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You might be surprised to learn that gap years between undergraduate studies and medical school are becoming increasingly common. According to the Association of American Medical College’s (AAMC) 2023 Matriculating Student Questionnaire, 73.2% of new, incoming matriculants had at least one gap year between undergrad and medical school.
Whether taken by choice or due to an unsuccessful application, a gap year can provide valuable opportunities for both your personal and professional growth.
When used correctly, a gap year can enhance your medical school application and better prepare you to become a doctor by allowing you to gain relevant experience, improve your GPA, and explore your interests in depth. However, the key is to use this time purposefully; failing to do so may result in a more negative outcome.
Let’s talk about the pros and cons of taking a gap year before medical school, the most productive ways to spend one, and if it can improve your med school application.
Read Next: Top AAMC Resources for Getting into Medical School
Pros of Gap Year(s)
Most AdComs (admissions committee members) now expect to see gap years. Of course, they accept some students straight from undergrad, but taking gap years can only help you as long as you’re dedicating them to improving yourself, your application, and your future. Here are the top benefits of taking a gap year:
- Enhanced Extracurricular Experience: By taking a gap year, you can accumulate significant hours in clinical work, volunteering, research, and leadership — areas that are increasingly emphasized and rigorously analyzed by admissions committees. It is possible to build your extracurricular activities portfolio while completing your Bachelor’s without taking a gap year, but only if you’re laser-focused on medicine starting freshman year.
- Full-Time Work Opportunities: Most students are now finding that they don’t have enough clinical or other experience accumulated to submit a competitive application at the end of their junior year. So, they wait until the end of their senior year — or the year after — and spend a year or two working full-time in a clinical setting or as a researcher to gain the additional work experience that they need. Just remember to keep up with your volunteering requirements if you go this route!
- Improved Application Competitiveness: Gaining additional experience and building a strong extracurricular portfolio can strengthen your application, especially if you started your undergraduate studies without a clear focus on medicine.
- Flexibility for Career Exploration: Taking a gap year allows you to explore other careers or gain diverse life experiences, which can be beneficial if you’re transitioning from a different field or seeking to understand the medical profession better. Before applying to med school, you should shadow different physicians to learn what working in a specific medical career field would actually be like.
- Alignment with Admissions Trends: Many medical schools now expect most applicants to have gap years, and this approach can align with their preferences for more mature and well-rounded candidates. However, just make sure you don’t waste your time, as a wasted gap year will not bode well with admission committees.
- Freedom to Explore Personal Interests: A gap year allows you to explore interests outside the medical field, helping you become a more well-rounded individual — something med schools are looking for. You might even discover new passions that could complement or enhance your medical career. Numerous innovative medical professionals combine their diverse interests to drive breakthroughs and improve patient care.
- The Opportunity to Take Care of Yourself: Taking a gap year also means that you don’t have to cram as much in during undergrad, which could help you avoid burnout and take care of both your physical and mental health. Gap years could afford you more time to follow a physical fitness routine and cultivate a strong social life. Making friends and connections before your first year of med school is always a good policy, as you will only get busier as a med student.
We curated a list of the top pre-med activities and organizations to help you build your extracurricular portfolio for med school. Apply to multiple pre-med positions, all in one place!
The Potential Drawbacks
Does a gap year look bad? While a gap year can offer valuable opportunities, it can also present drawbacks if not managed well. If the time is not used productively — such as by failing to enhance your academic record, gain relevant experience, or develop key skills — it could negatively impact your medical school application process.
Additionally, admissions committees could potentially view an unproductive gap year as a lack of commitment or focus. To avoid this, ensure that your gap year is purposeful and demonstrates growth, readiness, and a clear commitment to a career in medicine.
Quite honestly, though, the only scenario where taking a gap year is bad for medical school and doesn’t help is if you don’t use it to explore another career or to build your pre-med extracurricular portfolio.
In fact, many med schools are seeing the benefit gap years can provide to future applicants, if managed well, and some are even recommending students take them.
5 Ways to Use a Gap Year to Improve Your Application
A gap year can significantly enhance your medical school application by demonstrating maturity, responsibility, and a thoughtful approach to your career path. It provides an opportunity to boost your GPA, complete additional coursework, and gain valuable experiences that reflect your commitment to medicine.
Additionally, it helps you develop skills such as compassion and humility, which are highly valued by admissions committees.
If you’re wondering what to do during your gap year before medical school, here are 6 things that can help improve your med school application.
1. Get More Experience in the Medical Field
Use your gap year to gain more experience in the medical field, including:
- Clinical Experience: This can be anything from working as a certified nurse’s assistant (CNA), an EMT, or a medical scribe to simply volunteering in a clinical research capacity. You’ll gain experience interacting with patients and healthcare professionals, which will offer you a deeper understanding of patient care and the healthcare environment. Additionally, well-developed clinical experience can help improve your application by showcasing practical skills, and the development of important qualities such as empathy, communication, and problem-solving.
- Physician Shadowing: Shadowing a physician can give you first-hand patient experience and a genuine and realistic understanding of different specialties and working environments. It can also help you stand out as an applicant, as it shows your dedication to the medical field and can help you articulate your motivations and readiness for a medical career during interviews and personal statements.
- Research Experience: Many medical schools highly value applicants who have research experience. If you don’t have any, use your gap year to gain some. Consider volunteering in a research lab, working as a research assistant, or even conducting your own research project. This will not only enhance your application but also help you develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
It’s important to note, too, that working in the clinical and research fields can help you make connections with professionals who can serve as mentors and may even provide you with future letters of recommendation. This is just another way to take advantage of this extra time outside of school.
Having trouble finding shadowing opportunities? Get shadowing hours from your couch with our FREE comprehensive Virtual Clinical Education course. Shadow physicians from over 25 specialties, and add the hours to your application!
2. Take (or Retake) the MCAT
This isn’t really a secret, but it’s important to include, as it’s a great opportunity to take advantage of — especially if your scores weren’t so hot the first time around and you need to retake it!
Consider exploring new study techniques and habits that differ from those you used previously. Hiring a tutor or adopting innovative study methods can help refresh your approach and deepen your understanding. Embracing different ways of learning during this time will improve your adaptability and readiness for the diverse challenges and coursework you’ll encounter in your medical education.
Working 1-on-1 with a 99th-percentile MCAT tutor is the best way to boost your score. Our tutoring clients improve their MCAT score by an average of 12 points!
3. Volunteer
Pre-meds should always be involved in at least one volunteering activity, even if they’re working full time in research or clinical during their year off. Great opportunities include volunteering at a clinic, senior center, local healthcare nonprofits, or even with sustainable international volunteering organizations.
A note on international volunteering: The knowledge you obtain from volunteering internationally can be extremely valuable when you’re a medical student and working with patients from different backgrounds and cultures. You may even discover some ways that healthcare could or should be implemented into our healthcare ecosystems based on what you observe during travel.
I encourage students to thoughtfully consider organizations that operate sustainably and do not perpetuate systems of white saviorism or short-term “missions.”
Use your gap year to get some great volunteering experience that not only boosts your med school application, but will also make you a more robust physician.
4. Fulfill Prerequisites and Strengthen Your GPA
Consider using your gap year to take additional coursework through a post-baccalaureate program or master’s degree. Focus on required or recommended classes you missed during undergrad, or use this time to enhance your GPA by excelling in upper-level science courses.
A post-bacc or master’s degree can be a big commitment, both time- and money-wise, so you should consider this option carefully before making a final decision. In general, they’re worth the time, energy, and money if you need to fulfill extracurricular requirements or boost your GPA. Otherwise, you’re probably better off spending your gap year doing research or clinical work.
5. Explore Other Careers
Medical schools often like applicants who have spent time in another profession. Teaching experience is a great lead-in to a medical career, as is any STEM profession like engineering or software. A business background would probably be appreciated, and military experience is also super valued by AdComs.
However, if you use gap years to pursue other career options, keep in mind that you will also need service and volunteer experience, shadowing hours, and clinical experience, just like any other applicant. Your experiences should collectively show that you understand the ultimate career you’re getting into and that you’ve put the expected time and effort into preparing for it.
How to Discuss Your Gap Year Experiences
Whether you are filling out the Work and Activities section on the AMCAS or talking to an admissions committee during an interview as a pre-med, there are some key points to remember when it comes to talking about your gap year and your experiences during it.
Be Honest
Honesty is the best policy, and that’s especially true when it comes to discussing your gap year(s) and experiences. You obviously don’t want to sell yourself short, but you also don’t want to exaggerate your accomplishments to the point where your story ends up being incredibly distorted. Find a happy medium using empowering language said as truthfully as possible.
Don’t overshare. While honesty is always the best policy, that doesn’t mean you need to dwell on the weak points of your application. Remember that if you’ve received an interview invite, it means that the admissions committee has deemed your application acceptable on paper. (The purpose of the interview is to screen for soft skills, not pick apart your CV.)
Therefore, you should focus on being personable and highlight your qualifications for med school. If the interviewer asks about a weak point, like a missing extracurricular or an MCAT retake, of course you should address it honestly and explain what you learned from it. But there’s no need to proactively point it out in your essays or in an interview.
The exception to this rule is if you are a reapplicant who didn’t get accepted the first time around. If that’s the case, the best strategy is to mention overcoming any weak points in your application and interview as part of your story as a pre-med. Remember — over half of applicants in a given year don’t get accepted to med school. AdComs are used to dealing with re-applicants, so don’t be embarrassed. Instead, explain how you’ve strengthened your candidacy.
Communicate Effectively
Communicating your gap year experiences well in both writing and interviews is key. You want to write and speak coherently and clearly while also being engaging and relatable.
Consider writing down bulleted outlines of some of the growth experience you’ve had before writing a personal statement or stepping into an interview. This gives you a chance to organize your thoughts and, hopefully, communicate them well in the future.
Additionally, it’s important to think of your skills and life experiences outside of academics and the medical realm that you may have acquired and how they translate to your role as a future physician. For example, if you’ve been raising a family during your gap years, then you’ve learned the value of time management and organization. Make sure to highlight these types of experiences and skills during your interview.
Embrace What Makes You Unique
Medical school admissions may be looking for certain academic and application criteria, but they also want to know what makes you stand out from other applicants. Reflect on and discuss what makes you unique, what makes you a valuable addition to the school, and what you have to offer when writing your personal statement, secondaries, and during interviews.
Our quirks, non-traditional choices, and unique ways of thinking can often serve as some of our greatest strengths.
FAQs
According to AAMC’s 2023 Matriculating Student Questionnaire, 73.2% of incoming medical students took at least one gap year between the time that they completed undergrad and started med school. This is an increase of 6.9% from 2020, where it was reported that 66.3% of matriculating med students took at least one gap year.
So, it’s safe to say that more than half of matriculating students take one gap year (or multiple).
When you finish your undergraduate program, your federal student loans will enter into a grace period, which is typically about 6 months long. During this time, no payments are required.
However, after the grace period runs out, you will need to start repaying your federal loans. Loan servicers will often provide a payment schedule at least 30 days before your first after-grace-period payment is due.
Federal loans offer several reduced repayment options (including for $0 payments) based on your income and certain work situations. If you’ll be making a small income during your gap years, you may qualify for deferred payments or a reduced-cost repayment plan during this time.
Yes, you can take the MCAT before starting your gap year. Many students choose to take the exam in the spring or summer before their senior year of college. This allows them to spend the year after graduation applying to medical school while simultaneously building up their pre-med experience. Remember — you should continue your extracurriculars during your application year. That way, you can send relevant updates to AdComs that demonstrate your progress.
Alternatively, many students opt to take the MCAT the summer after graduating. This sets them up to apply the following cycle, which means taking two gap years between undergrad and medical school. These two extra years of experience will only improve their chances, as long as they are spent wisely.
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Renee Marinelli, MD
Dr. Marinelli has practiced family medicine, served on the University of California Admissions Committee, and has helped hundreds of students get into medical school. She spearheads a team of physician advisors who guide MedSchoolCoach students.
