Taking a Gap Year Before Medical School
Your definitive guide to maximizing your admissions odds and choosing what’s right for you.
Learn the best way to spend your gap year before medical school.
The pros and cons of a gap year before medical school
Should you take a gap year?
Best ways to make the most of a gap year
What to avoid during your gap year
Talking about a gap year
Applying to medical school requires years of planning, but perhaps things haven’t gone exactly as you’d planned. A gap year may be the answer to your unique circumstances.
Maybe your GPA or MCAT score is lower than you need it to be, or you accumulated fewer community service, clinical, or research hours than you hoped for. Perhaps you just want real-world work experiences before the rigors of med school fill your every hour.
Regardless of which camp you fall into, you’re not alone. These days, about 60 percent of med school applicants get rejected from every school they apply to. For this reason, you can take a gap year to boost your application and work on yourself.
In a 2025 AAMC survey of matriculating medical students, 49.9 percent of incoming med students said they took 1 to 2 years off after completing college. That rate has risen over the past five years. In fact, far fewer respondents—27.3 percent—went directly from college to med school.
The average age of medical school matriculation is 24 or 25, showing how it’s increasingly common to take a gap year. There’s no shame in it! Just don’t waste that time. You’ll want to carefully choose how you spend your time before applying (or reapplying) to medical school.
In this guide, we’ll help you determine whether or not you should consider taking a gap year. We’ll also cover various options for how you might spend your gap year, including pros, cons, and who each option is best suited for.
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Benefits of taking a gap year
The potential benefits of a gap year are the time to accomplish the following:
Complete prerequisite coursework you didn’t get to during undergrad
Improve GPA through a post-bacc or master’s program
Retake your MCAT and improve by at least 4 to 6 points
Get more clinical experience hours
Find more research opportunities
Volunteer more
Invest in hobbies that you’re passionate about
Develop yourself professionally and personally
Deepen mentor relationships
Downsides of taking a gap year
The primary downsides of a gap year that apply to every case are delayed career entry, lost academic momentum, financial burdens, and the pressure to justify your gap year to admissions committees (adcoms).
Gap years have become increasingly common and, unfortunately, necessary for less competitive applicants.
The following disadvantages of a gap year should only apply if you misuse your time. Beware these downsides applying to you:
Spending a year on your couch day and night
Working a job completely unrelated to the medical field
Vacationing with no focus on personal or professional development
Working to improve your grades only to lower your GPA
Retaking the MCAT and getting the same or a lower score
Losing mentorships and networking connections like your pre-health advisor
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Should you take a gap year?
You should take a gap year if you need to strengthen your medical school application.
Before discussing your various options (skip to options here), you need to determine whether you should take a gap year in the first place. The decision is sometimes clear, but oftentimes it’s not.
Below are a few scenarios that warrant, or may warrant, taking a gap year.
Scenarios that warrant taking a gap year
Here are some scenarios that warrant you taking a gap year.
Your GPA or MCAT score is significantly lower than what most MD and DO schools will accept.
You won’t have completed your medical school prerequisite courses by the time that you would enroll in medical school.
You received your first—or only competitive—MCAT score late in the med school application cycle. This may prevent you from meeting application deadlines or taking advantage of rolling admissions cycles.
You don’t have enough shadowing, community service, or patient exposure hours.
A personal circumstance absolutely necessitates that you take a break from school or work.
Signs you may not need a gap year
If you have good grades or a good amount of clinical hours, you might not need to take a gap year—but you may if you really want to.
But it’s totally your choice if you want to delay your journey through academia, your eventual career, and your maximum salary potential by a year so that you can boost your application to be competitive at your reach schools. That is your prerogative.
Here are some signs you may not need a gap year, though you may benefit from one:
Your GPA or MCAT score is lower than what the schools you’re itching to go to will accept.
You received your first—or only competitive—MCAT score midway through the application cycle and have not pre-written most secondary essays.
You have at least the minimum amount of extracurricular hours, but nothing particularly stands out.
You have to tend to a personal matter that will require significant time and attention.
You want to pursue a certain interest before starting medical school. Make sure you can justify it to an adcom when interviewing for med school.
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Best ways to make the most of a gap year
Students who do decide to take gap years often ask us what we recommend they do during that time. Our most common response is, “It depends on what you intend to accomplish.”
The best way to evaluate how to spend your gap year is to consider the current red flags on your resume and whether a particular option clearly addresses them. Otherwise, you won’t add any new positive information to your application, and it may turn out to be a wasted year.
Below are discussions of the most popular gap year options. Keep in mind that some options can be pursued simultaneously during the same gap year.
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Enroll in a post-bacc program
Pros: Post-bacc programs offer an opportunity to complete prerequisite science courses, boost your GPA, and (sometimes) access extracurricular experiences you’re lacking, such as hospital volunteering. They can be completed either formally (e.g., at a university you apply to) or informally (e.g., taking courses through a university’s extension program). Additionally, post-bacc courses offer more gap year opportunities to build relationships with professors—and receive strong recommendation letters—in case you didn’t do so during undergrad.
Cons: High grades in post-bacc programs won’t always be viewed as favorably as high grades at your undergraduate institution. Also, post-bacc programs may require a large tuition payment, increasing your loans before you even begin medical school.
Who should consider it: Students whose GPA is significantly lower than what most MD and DO schools will accept, or students whose GPA is lower than what the schools they really want to attend typically accept.
Enroll in a Special Master’s Program (SMP)
Pros: Special Master’s Programs (SMPs) are more rigorous than post-bacc programs or even Master’s in Public Health programs; therefore, adcoms view strong SMP grades very favorably, boosting your admissions odds. SMPs may also offer research opportunities, as well as mentorship opportunities. Some SMPs guarantee an interview with a linked medical school if you meet certain criteria.
Cons: SMPs are tougher to get into than post-bacc programs, so you need a pretty strong application. The degree itself—Master’s in Medical Sciences or Master’s in Medical Physiology—carries almost no weight. SMPs may take two years to complete, and they can rack up more student debt.
Who should consider it: Students whose GPA is lower than what the schools they really want to attend typically accept, but is competitive enough to get into an SMP, or students who want to boost their GPA and accumulate more significant research experiences. Also, students who want to take advantage of an SMP’s linkage to a specific medical school.
Enroll in a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) program
Pros: Public health coursework is interesting to many prospective medical students, and the degree itself can open doors if you choose to work as something other than a physician. In addition, you’ll be able to take a “public health angle” across your application materials.
Cons: MPH programs can be fairly easy to get admitted to and do well in, so their GPAs may carry less weight than SMPs. Additionally, MPH coursework largely does not overlap with premedical prerequisites, so adcoms won’t necessarily equate MPH success with med school success. As with post-bacc programs and SMPs, MPH programs can require a significant financial investment.
Who should consider it: Students who want to demonstrate recent strong grades and who have a genuine interest in public health.
Retake or study for the MCAT
Pros: Studying for your MCAT during your gap year can be much less distracting than studying during your undergraduate years. By going all in, you will increase your chances of achieving your best possible score. If you took it previously and scored lower than you hoped, a gap year’s a good time to retake the MCAT and aim for at least 3 to 6 points of improvement.
Cons: While studying for the MCAT can be done alongside other activities, exclusively preparing for the exam may mean not being able to pursue other activities, such as accumulating patient exposure hours, that are lacking on your resume. Moreover, there’s never a guarantee you’ll achieve a certain score on the MCAT, no matter how much time you put into it. If you retake the MCAT and only get a point or two higher, that will honestly reflect poorly on you. It’s difficult to understand the opportunity cost without knowing what your eventual score will be.
Who should consider it: Students whose GPA is at least “good enough” to get into the med schools they’re interested in attending, but who either haven’t yet taken the MCAT or who have a relatively low score and need to retake the test.
Pursue professional medical experiences and roles
Pros: Gap years are a great opportunity to catch up on patient exposure hours. Demonstrate your commitment to medicine by continuing to pursue full-time medically relevant experiences, such as working as a scribe, EMT, or medical assistant. Plus, you can actually make some money rather than take on massive loans before starting school.
Cons: If you’re looking to take a break from the rigors of premed before jumping into challenging med school coursework, you won’t find that break by taking on full-time pre-med jobs. Instead, pursue part-time work, especially if you need to boost your GPA or study for your MCAT, too.
Who should consider it: Students whose GPA and MCAT scores are “good enough,” or nearly good enough, to get into the med schools they’re interested in attending but who lack sufficient patient exposure hours to stand out. We recommend at least 150 clinical hours or 300+ hours if you are trying to get into more competitive schools.
(Note: We won’t devote a separate section to shadowing or community service. The rule of thumb for shadowing or volunteering—If you don’t have enough hours, get them. If you intend to apply to DO programs, accumulate DO physician shadowing hours, not just MD hours.)
Find relevant research opportunities
Pros: While research is not a requirement for many medical schools—some research-heavy institutions do expect research hours—most competitive applicants accumulate research experience to boost their application. Use your gap year time on publishing a paper or two.
Cons: Conducting thorough research can be time-consuming. Therefore, it may be difficult to meaningfully pursue research while adequately addressing other red flags on your resume. Additionally, you may not need any research hours.
Who should consider it: Students who have no other red flags on their resume but who lack research experience or want to apply to more competitive medical colleges.
Focus on personal development
Pros: Focusing on improving oneself is a noble goal, and we should always strive to better ourselves as people and as physicians. As a future medical school student, you could focus on leadership experience, communication skills, familiarity with emerging technologies, or self-care. Consider attending motivational workshops or even speaking at one.
Cons: You may feel defeated when you realize you’ll never be perfect. Combat this by maintaining a realistic mindset about what you expect to learn and the areas for improvement.
Who should consider it: Students with a good resume but limited leadership skills or other lacking in pre-med competencies.
Gain purposeful miscellaneous experiences
Pros: It’s nice to pursue something simply because it brings you fulfillment, meets your goals, helps you make a bigger impact, or broadens your horizons. We’re talking about passions, hobbies, community service, and extracurriculars. Adcoms are hoping prospective students bring with them diverse hobbies and experiences—not just high MCAT scores. Miscellaneous experiences can add a unique richness to your personal statement, Work and Activities section, secondary essays, and interviews.
Cons: As with professional medical experiences, it’s hard to pinpoint cons as long as your GPA and MCAT scores are competitive enough for your target medical schools. This is another option where the only real downside is that the work can be taxing, but how much so depends on what kind of experience you choose to pursue.
Who should consider it: Students with no red flags who have the requisite stats and coursework to get into medical schools but who want to explore a new area or complete an existing project.
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What to avoid during your gap year
Avoid wasting your gap year on meaningless vacations, resting on your laurels, and exploring non-healthcare career options. You should have a clear purpose for taking a gap year; avoid spending all your time on activities that don’t strengthen your AMCAS or AACOMAS application.
If you go into your medical school interview and they ask about your gap year, you don’t want to say you needed a year off or that you wanted a year of partying before real life began. Both of these answers will tell adcoms you may not be ready for the rigors of medical school and life as a physician.
A gap year is typically a good thing for your med school application, as long as you use the extra year to boost your resume: increase your GPA at a postbac, retake the MCAT (and get a higher score), get more clinical experience, expand your extracurriculars, find research opportunities, or invest time in mentors who can write glowing letters of recommendation.
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Talking about a gap year
If you took a gap year, it will show up on your U.S. medical school application. Therefore, you need to know how to talk about it honestly and not arrogantly.
Below are several tips on how and when to talk about your gap year:
Do mention your gap year in your Work & Activities section and secondaries if it comes up naturally.
Don’t write about your gap year as if it were unfortunate or forced upon you. Talk about how it was an opportunity that you capitalized on.
Do discuss gap years in your personal statement.
Don’t make your personal statement all about your gap year. It should probably appear in your personal statement about halfway through and take up about 1,000 characters.
Do expect to get questions about it in your med school interview.
Don’t brush it off as an unimportant year where nothing important happened.
Do mention any ways you improved as an individual and future physician.
Don’t talk about how you just needed a break or vacation.
Do discuss how you are better prepared for medical school because of the experiences that you sought out and went through during your gap year.
Don’t tell adcoms that you just needed a year to make some money at a non-healthcare-related job. Of course, student loans are expensive, but there are healthcare jobs that can kill two birds with one stone—giving you experience while earning you money to pay off bills and loans.
Do demonstrate that you used the time off from school to improve your grades, MCAT scores, or clinical resume. If you earned a master’s degree during this time, mention it. This is not a time to be modest or arrogant—simply honest about your growth and progress.
Frequently asked questions
Is it easier to get into medical school after a gap year?
Although it is not inherently easier to get into medical school after a gap year, it has become more common for med school matriculants to have one on their CV.
This gap year advantage is likely due to the extra year you get to increase your GPA and MCAT scores, get more clinical and research hours, and spend time on personal and professional development, which all look great during the med school application process.
Do medical schools prefer applicants who take a gap year?
Medical schools often prefer applicants who have spent a gap year improving their grades, gaining more patient care or research project experience, or boosting their applications in other ways.
It is becoming more common for medical applicants to take a (productive) gap year just to stay competitive at their preferred med schools.
Will graduating early affect your medical school application?
Graduating with your bachelor’s degree more quickly than the standard four years should not negatively affect your medical school application. It’s like you’re giving yourself a bonus gap year or gap semester. Make sure you use your extra time well.
Graduating early should give you an extra semester or two to focus on non-academic pursuits that can strengthen your AMCAS or AACOMAS application, such as working as a research assistant, medical scribe, or shadowing a health professional whose career path you aspire to emulate.
What are the best gap year jobs for pre-med students?
The best jobs for pre-med students in their junior year, senior year, or their gap year would be a healthcare-related job that helps pay their bills while giving them healthcare experience.
Look for available positions as a medical scribe, medical assistant, emergency medical technician (EMT), certified nursing assistant (CNA), or clinical research coordinator.
Suggested reading: The Best Premed Jobs (Clinical Experience, Salary, and More
How many gap years are too many before medical school?
If you take more than 2 gap years before going to medical school, you will likely be considered a non-traditional applicant, which may not be a disadvantage—it will just put you in a different category.
Non-trad applicants have their own potential advantages, including a unique perspective and diverse life experiences, but make sure your time off won’t look bad on your eventual application.
If it’s to invest in yourself or even to deal with family or personal emergencies, adcoms will understand. If the time was spent partying, vacationing, or sitting on the couch, adcoms will be less understanding.
Final thoughts
It may or may not be necessary for you to take a gap year before applying to medical school. In making your decision, consider any missing pieces or red flags on your application and how you can use your gap year to address them.
It’s critical to understand there are no “magic bullet” gap year experiences. In other words, you should first honestly assess how you need to bolster your application before asking, “What should I do during my gap year?”
A great gap year decision for one student may be a really poor choice for another. Consider your unique circumstances.
We hope this article gave you a framework for appropriately evaluating whether a gap year is right for you. By using your gap year wisely, you can significantly increase your admissions odds during the next application cycle.
About the Author
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on medical school admissions. For over 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into medical school using his exclusive approach.
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