For any M.D.s out there: Would you suggest taking at year off from college before starting med school?

Question

I am currently a third year Bioengineering student at UC Berkeley. Feeling burnt out and am thinkng about waiting a year to apply.

Answer 1

I was MCB at Cal, so I know what you mean when you say "burnt out."

The folks at the Career Center told me that it's okay to take a gap year as long as you fill that time with something meaningful. In my case, I tried to find a job, but I graduated at the end of the dot com bubble, so every biotech firm was on a hiring freeze. I wound up waiting tables and tutoring kids in Oakland (tutoring is a great gig and I'd recommend it wholeheartedly; waiting tables ... not so much).

I knew a lot of folks who took time off. Many of them stayed in Berkeley and worked in the labs. Some of them got jobs. Some traveled.

Most of them went to med school. I went to USC for a masters. I'm trying to get into med school now. I think the important thing is that you don't let 1 gap year become 5 gap years. When you're out of school for longer, your priorities begin to shift. When I was 21, I was gung-ho and terrified at the prospect of going to med school. But it's all I wanted, and all I focused on. Now that I'm 27, I'm starting to think about other things like: how old I'll be when I finish residency, how I'd find a husband and when I'll get married, and whether I should be in the game at all -- maybe I'll do better to go back to Berkeley for a PhD?

Anyway, if you want a real life example of what happens to folks who take gap years, I'm probably a worst-case scenario. But I can assure you, when I was at USC, I saw loads of my MCB classmates who had also taken gap years. btw, Keck School of Med at USC is the #1 acceptor of Cal pre-meds.

Answer 2

there is a lot you're able to do mutually with get a role in a wellness center or some form of internship, you additionally can spend a while for your self. i comprehend as an entire-time pre-dent pupil i think very cooped up, i will spend time vacationing. i think of as long as you do some thing extremely efficient to your self and can communicate approximately it in a favorable way at your interview it is going to paintings on your benefit. Med colleges want somebody who they think of is competant, could make it via med college and somebody who seems exciting and has "distinctive" existence reviews.

Answer 3

I'm not an MD, nor am I in med school, rather I'm in grad school at Yale. However I took four years off after getting my Bachelor's (from Cal also, incidentally) before starting the program here.

Really, if you feel burnt out from your degree program and you have doubts about whether continuing your education in a medical program is the right thing for you, then don't feel rushed into applying immediately. Your burning out may be a sign that you may need to take time off after graduation to reflect on what else you would like to do with your life. As long as you remain productive during that time off, I don't think that it would look bad on any med school application, and it certainly would not have a negative impact on your performance in med school. Quite the contrary, I think that with the added knowledge and experience gained from work or self-reflection during your respite, you can find added resolve to embark on a medical career. Of course on the other hand, you may find that your interests indeed lay elsewhere! Don't feel like you have to rush from school to school without fully exploring other options; you'll be surprised how much a shift in your perspective will give you a more three-dimensional understanding of your life, and how med school (or any other field) fits in with that understanding.

I took four years off primarily because although I liked research, I didn't know if I wanted to invest the 6+ years into a Ph.D. doing something that I might not end up liking. Thus I had decided not to apply, and seek a job in industry instead. With the several years of industry experience, I had learned what it was like to work in my field with a Bachelor's, and see for myself the benefits and the limitations of working with that level of education. After much contemplation, I decided in the end to return to school and make that investment that I was hesitant to make years earlier. Do I regret the decision? Not at all, in fact the added experience gave me considerable wisdom and a different perspective on my field, that many of my fellow grad students don't have, because they never worked in industry. My added experience also was considered by the admissions committee here at Yale to be extremely beneficial to my application, and really set me apart from the other applicants. So the decision to take time off was one of the best things I ever did. Had I not taken time off, I would have ended up with a weaker application, probably gotten burned out in grad school and then dropped out without finishing. It's far better to take the time out earlier than later, that way you will still have time to think, and shoot for long-term goals while remaining flexible enough in the short-term to take advantage of newly-acquired knowledge and experience.

Good luck, and remember that there is always something to learn, around every corner you turn!