields–just to name a few.
Plus medical students have historically come from families in the very tippy top income brackets – that has been the case since forever. Or at least going back to the 1940s when records about that kind of information started being kept. In 1970, more than 75% of med students came from families in the top 10% income bracket. And that’s AFTER federal student loan program became available to help pay the cost of a medical education. The push to expand the socio-economic diversity in medicine really didn’t get started until the mid 2010s.
Today there are still tons of structural barriers to low and middle income students who want to go to med school.
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I think part of what’s happening is that there is a misperception of what’s high income and what’s middle and low incomes in the US. In the US if the total household pre-tax income Is $155K/year or higher, that family is in the top 25% of all earners in the country and is considered high income.
$155K/year may not feel like a high income given the cost of housing, healthcare, taxes, childcare, college tuition…but it is.
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^^This
Unless your student got specific and detailed feedback from Every. Single. Medical school. she applied to, you have zero idea of why she got rejected her first round.
It could have been dozens of different things. It could have been a different reason at each school.
Medical schools are not all alike in their mission, their culture or what qualities its adcomms are seeking in students.
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Veterans MAY have some help with the GI Bill. It can pay for college OR medical school based on in-state tuition rates
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My grandfather was a physician. Immigrant to the US, grew up in poverty, entire extended family pooled their resources to get him to university and then medical school. He said that being Jewish was a much bigger barrier to his training than being poor– the “ethnic” med students and residents were tracked to the big public hospitals (in the 1920’s the private hospitals were where anyone with money ended up) and gaining a training slot for surgery was close to impossible.
So the immigrants treated other immigrants– and slowly became “middle class” (nobody got rich working at one of the public hospitals, even in the higher end specialties). But being middle class and having a secure job meant you were MUCH better off once the Depression hit.
Medicine was an honorable profession for the sons of the elite. And the notion that it was lucrative was foreign “back in the day”. Anyone who was working in a hospital (public or private) during the Spanish flu epidemic understood that you were serving humanity– at great personal risk.
According to my grandfather, the “being a doctor means making money” ethos didn’t hit until the late 1950’s. And being a physician who had grown up poor was always an outlier situation. My grandmother told stories of the patients who couldn’t pay during the 1930’s and 1940’s leaving pies or a tray of cookies outside the door as a thank you.
During my childhood I knew doctors who had served in WW2, either stateside or overseas. It wasn’t lucrative then, I imagine it’s not lucrative now. But it was HIGHLY honorable, and these men (they were all men) were really at the top of the totem pole in terms of community respect, admiration, etc. The guy who took out my tonsils- the first thing the nurses would say when they walked into your room “You were so lucky to have Dr. B as your surgeon, you know he landed in Normandy and worked with no sleep for three days”.
Just perspective.
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If I recall correctly (?), your daughter graduated early?
As I mentioned in another of your threads about how to pay for med school, there are options. Though, perhaps, they are not palatable to your daughter.
HPSP–this pays for your medical education PLUS it provides a very comfortable monthly living expense stipend for med students. However, it requires the scholarship recipient to serve as physician in military service for a period of time. (Exactly length of the service requirement will vary depending on host of variables, but assume 6 or more years of payback enlistment.) Specialties allowed depends upon the needs of the particular branch of the military one has enlisted in.
VA HPSP–this pays for most of one’s medical education. PLUS it offer a monthly living expense stipend. There are no restriction on choice of specialty, but the scholarship recipient agrees to work whatever post the VA assigns them to for 8 years post residency.
NHSC–this pays for medical school up to $40K/year (Student is still eligible to take out federal student loans on top of the scholarship). Scholarship recipients also get a comfortable monthly living expense stipend. Specialties choice limited to a primary care field–though in the past psychiatry and emergency medicine have been considered primary care. Payback is 1.5 years of full time service per year of scholarship awarded. Must work at a clinic in federally designated medically underserved area. Payback can be done at less than full time.
State sponsored scholarship for medically underserved areas. Terms will vary depending on the state, but generally full tuition at the in-state public med school is covered plus some sort of living expense stipend. Usually limited to primary care fields, though some states include psychiatry, surgery, anesthesia in their list of allowed specialties.
MLARP in Maryland provides low cost loans and loan forgiveness to MD residents who are studying medicine and agree to practice in areas of Maryland that are medically underserved. Specialties limited to: Family Medicine, Ob/GYN, IM, Geriatrics, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine, and Women’s Health. Other specialties may be eligible if an area of high level provider shortage is identified.
Indian Health Service – scholarship that covers an in-state level tuition rate plus a monthly living expense stipend. Specialty options limited to primary healthcare or other designated high need specialties. Payback is 2 years of service at an IHS clinic for every year of scholarship received.
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You are correct. She graduated a semester early, which helped her gain several hundred additional hours of clinical experience by working full-time as a medical assistant, as well as more non-clinical volunteer experience.
Will she be starting medical school this summer/fall?
Did she do those hours after or before her med school application? If it was after, that wouldn’t have helped, at all.
Yes, she will start medical school this coming fall.
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She completed a few hundred hours prior to submitting her application this cycle.
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Taking some time to strengthen her application was beneficial.
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Yes, she was able to work full time, volunteer more, take a break from studying, and most importantly, have better results this cycle. She just turned 22, so the paid employment was a great chance for her to grow.
This cycle…and she got accepted.
Maybe that is what was missing the first time around.
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