Increasingly, medical school students begin their medical school experience one or more years after graduating from college. In fact, the average age of a first-year medical student is 23 or higher at the majority of institutions. However, the decision to opt for a gap year should not be taken lightly. A gap year can serve as a significant advantage, but it also carries several potential drawbacks.
Medical
Learn about medicine and how to become a physician in our articles for pre-medical students (including the MCAT), medical students, resident physicians, and practicing physicians.
Making the Transition to Medical School
You’ve taken the MCAT exam, applied to medical school, received an acceptance (or two!), and finally decided which school you are going to attend. Now it’s time to prepare to start medical school.
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has a few tips to help make the process of transitioning to medical school a little smoother:
A Letter to Myself, Future Resident, on Dealing with Myself, Current Medical Student
Residents, don’t forget where you came from when you’re not a student anymore.
It's Not a Failure: Taking Personal Leave from Medical School
August 2, 2009 is a day that will be forever engrained in my mind. “We would like to offer you a seat into the class of 2017 if you’re interested,” was the most wonderful phrase I had ever heard in my entire life. I had made it. I got accepted into my top choice D.O. school, right in my home state! However, the changes that ensued hit me like a whirlwind. The call occurred on the first day of orientation. I had 24 hours to pack all my things, move three and a half hours away from home, find a place to live, and start class on Monday. Of course there was slight hesitation in my mind, wondering if I should take a year off because I wasn’t prepared to go that fall. I didn’t even think I would get accepted, and here my dream came true!
The Important Considerations for Starting a Career in Medicine
You’ve finally finished all those years of training and now it’s time to make a decision second only to choosing a spouse—what you will do for the rest of your life. You’re probably thinking about salary and getting rid of debt, but those are secondary issues. First of all, your employment choice should fit with your long-term vision and plan for you and your family. Second, you should fit into the culture of your future practice or organization.
Long-term plan, what long-term plan? I’ve just been trying to make it through all these years of residency. Probably so, but now it’s crucial to think down the road at least ten years. Make sure that what you do next year gets you to your desired future. What do you want to be doing in ten years? Private practice? Hospital employee? Academics? Where? Does the proposed location meet the needs of your spouse and family?
Lessons Learned on the Residency Admissions Trail
This time last year, I embarked on my own medical residency admissions journey. I realized that the decision-making process involved in the ERAS and residency application cycle can be dauntingly ambiguous to many applicants, including myself. Gone are the lists of medical schools or colleges ordered by objective measurements such as research dollars, student-faculty ratios, and admission statistics of entering classes. While there is significant debate on which criteria should be included in ranking schools, the availability of that data at least allowed for individual interpretation based on personal beliefs.
5 Steps to Preparing for Your Medical School Interviews
After obsessively checking your email every five minutes for weeks, the appearance of your first interview offer brings with it a flood of relief and excitement. All that studying, volunteering, and writing of countless secondary applications has earned you a coveted interview slot. Yet coming on the tail of such excitement is that sense of panic. What now?
Top Factors to Consider When Comparing Medical Schools
Selecting a medical school is a significant decision, as the program you attend may play a key role in determining your career path. Whether you are completing final interviews or simply starting the application process, below are several factors to consider when comparing potential medical schools.
Location
The majority of applicants have a reasonable idea of the type of setting they would like to spend four years. In general, medical schools can be in urban and suburban settings. They are rarely rural. However, realize that the area a medical school is in affects more than your personal life and cost of living. Different geographic regions will expose you to different patient populations and disease processes. If you are extremely passionate about working with certain patients (e.g., the under-served urban poor), then take location heavily into account when choosing a program.
20 Questions: Rebecca A. Lubelczyk, MD, Correctional Healthcare
Rebecca A. Lubelczyk, MD, is a utilization review advisor physician for Massachusetts Partners in Correctional Healthcare in Westborough, MA, and associate clinical professor of family and community health at University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. Lubelczyk received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Vassar College (1992), and her MD from University of Massachusetts (1996). She completed a residency in general internal medicine at Brown University School of Medicine, Rhode Island Hospital (1996-1999), followed by a residency in post graduate year 2 and 3 at the outpatient community site at Rhode Island Department of Corrections (1997-1999). Dr. Lubelczyk also completed a general medicine fellowship at Brown University School of Medicine, Rhode Island Hospital (1999-2001).
The Value of Social Media for Medical Students
Many students avoid social media because of its risks without considering the benefits it can provide when used well.
Prepped: Reflections on a Stillbirth
There are some experiences you can’t prepare for by reading a textbook.
De-Stress the Distress of Medical School: A prescription for stress reduction
“I was a little excited but mostly blorft. “Blorft” is an adjective I just made up that means ‘Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’ I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants
I believe I have spent much of medical school fairly blorft. Elevated levels of stress seem to be a universal medical student experience. Studies looking at medical students around the globe – from Pakistan and Malaysia to Greece and India – show we all struggle with elevated levels of stress1. Stress, as it is used today, was first defined in 1936 by endocrinologist Hans Selye as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”2. That definition highlights the point that not all stress is bad – a certain level can actually be useful during medical school. Knowing the importance of Step I board scores was stressful, but undoubtedly drove me to study harder than I would have had I treated it as no big deal. However, sustained, elevated levels of stress can be detrimental to both mental and physical well-being. For example, stress levels have been found to be correlated with depression and anxiety amongst medical students3. The good news is that there are steps you can take to reduce and manage your stress.
Signs of stress
20 Questions: John Hunt, MD, Pediatric Pulmonology/Allergy/Immunology
Dr. John Hunt discusses his varied career as a pediatric asthma specialist, military physician, academic, novelist, and entrepreneur, and offers some advice for students.
Ten things I learned in medical school (Other than, you know, the medical stuff)
I learned a great deal during the preclinical years of medical school, much of which served me well during my clinical training (although I never found a practical use for memorizing the Krebs cycle beyond boards exams). Clinical training was a whole new world, filled with hidden lessons that I didn’t find in any of my textbooks.
10. Late is a four-letter word. Be on time; rounds do not wait for the medical student. A lot of being a third year med student is simply being there. When I was on my surgery clerkship, New York was hit by hurricane Sandy. The next day, we were all there for morning rounds. On time.
5 Strategies to Make the Most of Your MCAT Studying Efforts
For an exam as important and comprehensive as the MCAT, it’s vital to do everything you can to prepare in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Below are five strategies to maximize the value of your MCAT studying efforts.
Practical Advice for the Medical School Applicant
As students begin to prepare for the next cycle of medical school application, I want to review some of the practical pieces of advice that every applicant should know. The actual process of applying to medical school is resource intensive: it costs thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, and will strip you of many relaxing weekends that you would have otherwise enjoyed. Since you’ve made the decision to apply, here are some things that will help you make the best of it.
Remember that your MCAT score is a number. Your GPA is a number. These two things make up a major component of your application and you can’t change either of them now. You can’t change your letters of recommendation, either. The personal statement is a modifiable aspect of your application at this point, so you want to make sure to do a good job on it. But what else is there?
The answer to this lies in the details. This is what separates a good application from an excellent application. It is also what could separate a marginal application from one that gets an interview invitation. Every year, there are a few key mistakes that really put some students at a disadvantage. When schools are looking to offer acceptances, they are not only looking for good students. In addition to being smart, they are looking for people who will one day care for patients and be their colleagues. It is no surprise that those selected to become student doctors are usually meticulous, mature, intelligent, team players, and caring. Your application needs to reflect this.
This is No Lake Wobegon: When Medical School Means You’re No Longer Above Average
“Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
– Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion
While NPR’s Garrison Keillor entertains listeners with weekly monologues highlighting news from Lake Wobegon, his fictional home town, it is that closing line “and all the children are above average” that has taken hold in the popular culture. The Lake Wobegon Effect refers to that normal human tendency to overestimate one’s abilities.
The problem is that an average is just that, an average, meaning that while some are above, there are also those below. We all want to be above average. Who shoots for the mean and makes it into medical school? The truth is, if you made it into medical school – or even if you’re somewhere earlier along the path – you have almost certainly been “above average” academically and otherwise most of your life. You were on the honor roll from the time you started receiving grades. You graduated near or at the top of your high school class, many being valedictorians. You were in your college’s honor society and graduated some version of cum laude. You were accepted to medical school.
Average just isn’t in your vocabulary.
And then medical school happens. . .
Navigating Your Future: A Roadmap to Specialty Exploration
Congratulations! You’re in medical school. What you will soon realize is that your answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is going to have to change. Simply saying “doctor” is no longer enough. You need to start to figure out what kind of doctor you want to be. And, although applying to residency may feel very far off, there are steps you can do starting in your first year to help you pick the specialty that best suits you.
Most of us have fairly limited exposure to different specialties as pre-meds; mine consisted primarily of shadowing cardiothoracic surgeons. Yet there is a huge diversity among medical specialties, some of which you may have never heard about. Physiatry, anyone? Others you know of can be quite different than what you had envisioned. A friend of mine recently shadowed an interventional radiologist and was surprised by the surgical nature of the specialty.
Letters of Recommendation for Medical School: Everything You Need to Know
Letters of recommendation can be one of the most important parts of an application. Here we answer some of the most commonly asked questions about LORs.
The Dual Path: What to consider when considering an MD-PhD
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” – Yogi Berra
I was sitting in the back of a filled auditorium listening to a presentation about the medical school application process when I heard the question that would forever change my life’s trajectory. “What about MD-PhD programs?” a woman sitting somewhere down in front asked. That was the first time I had heard of the dual degree program. Having struggled to decide on my career path, this seemed like the best of all worlds: I could get an MD and a PhD.