Letters
The New Physician January-February 2012 Volume 61, Number 1
The Postbac Boost
Postbaccalaureate premedical programs are offered at many schools across the United States and provide unfair advantages to those students able to afford them.
"Postbac premed" programs offer the standard courses required for admission to medical school (biology, chemistry, physics and organic chemistry) to students who already have their bachelor's degrees. They allow students to take the premed courses they didn't take in college (career-changer programs) or to retake these courses for better grades (academic record-enhancer programs). They are offered by universities with affiliated medical schools as well as liberal arts colleges. Course work ranges from one to two years, and tuition from $25,000 to $50,000.
These programs offer many advantages over the traditional premed track. The most outrageous is the "linkage," a special relationship between a postbac program and the admissions committee of a particular medical school. Bryn Mawr, according to their website, has linkage programs with 18 medical schools, including Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Pittsburgh, Rochester, University of Michigan, University of Chicago and Cornell. This means qualified students can circumvent the traditional application process; they apply to one of these schools in May for matriculation in August of that same year, instead of waiting an additional "glide" year like standard applicants. I'd heard from friends who attended these programs that the GPA and MCAT requirements were less stringent for linkage than for regular admission.
I contacted the Bryn Mawr and Goucher postbac directors to ask what their requirements were for linkage; both programs said they only disclose that information in person–Bryn Mawr to candidates they interview, and Goucher only to current students. According to the website for the Columbia postbac program, their agreement with Brown allows students to apply without submitting MCAT scores, nor do they require that students have taken organic chemistry lab.
In addition to the postbac, some medical schools offer programs that teach the first-year med school curriculum; the Interdisciplinary Basic Medical Science Program at New York Medical College and the Interdepartmental Medical Science Program at Drexel are examples. Admissions interviews are guaranteed to students who perform decently, which increase their chances of acceptance tenfold. Drexel's website says that students must have a score of 27 on the MCAT and grades of B or better in order to qualify for an interview; these are well below Drexel's average MCAT of 31 and GPA of 3.5.
The most well-connected postbac programs have competitive admissions and rigorous curricula, and their students no doubt make excellent medical students and doctors. But, given the cost of attending, it's unjust to allow only those who can afford $20K–$50K after college such exclusive opportunities to attend some of the best medical schools in the country. For a steep price, these programs grant students unfair advantages in the cutthroat world of medical school admissions.
Julia Schulman Mekler
University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia