Post-Bacc, SMP, or Another Degree: What's the Best Choice?

If you’re a non-traditional student who has been out of school for a while, or you are looking to bring up a low undergraduate GPA, then you’ll need to explore all your options for becoming the most competitive applicant possible. There are many options available to prove to schools that you will be able to handle the heavily course load that comes with medical school. The following will be a discussion of some of these options, so that you can best decide what will work best for your situation.

Post-Baccalaureate Coursework

A popular choice among many non-traditional students is to take undergraduate courses as a non-degree seeking student. This is commonly referred to as a post-bacc. Most medical schools will count these courses as part of the overall undergraduate GPA, so this could be a good way to boost your GPA. This method is also particularly useful if you were a non-science major during college, because it can be used to take all the required science pre-requisites in addition to increasing your science GPA. The science GPA is weighed most heavily by medical schools, so if you do decide to go the route of taking post-bacc coursework, make sure that it mostly consists of science coursework. Also, if you a non-traditional student who already has an undergraduate degree in the basic sciences, pursuing a post-bacc will only be beneficial if you take upper-level advanced science courses.

For some students, pursuing a post-bacc might not be as beneficial. If you already have an undergraduate degree with over 130 hours, taking more classes may do very little to increase your overall GPA. Also, as a non-degree seeking student, you will not be eligible for any federal financial aid, so you will have to either pay out-of-pocket or take out private student loans. When the high interest-rates associated with private loans and course fees are taken into account, this can prove to be a very costly path. (Note: There are now some post-bacc programs that offer federal financial aid, so make sure you ask the school you plan on attending about this.)

Special Masters Programs

Another great option for proving that you can handle the heavy course load of medical school is a special masters program (SMP). These programs typically last between 1-2 years, and they generally cover advanced science coursework. A few SMPs are linked to medical schools, and as a student you will be taking the same classes as first-year medical students. Some of these programs also take place at medical schools, and allow you to take the courses right alongside current medical students. This is an excellent way to prove that you can handle medical school, and if you are interested in attending the medical school of the program you attend, then it is also a great way to network and get to know the professors. Furthermore, these programs are also covered by federal financial aid.

The only downside with SMPs (and pretty much any program) is that if you do not do well it can greatly diminish your chances of gaining an acceptance into medical school. SMPs are also a popular choice among many pre-medical students looking to increase their GPAs, so acceptance into some of the programs could be very competitive. Also, while there are many SMPs throughout the United States, there may not be one in your area. This may mean that you will have to relocate to pursue the program, and this may not be feasible for some non-traditional students.

A Second Bachelors Degree

Some students decide to getting a second degree is a better option for them. A second bachelors degree is probably most beneficial to students who previously obtained a non-science degree and previously did not perform as well. In this case, a second bachelors degree would not only give them a science GPA to work with, but it would also work to increase their non-science GPA as well.

Unfortunately, pursuing a second bachelor’s degree can prove to be very costly out of all the options due to the fact that you will essentially be paying for another four years of school. If you’re a non-traditional student who has been out of school for more than a decade, this might not seem like a bad choice, but this commitment does not come with a guaranteed acceptance into medical school and it will take longer to complete than all of the other options listed here. If you have been in the workforce for a while, and you’re looking to get an advance in your career as a plan B option, another bachelors degree just might not be useful as most companies require a masters degree or higher in order to climb up the ladder.

A Masters Degree (or higher)

Obtaining a graduate degree is another viable choice for making yourself a competitive applicant, but unfortunately it is not a common path for pre-medical students. Obtaining a masters degree was the path I chose to take in order to boost my competitiveness as an applicant, and it is what I credit to my acceptance into medical school. Typically it only takes 1-2 years to complete these programs, and a thesis-based program is not required if your only goal is to go onto medical school.

Some non-traditional students are career-changers, so they might already have a graduate degree when they decide to apply to medical school. If the degree is recent, then it may help boost your chances of gaining an acceptance, but in some cases you may still have to have current coursework that will prove your ability to medical schools. Also, if medical school is your main goal, then you will have to seek out programs that do not require the added time of completing a thesis. For non-traditional students who have more advanced graduate degrees, such as a PhD, there are medical schools with pathway programs specifically for non-traditional students of this type, so please do your homework.

So What’s the Best Choice?

Whenever somebody asks me this question, my response is almost always “whatever works best for you.” You have to decide how much money and time you want to invest in pursuing an alternate path, and it will also be important to take into account your current lifestyle. Ultimately, the decision rests on you, but I hope this post will help you make the most informative decision. 

Paying for Medical School (Loans, Loans, and More Loans!!!!)

GA-PCOM 2014-2015 Cost of Attendance Breakdown

Attending medical school is expensive! Sure there are public medical schools where the tuition can range from $10-20K per year, but if you’re not lucky enough to get an acceptance or be a resident of the states where these schools are located, you’ll be embarking on a very expensive journey. Most medical schools have tuition in the range of $25-50K, but there are quite a few that have tuition considerably way higher than this. When I was applying last cycle, I encountered a school where the tuition alone was over $80,000! So if you are reading this and planning on applying to medical school, please be aware of the financial commitment that you will be making.

One of the most common questions I get asked when people find out that I will be attending medical school is how I am going to pay for it. My response: loans, loans, and more loans! I do not come from a family that can afford to help pay for my medical education, and as a single parent, I have the added expense of caring for a young child. I also do not plan on working while I am in medical school, because working throughout my undergraduate years took away from time that I could have been focusing on my education. This is literally my last shot to achieve my dreams, and I do not want anything to get in the way of it. If I feel that I can manage school and work down the road, then things might change, but for the first year of school, I’ll be all in.

So to answer the question of paying for medical school, I have taken out subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans, along with GradPlus loans to cover the rest. All of my loans are federal loans, and I strongly encourage everyone to avoid private loans at all costs! (I took out a few as an undergraduate, but I’ll save that rant for another post.) I have also applied for a few scholarships, but I won’t know the outcome until later on.

As you can see from the above picture, most schools factor in a “cost of living” that will allow you to take out loans for room and board, supplies, transportation, etc. Basically, once my loans have taken care of tuition and school costs, I will receive a refund each term that will be used to cover my living expenses. This means I will have to carefully budget each term for around three months at a time, but for me, the amount is doable. If you are a fellow non-traditional student with a large family, you will have to take into account what your living expenses will be, and contact the school to see if they can increase your cost of living.

In a nutshell, if you really want to become a physician, do not be discouraged by the price. Federal loans are readily available, and if you’re willing to write a few essays, there are scholarships as well. Thinking about repaying loans can be overwhelming, but there are also a ton of programs that can help you pay down your loans when you graduate and even some that offer loan forgiveness. Also, everyone who I have spoken with has assured me that paying off medical school loans is possible within ten years, but it may require frugal living for a while. If you’re like me, then medical school will probably be the biggest investment that you ever make in life, so I hope this post helped make the decision a little bit easier. 

Pre-Meds: Turn Up! It’s Time to Apply to Medical School!

The lack of posts last week can be attributed to taking the time to respond to the flood of e-mails in my inbox. Medical school applications can officially be submitted June 3^rd of this week, and it seems as if everyone is freaking out accordingly.

My main advice is to stand back, take a breath, and relax! I have been in your shoes, and I know how stressful it is applying to medical school. While applications can be submitted this week, they won’t be transmitted to individual schools until the end of the month. In other words, there is absolutely no need to rush to get everything submitted on the very first day. Don’t be afraid to take a few days to look over your application and tweak it in any way you need to.

If there is any part of the process that you need a bit of advice about, don’t be afraid to contact me. I do answer every e-mail, and I try to as quickly as possible. I will also be putting together some posts in the next few days to further clarify a few things that I get asked about often. This week will probably be the best time to contact me, so if you have any questions, shoot me an e-mail or comment below.

Good luck!!!!

Choosing a Medical School: Apply Broadly!

I cannot stress this enough when it comes to medical school applications: APPLY BROADLY! The entire process is an extreme crapshoot and there really is no such thing as a safety school. You may think you have a great chance at one school only to end up being rejected pre-secondary. The same can apply to schools that you think are a reach. When I applied last cycle, I did not think I had even the slightest chance at GA-PCOM even though my heart was set on it. I had previously been rejected from the school and various forum boards said they did not take any MCAT section with a score of less than an 8. Obviously that is not the case, although it may be more of a general guideline than a set rule. There were also a few schools that I received secondary applications to that heavily screen the primary applications. I’m pretty sure my graduate school GPA was taken highly into consideration even though it was not explicitly mentioned on their websites. I even received e-mails from some of these schools stating that they were interested in receiving my MCAT scores after a retake to help with their decisions. The fact that I could not pull my score up was definitely a factor in my rejections.

The point of this post is not to discourage anyone, but to make sure you don’t make some of the same mistakes I did in my first two application cycles. A new application cycle is opening, and I want everyone to have the best possible chance of getting an acceptance. Applying to medical school is an expensive process, and having to re-apply because you did not choose the right schools the first time can be even more expensive. It is super important to utilize the AACOM CIB and AAMC MSAR books to pick the right schools for you. In a previous post, I wrote about how I selected some of my schools, so feel free to check it out if you need a little guidance. Also, if there is that one school that you feel you don’t have the slightest chance at but your heart is set on it, apply anyway. I can say from experience that it just might result in some great news. Best wishes to everyone applying to medical school this summer!  

Don’t Wait on Success; Make it Happen!

I was going through my old e-mails earlier today and came across this gem that was sent to me a few months ago. For those of you who don’t know me, I am a HUGE procrastinator! I have so many ideas and a list of things that I want to do in all areas of life, but I always find a way to put them off. For me, it has always been easier to say that I will have better luck with something if I wait until a better time, but in reality, now is the best time to do anything. Tomorrow is not promised for anyone and I really do want to live my life with no regrets.

So what does this have to do with medical school? Well, as a non-traditional student, I know how easy it is to put off things like completing pre-requisites, submitting an application, or taking the MCAT. Life doesn’t stop when you apply to or enter medical school, so it’s best to just jump right in and do what needs to be done. You’ll never know if you can be successful at something if you never even begin to do it. Risk-taking is a part of the game, and the results can be pleasantly surprising.

With that being said, both the AMCAS and AACOMAS applications are now open for the entering class of 2015. If you have been putting off applying, but you think you might have a solid chance of being successful, then go for it! If you have been studying for months on end for the MCAT but you want to push the date back because you are nervous that you won’t do well, take it anyway. If you don’t feel adequately prepared to apply or take the MCAT, then register for classes, get started on those EC activities, or do whatever you need to succeed. Like the above says, success starts now, so what are you waiting for? 

School Selection

Another question that I get asked a lot involves the number of schools I applied to and how I made my choices. I really think this is dependent on your individual needs, but I don’t mind sharing how I narrowed down my school list. I’ve heard that the average applicant will apply to 10-15 schools. I didn’t consider myself to be an average applicant in the process, so I applied to 26 schools (included MD and DO). When selecting schools, I considered the following factors:

- GPA/MCAT: I looked at the average stats of accepted applicants for all the schools I was interested in. For MD schools, the MSAR is a valuable source for this because it lists all this information and more so every school. It’s not free, but if you are planning on applying to any MD school then you absolutely need it. It lists both the top and bottom tenth percentile of GPAs and MCAT scores accepted by each school, along with other very important information. The link to it can be found HERE (NOTE: Only order the online version. The hardcopy version that they now have will not help you). For DO schools, I used the CIB which can be found as a pdf file for free on the AACOM website (see THIS LINK ). It doesn’t list the individual accepted GPA and MCAT stats for each school, but it will tell you the minimum GPA needed to obtain a secondary. This helped me avoid applying to schools that would automatically screen me out.

- Graduate degrees: I also looked at the percentage of matriculants that held a graduate degree. I figured schools with a higher percentage of students with advanced degrees probably considered those grades more heavily than undergraduate grades. This was just a guess on my part and might not be entirely accurate.

- Race/Ethnicity data: This was entirely just a personal thing, but I avoided applying to some schools that had listed the percentage of black applicants as being zero or less than one percent. I really don’t mind being the only black person in a class, but having absolutely no black matriculants felt somewhat odd to me.

- Location: I know beggars can’t be choosers, but I just couldn’t see myself living out in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no support system or places where I could take my daughter for bonding time. Also, if I was going to be without a close support system, I wanted to at least be in a place with readily accessible babysitters in case of emergencies.

- Cost: One school I looked at had the tuition listed at 80,000 a year. Add housing and other costs to that and it really adds up. I still applied, but had I got accepted, it would have been something to really consider.

- Mission Statements: I know this is probably not the most important, but the mission statement of a school will usually tell you if you are a good candidate or not. For example, if a school says that it is committed to training students who will be physicians in a particular area then it might have a regional bias.

- Regional Bias: Look closely at the schools' mission statements and in matriculant data for this. Some schools only accept in-state residents. There is no sense in spending your money applying if this doesn’t pertain to you. For example, I know one of my state schools only takes Louisiana residents and for the other your parents need to be graduates or you have to have some really strong ties to the state.

I think that is pretty much everything I used to narrow down my schools, but if I can think of anything else I’ll make sure to add it to this post in the future.  

AOA & ACGME Merger

I’m not sure how many of you have been following the negotiations between the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), but yesterday brought some really good news. In a nutshell, there will now be one accreditation system for both MD’s and DO’s. What this means is that DO’s can now enter MD residencies with greater ease, and MD’s will now be given the opportunity to enter into DO residencies. The main benefit as of right now will be that DO’s will now have greater access to MD fellowships. There were negotiations for a merger around this time last year, but I believe they fell through due to a few disagreements on both sides. The main points (taken from the AOA website) are as follows:

Under the agreement:

·         From July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2020, AOA-accredited training programs will transition to ACGME recognition and accreditation. 

·         There will continue to be osteopathic-focused training programs under the ACGME accreditation system. Two osteopathic review committees will be developed to evaluate and set standards for the osteopathic aspects of training programs seeking osteopathic recognition.

·         DOs and MDs would have access to all training programs. There will be prerequisite competencies and a recommended program of training for MD graduates who apply for entry into osteopathic-focused programs. 

·         AOA and AACOM will become ACGME member organizations, and each will have representation on ACGME’s board of directors.

There is still a lot that I do not understand about the merger, but I am hoping that it will eventually lead to one unified Match. As of right now, current DO students have the option to apply for both MD and DO residencies, but if they match into an osteopathic residency (which is done one month earlier than the allopathic one), they are automatically dropped from the allopathic Match. This is important to me because a number of DO residencies tend to be in northern and rural areas, and I will most likely want to stay in the south. If there is no unified match, then I may have to take a gamble and skip out on the osteopathic match. Having a unified match would mean that I would have more options available to me, and I could apply to more programs. This has not been addressed yet, but hopefully it will be soon.  

I still have more research to do on the subject, but for now I am happy with the merger. I feel that it puts both DOs and MDs on a level playing field, and the merger will hopefully bring more awareness to osteopathic medicine. Like I previously mentioned, DO’s have already been able to enter into allopathic residencies, but this merger may make it possible for them to enter into certain programs that were previously biased against them. I am sure that I will update you all with more information as I begin to understand it, but for now, the following links should be really helpful:

AOA and ACGME Agreement

FAQs Regarding the Merger