Should you take a gap year before medical school?

If you’re thinking about taking a gap year before medical school, you’re in good company. According to the AAMC’s most recent data, nearly three quarters of students starting medical school this year took at least one gap year between undergrad and their first day of class. In 2017 that number was 60 percent. The gap year isn’t a detour anymore. For most medical students, it’s just part of the path.

The question is whether it’s part of yours, or whether it’s become the “path of least resistance.”

There are good reasons to wait.

A lot of them. If your MCAT score isn’t where it needs to be, another cycle gives you time to address it. If you’re finishing a post-bacc program or a research project that will meaningfully change your application, waiting until that work is done makes more sense. And finances are another factor – more than 40 percent of gap year students in the AAMC’s Matriculating Student Questionnaire said they used that time to get their finances in order before starting.

A gap year with a real purpose behind it can make you a stronger applicant and a more prepared student when you get there.

But before you decide it’s worth asking yourself: what are you really waiting for?

That’s a question that may need some introspection. If you have a specific goal and a plan to get there, that’s one thing. But many students in this process are waiting on something that isn’t necessarily a “plan” – a waitlist, another cycle with an application that hasn’t changed, a general sense that more time will make the decision easier.

That’s not a gap year. That’s just another year gone.

Every year you wait is a year further from practicing medicine. Another application cycle, another round of fees, another year of explaining the time off. The AAMC’s own data shows that applicants who take one to two purposeful gap years often post equal or stronger acceptance rates than straight-through applicants. The keyword here is “purposeful.”

September isn’t the only start.

Most applicants think about medical school as a September thing. You apply, you wait, you start in the fall. But that model assumes the academic calendar is fixed, and for some schools it isn’t. If you’re ready now, or close to it, a January or May start puts you in a classroom months ahead of where another gap year would put you.

Off-cycle classes are generally smaller. That means more direct access to faculty, a tighter cohort, and a start to medical school that isn’t matriculating hundreds of new students at once. If you spent time after undergrad finishing something that made your application stronger – a master’s degree, a post-bacc, a research project – a January start means that work actually gets considered by an admissions committee without you losing another full year waiting for September.

And if you’re already thinking about a competitive specialty – Neurology, Ophthalmology, Urology, Neurosurgery, or an early match program like the Military Match or CaRMS – a May start gives you something a later start can’t. Time to take electives in that specialty before you apply. In fields where the margin between a match and no match is razor thin, that matters.

The bottom line.

A gap year might be exactly the right call. The data backs that up and so does the experience of the majority of physicians practicing today. But there’s a difference between taking time with intention and just letting time pass. If you know you want to be a physician and you’re ready to do the work, the question isn’t really whether to wait. It’s whether waiting is getting you anywhere.

WAUSM offers there classes a year in January, May, and September. If you’re ready to stop waiting, you have options.