6 Things I Did During my Gap Year to Become a Competitive Medical School Applicant
When I first started college, I thought I was going to finish in four years and go straight into med school. I had every semester outlined with exactly which courses I was going to take, and at the time I was double majoring in biology and chemistry. But after transferring to the best university in the SEC (#geauxtigers), changing my major, and being honest with myself about what I wanted to get out of my college experience, my path looked different than the way I originally planned.
One of the biggest lessons I learned in college was that timelines are (mostly) arbitrary. I mean, it’s important to know what boxes you need to check to get where you wanna go, but you are not a checklist. So, after graduating college in four and a half years, I decided to take a gap year.
A gap year refers to the period of time between finishing undergrad and starting medical school. It can be an opportunity to relax and recharge from the past four years, pay off student loans, and fill in any gaps in your med school application. This is all with the goal of making yourself a more competitive applicant and making sure you are rested and prepared to take on the rigors that the next four years will bring.
These are six things I did to leverage my gap year and get accepted into medical school my first round applying:
#1 Gained Meaningful Clinical Experience
I knew I needed some sort of experience working directly with patients in a healthcare setting if I wanted to be a competitive applicant. Ideally, you want meaningful, longitudinal clinical experience with direct patient contact. This experience can be hard to get while you’re in school since a lot of healthcare jobs are full time and require some sort of additional schooling or certification. I ran into these dilemmas when I was still in undergrad, which is why gaining clinical experience was a big focus during my gap year. I’ll also note that shadowing is not clinical experience, but we’ll get into why this is in a later post.
A few months before I graduated, I got a part-time position as a medical assistant (MA) in orthopedic surgery and sports medicine that I was later able to transition to full time. Some of my clinical duties included rooming patients (taking vitals and the initial patient interview), setting up and assisting with procedures, scribing, and removing sutures. I also performed administrative tasks such as returning patients’ calls and messages, faxing referrals, and coordinating care for patients with other members of the care team. Thankfully, the physician and PA I worked for were super supportive of my goals, so they took time to explain imaging studies and challenged me by having me present patients to them.
One of the perks of working with surgeons was that I was able to spend time in the OR, and I didn’t have to fill out a bunch of paperwork every time because I was already employed by the hospital. Over the past year, I’ve watched arthroscopic knee surgeries (meniscus repairs, MACI and BEAR implants, ACL reconstructions), Achilles and patellar tendon repairs, and a cervical spine fusion. And yes, your surgeon is probably listening to anything from Kevin Gates to Luke Combs while you’re on the table. The OR’s pretty lit ngl.
#2 Finished my Prerequisites
Prerequisite courses vary by school, with a lot of schools shifting to recommended classes rather than strict requirements. I went back to college a semester after graduating to take biochemistry because it was required by some of the schools I applied to. And it’s one of the first classes you take in med school, so might as well have a solid foundation before going into the real thing.
I already had some familiarity with the content since I taught myself biochem while studying for the MCAT. Being a part-time student while working full time was challenging, but I’m glad I took the course by itself so I could focus on just one class as opposed to splitting my time between a full course load. It also helped that my professor tailored the class for those of us who were medically minded since most of us where pre-med. This kept things interesting by applying concepts to medically relevant topics and testing our medical decision making on exams.
#3 Continued Volunteering & Community Involvement
If you look at any medical schools’ website, you’ll see an emphasis on philanthropy in their mission, which makes service an important aspect of your application. And just like clinical experience, your service activities should be longitudinal and meaningful. I labeled this section volunteering and community involvement because I think it’s important to recognize that you don’t always have to volunteer your time for free in order to demonstrate your service-orientation.
I already had experience volunteering through the student organizations I was a part of in college, but I had a lot of room to strengthen this aspect of my application. Full transparency—volunteering in a conventional sense doesn’t get me excited. Having volunteers to check people in and give directions might be important for the overall success of an event, but glorifying these tasks doesn’t feel authentic to me. Having one of these surface level experiences on my application was the same as having ten, so I sought out service opportunities that would allow me to highlight aspects of my character to admissions committees. These were my philanthropic activities, if you will, over the past year:
I volunteered at the local child advocacy center to show that I can work with populations that have experienced a traumatic event, which is obviously super important for anyone who wants to work in medicine. There will also come a time when I have to advocate for a patient or refer them to a community partner for support.
The organization I worked for as an MA had what was called a Rapid Response Team. This was basically the same as a code team but also included responding to less life-threatening events like falls and seizures. I was appointed by my department to serve on the team, but I wouldn’t consider this as part of my paid work experience since I was chosen for this opportunity without any additional financial benefit. This role demonstrated that I could work under pressure and collaborate with physicians, mid-level providers, and support staff to determine and execute a treatment plan for a patient following an acute event. Again, these attributes are incredibly important for anyone who’s going to become a doctor.
Lastly, I was invited to speak to current students on an alumni panel for the Ambassadors organization I was a member of while in college. This was an opportunity to pay forward the investment that was made in me and share wisdom from my college experience as a pre-med student. It was also a fantastic way to show that I can leave a legacy of representing professional organizations with integrity and speak in front of large audiences!
#4 Published Research & Got Involved in Clinical Studies
This was already a strongpoint of my med school application because I chose to focus on research during undergrad by completing an honors thesis. I defended my thesis during my last semester of college, and I knew that having a publication would give me an edge over other applicants. So, I tweaked my thesis manuscript and submitted it for publication in January following graduation. Thankfully the journal had a quick turnaround time, and I was officially a published first-author by April, just in time for it to be cited in my application.
Most of the projects I had worked on up until this point were classified as bench research. I strengthened this aspect of my application during my gap year by diversifying the types of projects I was involved in. Adding clinical research to my CV was pretty easy for me since the organization I worked for as an MA had academic support, and the sports medicine department had an athletic training residency program (these programs usually require students to be involved in some sort of research). My contribution included writing literature reviews, assisting with data collection, preparing manuscripts for publication, and responding to peer reviewer comments. The surgeon I worked for also asked if I would co-author a paper they didn’t have time to work on (talk about fell in my lap!).
The research opportunities I was able to take advantage of during my gap year were largely a product of the work I put in during the previous four and a half years, with some credit to being in the right place at the right time. The breadth and depth of my research experiences showed admissions committees that I sought answers to scientific questions, took an interest in contributing to clinical knowledge, committed to the things I started, and had the aptitude for success in a rigorous curriculum.
#5 Took Time for the Things I Enjoy Doing
I can testify that med schools want to know what you do for fun because I was asked this question during both of my interviews! These are some of the things I did during my gap year outside of work and academics:
Explored my interest in leadership, finance, and entrepreneurship through books and podcasts
Going off the first point—I watched a lot of Shark Tank (unpopular opinion: Kevin’s my favorite, just behind Mark Cuban)
Learned how to make craft cocktails
Tailgated; went to escape rooms, baseball games, a rodeo; and played Spikeball with friends
Went glamping with my girlfriend (and got a splinter in my heel 5 miles into a 10 mile hike that resulted in a visit to urgent care)
Went to a Greta Van Fleet concert
Started going to church again
Saw Nat Bargatze live
Went to my first New Orleans Mardi Gras
Picked up pickleball like everyone else and their mom
Started powerlifting again
Went to my first NFL and hockey games
(Barely) Improved my golf swing
Started physical therapy for all my orthopedic ailments (lol)
Started this website!
I chose a few things from this list to share with my interviewers, and we all ended up having at least one thing in common! Seeing that you have hobbies outside of school and work is important to admissions committees. And I’ll let you in on a secret: doctors know how to have fun when they’re not treating patients!
#6 Applied and Got Accepted into Medical School
Finally, my gap year was when I actually applied to med school! The application process was stressful, expensive, and time consuming, so it helped that I didn’t have to balance this with school. Even preparing to apply took a significant amount of time; between researching which schools I was going to apply to, attending multiple personal statement workshops, getting feedback on my personal statement, and working on my pre-med review committee application. After I submitted the primary app, I still had to work on secondaries, take the Altus Suite and AAMC PREview assessments, and prep for interviews. It took almost one year from the time I started seriously looking at med schools to getting my first acceptance!
Final Thoughts
I knew I was going to take a gap year halfway through my sophomore year of college because I didn’t want to have to take 18+ hours to graduate “on time”. This enabled me to get everything I wanted to out of my college experience and to fill in gaps in my med school application with the things I mentioned above. On top of that, majority of students who are accepted to med school take at least one gap year (source). I’ll talk about med school stats and what else you can consider doing during your gap year in later posts!
Most importantly, being directly involved in patient care and spending a significant amount of time with doctors daily has had the greatest impact on my understanding of the medical profession. I’ve also seen the positives and challenges of working for a large hospital system. I was confident that I wanted to become a doctor before, but these experiences have solidified that there is no alternative to becoming a physician.
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