Tips for a Productive Gap Year

Tips for a Productive Gap Year!

By: Hamed Ali

Hi, my name is Hamed, and I’m about to start my first year of medicine in the UK after 2 gap years. From my experience, I couldn’t really find many tips for a productive gap year if you are re-applying for medical school. I hope this helps!

(LifeofaMedStudent note: While some details are specific to the UK, this is great advice for any US medical applicant to read as well! The gap year can be a great asset if used productively.)

1. Do your research!

This is the most important point. My grades and admission test scores were average and sometimes just isn’t good enough for medicine. So during my gap year, I went through all the universities in the UK and screened myself against the entry requirements. I would cross off the ones that I don’t meet and keep the ones that I had the minimum for. From this, I would see how the university picks applicants for interviews. One university may just look at an applicant’s personal statement, and another may rank all students using admissions tests and pick the top 500 students for interviews.

This information can be hard to find sometimes. Not all universities are as transparent or detailed enough on their selection criteria for interviews. I would recommend that you email universities a freedom of information request. This is a UK act that entitles the public to access information from public authorities. I recommend https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ as they give you a reminder when the university should have replied to your request, and you can follow up on there. This is also a good way to get interview feedback from universities even if they claim that they don’t provide feedback.

Another thing I did was look for any foundation year courses. These courses have a foundation year at the beginning of the course and have lower entry requirements but usually required applicants to meet certain eligibility criteria. Each foundation course has different criteria to meet so check to make sure you are eligible. In addition, I looked for any widening participation scheme which lowered entry requirements for students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

After compiling all this information, I would see which universities I would most likely get into. Below I have put a screenshot of how the information should look like:

2. Get more medical experience

Now that you aren’t studying, you have a good opportunity to get more medical experience. I didn’t know any doctors, so I would email as many different hospitals as I could in my local area to get more shadowing experience. I was lucky enough to get two placements, both on neurology wards. During your experience keep a reflective diary so you can come back to it when you are writing your personal statement, it will make it so much easier to write!

Volunteering is also a great way to get healthcare experience. It probably won’t be as exciting as shadowing a doctor, but you will have hands-on experience with patients which might be as valuable. I volunteered once a week at an elderly care home which definitely boosted my application as I was able to talk about how my communication skills were vastly improved by talking with dementia patients

Also during my gap years, I worked as a healthcare assistant at a dialysis center. This was even better than shadowing experience because, firstly, I was getting paid and secondly, I had a lot more time to talk to patients on dialysis. From this, I had a wealth of experiences to mention in my personal statement and interviews.

3. Interview practice

For me, my biggest hurdle was the interview. I definitely underprepared for my interviews in my first 2 cycles and then perfected my technique in my third cycle.

The mistake I made was that I wasn’t doing the right kind of practice. I thought that if I covered absolutely every topic possible then I would 100% get an offer. Whilst, in theory, it makes sense, universities only ask about a few certain topics each and every time they interview students. So learning the ins and outs of ethical topics like abortion or euthanasia may be useful at some universities, others won’t even mention it.

The trick is to find as much information about the interviews as possible. How many stations are there, how long is each station, what topics are likely to come up? This information can be obtained with the freedom of information request.

With this information, I would suggest memorizing key bullet points for questions that are highly likely to come up such as why medicine, why not nursing? This is better than memorizing whole answers, as when you forget a portion of a whole answer under the interview pressure you can still continue your answer without panicking. Until your interviews, you need to be practicing as much as you can. By yourself, with family and friends or even record the answers and listen to them.

Some good advice I got was to treat each station independently and not let one station affect the rest. You don’t need a perfect score for an offer, and no-one expects you to give a perfect answer.

4. Relax!

Whilst your gap year should be busy with getting your application ready for med school, you should definitely relax and take time off as much as you can. It will be your last chance to have so much time off so you should capitalize on that as much as you can. Consider traveling with your friends to blow off some steam. I went to Italy for 10 days, and it really helped me unwind and relax.

That being said, it would be a good idea to save money where you can. It goes without saying that medical school is expensive, so you should try and learn to budget before university starts. You will thank yourself in the future!

Finally, I just want to say that you should try and stay positive as much as you can. It can be quite depressing to see all your friends go to university and it can feel isolating as you won’t be able to hang out with your friends. Just remember that this is a stepping stone on your journey to becoming a doctor. Taking two gap years was the best decision I could make. I was able to financially support my family, make some great friends at work and have savings to fall back on. I am now in a much more comfortable position starting med school now than 2 years ago.

Hamed Ali is a medical student in the UK. He can be reached (and encourages) any questions via his Instagram account: @hamed.h.ali.

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