Medical School

Article by Andrew Kim

One of the newer trends in medical school education in the US are combined undergraduate/medical school programs or guaranteed-pre-professionals programs available to high school students. Basically, when high school students are applying to colleges during their senior year, those who know that they would like to pursue a career in the field of medicine can choose to apply to one of these combined/guaranteed programs. What these programs offer, is a guaranteed seat/position in their respective medical school. So, your student, if accepted, is not only accepted into that college/university, but also accepted into the medical school at the same time!

So what’s the catch? Well, the details vary from program to program, but these are the basic principles same for all of them. These combined programs expect your student to maintain a certain GPA throughout their undergraduate years, take required pre-requisite classes before starting medical school, and finish all required undergraduate hours for their major. For any competitive medical school applicant, you would have done ALL of the above anyways on your journey to applying for medical school!

Some of the programs have some larger differences, certain school may ask you to take the MCAT and attain a minimum score to make sure the student was not slacking off during their undergraduate years,some may ask your student to participate in research, etc. These vary from program to program and can not be discussed here.

Thus, the advantages of the combined programs are… OBVIOUSLY, you have been granted a seat in the medical school, you may not have to take the MCATS (or just score a minimal required score), you can bypass the stress of applying to medical school/interviewing/etc., can enjoy your free time more during your undergraduate years. Also, many of these programs allow you to apply out to other medical school and break the contract with them, just in case a different medical school is where your heart is set on (this will free up your slot for a different applicant). Once again that policy differs from program to program, so please ask!

Now are there any disadvantages to getting into these programs? Honestly, I can’t think of too many. Here are a couple. Some programs are set up in the traditional manner (4 year of undergraduate and 4 years of medical school), while others allow you to skip one year of undergraduate, and other will allow you to finish the whole process in just 6 years!!! Shave off 2 years of the long journey. The only downside to the 6 year programs, is the fact school will be all year long with no long summer or winter breaks, in order for you to shorten your undergraduate education. And finally, the only other disadvantage I can think of,is that I had some classmates in a guaranteed program with me, and because of the comfort of knowing they were already set with a spot in medical school, they slacked off, their GPA went below the minimum requirement and were kicked out of the guaranteed program. They were able to get their academic life back together eventually, but, they had to apply like regular students to medical school. So… students! Please continue to study while you are in the program!

The great thing is, many school offer these combined/guaranteed programs for many of the healthcare fields including Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry! So please contact your schools in the area for your high schoolers and find out if any of the colleges/universities offer this. It is NEVER too early to prepare to apply for these programs as they are competitive to get in to for obvious reasons.

If you have found this article informative, please visit my blog at http://paymyloans.blogspot.com/ and make a donation to help me pay off my medical school loans. And give me feedback, if enough people like this article and let me know, I will write another article about how your high school student or you, can become a competitive candidate for these programs. I have conducted interviews for applicants and given recommendations to the faculty this past year and know what applicants should expect. Thank you for listening and good luck on your futures!

Andrew Kimhttp://paymyloans.blogspot.com/