Hello Everyone,
I am new to this forum and really glad I found it. I have a question which is probably not an uncommon one here, but I haven’t found any answers to it here yet, so forgive a redundant question if it is one, and maybe give me a link to a forum with this topic if it’s already here.
Question: Is there any listing online of allopathic schools that have a higher statistical trend of taking older applicants, and look more at life experience than younger age?
I am 41, and am applying this summer to osteopathic and allopathic schools. I believe I would prefer to be a D.O., but I’ve been on the fence on that one for some time now, and have not made up my mind completely yet.
I have a very diverse background, and have been (among other things) a translator/interpreter (German/English), a professional jazz musician, a U.S. Special Forces medic (a lot like being a P.A. with heavy trauma experience, and a lot of autonomy in decision making), and have been a computer programmer for the past 10 years. I wanted to go to med school after I first got out from being an SF medic, but I had a family to take care of. Now my kids are grown and nearly grown, and it’s time. I am finishing up my last prereq’s, and taking the MCAT this April. I have a previous B.A. (from about 15 years ago) in linguistics, back when I didn’t care much about grades, but have maintained nearly a 4.0 since going back to get the prereqs out of the way, over the last 2 years (while working fulltime of course, and being a fulltime father/husband).
I’ll probably go back into the military to pay for med school. Compared to some of the $hit I went through in the military over my 11+ years in, being a doc would be literally like a country-club for me, and by the time I got done with school and residency, probably one re-enlistment and I’d have my years in to be able to retire and then pursue a civilian practice.
Anyway, once again I’m glad I found this forum. Cya around. Thanks for any advice on the question you might have, in advance.
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Question: Is there any listing online of allopathic schools that have a higher statistical trend of taking older applicants, and look more at life experience than younger age?
Sam -
Not that I know of. Honestly, more and more MD schools are, if not non-trad friendly, at least open to non-trads. If you have the grades and the MCAT, I think you will be a competitive candidate at most MD schools.
On that note - don’t rule out applying to schools because you think they are not “non-trad” friendly. I honestly did not think I would be a competitive candidate at the school I am at and also had the impression that they were not friendly to non-trads. Now that I am here, I definitely don’t think that they are unfriendly to non-trads and actually had a discussion with the admissions office today about why our school has that repuation.
From the little backgroun you’ve given, it sounds like you are on the right track. If it makes you feel better, I graduated from college 13 years ago with a 2.77 GPA in Spanish. I also pulled nearly a 4.0 in the pre-reqs and had a decent MCAT. I applied to, and was accepted at five MD schools.
You can certainly apply to both DO and MD. Don’t not apply to MD because you don’t think you are a competitive candidate. However, if you truly prefer the DO philosophy, apply there and go there. But, I think if I were you, I would go to both, see where you are accepted, and make a decision based on whatever school you feel fits you best.
Good luck!
Amy
Hi, I sent you a PM so check your box. BTW most schools “will” accept you regardless of age IF you are comepetitive which it sounds that you are…check your box…
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BTW most schools “will” accept you regardless of age IF you are comepetitive
For those of us who have forgotten, how is “competitive” defined? In similar words, what makes one candidate/applicant more or less competitive than another candidate/applicant?
Competitive means being able to compete against trads in terms of GPA/MCAT combo. I would suggest going to the medical schools website and see what their “average” for both MCAT/GPA is and go from there.
The way I see it, “competitive” means that you present an MCAT score and GPA that’s within range for a particular school - as efex says, that’s information you can usually obtain from the school. For some OPMs, getting the GPA into that range may be impossible - in such a case, the new grades had better be damn good so that they shine so bright that the old grades can’t be seen.
Then in terms of the rest of the application - of course there are the extracurrics and medical experience things, and the intangibles. Here’s where I think OPMs can really shine: you may have really amazing experiences compared w/ someone just out of undergrad. Or you may have worked in a related medical field and gained insights that would be awfully tough to gain otherwise.
But the experience of an OPM CAN be a two-edged sword. While a traditional applicant may be cut a little slack for not doing a good job of articulating ‘why I want to be a doctor,’ an OPM is expected to be pretty clear about it. While a traditional applicant may be forgiven for being a little clumsy in an interview, an OPM had better be pretty polished.
Some people may feel this is unfair. My response: you WANT credit for your maturity and your experience. So you need to welcome being judged for those same qualities.
Mary R.
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Question: Is there any listing online of allopathic schools that have a higher statistical trend of taking older applicants, and look more at life experience than younger age?
I am not aware of any list, but:
Case Western Reserve University: claims to take a larger proportion of older students than any other med school.
U. Mass – Also seems to like older students.
Georgetown
Many osteopathic schools.
There’s no list. I suspect that many of us go into something I call “the quirky file”; some schools have bigger quirky files than others. I also don’t believe in letting age limit your application list–let them limit you if they’re going to be like that, but in terms of getting in, you don’t know until you try. Medical school applications are incredibly unpredictable–why I got into the schools I got into and got blown off by others, I still have no idea–but I know it didn’t have anything to do with my age. Maybe the people in charge of their quirky files just had different tastes?
That said, Stanford had more older students than the small number of other academic-y schools I saw, and a good financial aid policy too (automatically independent if you’re over 30).
joe
I’d agree, there’s not really a list. Non-trads aren’t really a novelty anymore–they’re probably found at just about every school. At my school there is a big group of us. The group is big and diverse enough that I wouldn’t even call it a "group."
The only exception to this that I’m aware of is NYU, where the student tour guide last year told those of us taking the tour that their class was pretty young, and there weren’t any older students that she knew of. However, that doesn’t really mean much. (Admissions tour guides are not the most reliable source of information, I am slowly realizing now that I am a first-year! 
)
You should apply to schools based on your interest in attending. I do think Joe’s comment about financial aid is very useful though–one way to categorize schools would be by which ones treat non-trad students as financially independent, so that they are eligible for financial aid. This is really important! My school DOESN’T do this, and believe me, I wish they did.
We should make a list of schools that consider non-trads over age 30 as independent for institutional aid. Feel free to add other schools to my list if you know about their policy.
Here are the schools that I know about that DO consider non-trads over age 30 to be independent (props to them all!):
Baylor
Stanford
U Alabama-Birmingham
U Chicago-Pritzker
U Miami
U Pittsburgh
Yale
And some others that I know definitely do not:
Albert Einstein-Yeshiva
Case Western (though the dean said they are considering doing it in the future)
Cleveland Clinic-Lerner (affiliated w/ Case; ditto)
Duke
Harvard (has to have the worst financial aid anywhere; they have a $25,000 unit loan)
U Florida
U Michigan
U Pennsylvania
U South Florida
Vanderbilt
Washington U.-St. Louis
I think an important note should be made to any list discussing money is that being an underrepresented minority CAN make the finanical aide offer MUCH better. For example, a few years ago, Harvard used to give out what amounted to half-tuition grants/scholarships to URM students (don’t know if this had changed). Same thing with Duke from what I understand.
Here are the schools that I know about that DO consider non-trads over age 30 to be independent (props to them all!):
Baylor
Stanford
U Alabama-Birmingham
U Chicago-Pritzker
U Miami
U Pittsburgh
Yale
And some others that I know definitely do not:
Albert Einstein-Yeshiva
Case Western (though the dean said they are considering doing it in the future)
Cleveland Clinic-Lerner (affiliated w/ Case; ditto)
Duke
Harvard (has to have the worst financial aid anywhere; they have a $25,000 unit loan)
Mt. Sinai
U Florida
U Michigan
U Pennsylvania
U South Florida
Vanderbilt
Washington U.-St. Louis
That’s great info. Thanks!
UCSF should be added to the over 30=independent list.
As for Harvard, I don’t know if they give URM scholarships any more–the scuttlebutt is, not so much. The independence criteria are more complicated–involving years in the workforce and not a dependent, etc–I was one of a few students to meet the test. You have to petition for it. A few people under 30 could meet the test; some people over 30 would not meet the test; many members of this community likely would meet the test.
The unit loan has increased since my class which is a bummer but it’s not a whole lot more than a lot of other schools–and beyond the unit loan they pick up the whole amount if you’re declared independent, so it’s not a bad deal. Cynically speaking many people are willing to pay a bit more in order to be able to drop the H-bomb for the rest of their lives, or less cynically, to get access to the school’s vast resources and learning opportunities, which is how they can have less URM funding than many schools and still have a reasonably diverse class. Stanford’s deal is sweeter because not only do they figure you as independent automatically after 30, but also they have a lot of funding for research, independent projects, teaching assistantships, and so on.
Pushkin, I’m glad that Cornell is what I thought it might be in terms of non-trads. I hope that keeps being true.
With a few exceptions I think these policies don’t say much about whether you’d be happy somewhere. I do think that Stanford’s approach suggests an active interest in non-trads and especially, “interesting people” who do projects, have lived some life, etc–but they also spend many hours in dark lecture halls which to me was not interesting and did not seem like how I wanted to live two years of my life. So despite the larger number of geezers and the sweeter money deal and the fact that I was a not-wealthy geezer, I decided to go somewhere with fewer geezers and more debt for reasons that had nothing to do with geezers or money.
joe
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As for Harvard, I don’t know if they give URM scholarships any more–the scuttlebutt is, not so much.
You know I guess this is the trickle down affect from that anti AA relatively new prez which was followed by black profs/employees leaving the school. I remember hearing about this a few years back so I’m not suprised that his affects are now being felt in the med school. Interestingly, I can’t think of a single minority premed from any of the premed websites except Efex, that has applied to Harvard in recent years.
Sorry to hijack the thread. Just curious, has anyone added Howard to the list? My understanding is that Howard is pretty nontrad friendly too!
Yeah I did apply and zero love…only two schools did not offer me interview out of 32…the two are Duke and Harvard…but hey you cannot get them all…
Those statistics are available. If you go to the bookstore and look in the Barons, Princeton Review, etc. books which list the information for all of the medical schools, they will usually give you the average age. In some of the write ups of the schools, they will specifically point out that x% of their students are non-traditional. For instance, I am applying to Temple School of Medicine in Philly through a link program in a post-bacc program. They specifically say in the write up that 50% of the student population has done some other work between undergrad and med school.
Hope this helps, and good luck.
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Those statistics are available. If you go to the bookstore and look in the Barons, Princeton Review, etc. books which list the information for all of the medical schools, they will usually give you the average age. In some of the write ups of the schools, they will specifically point out that x% of their students are non-traditional. For instance, I am applying to Temple School of Medicine in Philly through a link program in a post-bacc program. They specifically say in the write up that 50% of the student population has done some other work between undergrad and med school.
Hope this helps, and good luck.
One thing to keep in mind though, is that what med schools consider “non-traditional” or count as “time off” isn’t exactly the same as what someone here on OPM might consider those things to mean. If they’re counting everyone who took one or two years off, then that’s going to include well over half or two thirds of MOST med school classes. That’s not really the same as having pursued some other life path for a significant period of time.
also to make a statistical point: a school may have a “mean” or “average” age that seems quite low, or “traditional,” but in fact be very non-trad friendly. My class at GWU had an average age of around 22 but there were lots of us who were distinctly non-trad. Our mean age was somewhat skewed by the presence of GWU’s 7-year students - people who did 3 years of undergrad at GWU and in an accelerated program matriculated into the med school prior to officially graduating from college. I had a bunch of 20-year-old classmates.
Mary R.