Med Schools Accepting Old Coursework

Hello everyone. I am new to the site but have decided to dive head in to becoming a doctor at the ripe old age of 42. I have a specific question that I seem to get conflicting answers on. That is, will medical schools accept course work from my undergraduate days (20+ years ago). I know they may prefer that, but do they require it. Any experience you have with this would be appreciated. Primarily interested in attending med school in Philly for family reasons.


Thanks!

General rule of thumb is that the basic science course prerequisites that are older than 10 years need to be retaken. Varies a little bit from school to school.

Hi Br:


I’ve had the same problem. I asked around and heard most schools are looking for recent course work. On the other hand, there were those brave souls who took the MCAT, scored well and were accepted to medical school despite the age of their prior classes. I didn’t want to take that chance - besides, my twenty year old grades were a little mediocre, if I do say so myself…


Have you thought about doing a post-bac? There are alot of programs in the Philly area.

  • Bryn Mawr

  • University of Pennsylvania

  • Drexel University

  • Temple University

  • Penn State Brandywine

  • Villanova University

  • La Salle University

  • West Chester University

  • Arcadia University


    I haven’t looked too closely, but I think a few of them may have linkage agreements with medical schools in Philadelphia.


    There are also Master’s programs offered at PCOM and Drexel.

In lieu of a formal post-bacc, an informal one may work just as well for you. They’re often not as directly geared towards the non-trad circumstance, but they tend to be much less expensive.


To answer your original question, it seems that most schools require more recent undergrad-level coursework, especially in the pre-reqs, and most especially in biology.


In some cases, this may be overlooked - if, for instance, you work in a biology-related field, and you score exceptionally well on the MCAT. That’s the kind of thing that would be on a school-by-school and case-by-case basis.


Because you already have an idea of where you want to go, it may pay to contact the Philly schools directly and see what they consider your options to be.


And welcome to OPM .

Thanks.

Thanks. I did talk to the Director of Bryn Mawr and she said I did not qualify for the post bac program. I am setting up meetings with the four Philly med schools to see what they say. Appreciate your help.

Thanks.

  • BR Said:
Hello everyone. I am new to the site but have decided to dive head in to becoming a doctor at the ripe old age of 42. I have a specific question that I seem to get conflicting answers on. That is, will medical schools accept course work from my undergraduate days (20+ years ago). I know they may prefer that, but do they require it. Any experience you have with this would be appreciated. Primarily interested in attending med school in Philly for family reasons.

Thanks!



Have you done any academic work in the past 20 years? If not, it would probably behoove you to retake the pre-reqs. Science is not at the same place today as it was 20 years ago.

On the other hand, if you've been taking science coursework recently and you do well on the MCAT, you may not have to retake the pre-reqs. My pre-reqs were all 10+ years old, but I applied while a graduate student in chemistry, and I had an excellent MCAT score. Even the handful of schools that usually require pre-reqs to be retaken agreed to waive the requirement in my case based on those mitigating factors.