Episode 17 (.mp3) [ 9:08 ] Download (5368)

Joni Krapec joins us to discuss age factors when thinking about medicine as a career.

If you have questions for us, please send them to pritzkerquestions@gmail.com.

[Music: Stephen Asma - Check It]

Episode 17 Transcript

Ben Ferguson: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Pritzker Podcast. I am joined once again by Joni Krapec. Hey Joni.

Joni Krapec: Hey Ben. How are you?

BF: Good. We are doing these rapid-fire episodes and we’re going to continue right on with this one. We’ve got a very focused question from a listener who seems to be concerned potentially about his or her age. And the question I guess was, “What is or was the age of the oldest medical student ever admitted to Pritzker?” And then Joni, we talked about this a little bit earlier and you said you haven’t been necessarily working here for, you know, the entire time that Pritzker’s been open or even named Pritzker.

JK: Right.

BF: But if you know of any stories or if you’ve come across really old or, you know, atypically old medical school applicants or even young applicants. Do you have any thoughts on it?

JK: Sure. So in my lifetime at Pritzker, which has been about four years, so looking at kind of some recent history, some of the older pre-med students or medical students that we’ve ever admitted here in my recollection have been between about 38 and 40 years old. And that was typically one or maybe two students in each entering class. Our age, if you think kind of a bell curve and where the greatest concentration would be, kind of where the highest point in the curve is, is typically from about 23 to about 27 or 28. That’s typically kind of the entry age for Pritzker. And we are one of the schools that tends to have a slightly more nontraditional class compared to our peer institutions. So that’s something that’s just important to know. In terms of the youngest, we had a couple of students who have been really go-getters in college and many of whom skipped a couple of grades, went straight into college, or maybe got out of college a little early. So they’re starting medical school maybe at 20. A couple of occasions of 19. There was a student in recent history who was just a genius and started an MD/PhD program at the age of I believe 12 or 13.

BF: I think 12. Yeah.

JK: 12. And did the PhD first so the medical school side wasn’t coming until that student was a little bit older.

BF: Right.

JK: There is actually a great community for nontraditional students that is online. You can just Google “old premeds”. It’s an entire society. And from what I understand, they have message boards. They have conferences. They kind of do questions back and forth to each other thinking about what are the med schools that are kind of hospitable to older medical students.

BF: Wow.

JK: I’ve heard a couple of medical schools that have admitted people who are in their 50s. Tended to be osteopathic medical schools as opposed to the allopathic medical schools, but again that old premeds group is a great resource to kind of get some other feedback from people who have been through this as well.

BF: Well, not to deter people, but let’s just go through this. If you’re applying when you’re 40, you don’t graduate until you’re 44 at the youngest. And then you do at minimum a three years of residency. So you’re 47 or 48, pushing 50, by the time you’re actually starting to repay your loans. Do you have any sense of how successful these people are or how happy they are in medical school, or whether they think it’s a good idea?

JK: Yeah. I think the biggest thing to really consider for yourself and something that we look at from the committee standpoint, I’ve heard rumors about medical schools don’t want to take older applicants because they don’t have enough time in terms of a career trajectory as younger students do to go out there and make a big splash in the world of medicine.

BF: Right.

JK: That’s not really something that we worry ourselves about. What we think about is why is this person making this choice at this particular point in his or her life? How well formed is the decision? How much do they know about, just as you were talking about Ben, you know the overall timelines for medical school? What if you want to do a specialty that may take an additional four to seven years of training? Questions like that. We just want to make sure that the applicant themself is informed about it. And then also too with the overall financial cost of the medical school. Many of our students who take on loans while they’re in medical school have 30, 40 years to pay off those loans. And then that kind of puts our students into their mid 50s where they still have time to save for retirement after paying off all of those loans.

BF: Right.

JK: So, that might be something that’s certainly important to think about. But the myth that we worry about the kind of years that you have kind of in between your medical school and your entire medical career and whether or not you’ll grow to be a distinguished alumni of ours. We don’t really pay a whole lot of attention to that. We’re just looking to see why you want to be a doctor and making sure that you know what you’re kind of walking into.

BF: Well, what about during the application process? Do you have any sense of how successful older applicants are compared to younger students? I mean, I guess most people don’t graduate college and say they’re going to take some time off, maybe two or three decades to do research or go get a job or something. So imagine they don’t come by every so often or very often at all, but do you have any sense of how successful they are? And sort of what different things they bring into the table than younger applicant might?

JK: Sure. I think for the people who are knowing why they’re making this career change and who have done the exploration that is necessary, which we talked about in a previous podcast, about some of those experiences that admissions committees look for. I think those applicants can be very successful in the process and we certainly have seen that in our own process. What we’re obviously thinking about is how well formed is this decision? And also too, is this a person who will be able to relate to the rest of their classmates? Because you come in to medical schools say at 45, most of your classmates might be in the early 20s and I have talked with applicants before who kind of take a very dismissive tone towards that. You know, “Oh these kids…” or blah, blah, blah. And okay, that’s not necessarily somebody who I think is going to be able to be a positive contributor to their peers in the way that we expect every one of our students to be. So that’s something that we think about.

We’ve had applications from people who it’s kind of their lifelong dream to have been a doctor. They didn’t pursue it for whatever reason at a younger age and they really haven’t done anything with it in a significant period of time. They may have been out of school for decades and now they’re just kind of saying, “Well, I’m pretty much wrapping up my first career, I want to go back to medicine. Those applicants are not typically successful because they don’t have recent academic experience. We don’t see that there’s been this testing of whether or not medicine is truly the best fit.

BF: Right.

JK: Certainly, you know the biggest thing that nontraditional students can bring is a great deal of life experience and maturity. And again what we’re looking for with that, which is what we look for with all of our applicants is you’ve had these experiences and are you able to share those in a way that will benefit your classmates as well.

BF: Sure. Yeah. I mean I wouldn’t necessarily recommend medical school as an outlet to a midlife crisis.

JK: No.

BF: But if you got good reasons for it then by all means, come to Pritzker. There’s definitely a lot of older students here. And I’m getting up there myself. Well, thanks Joni. That was very helpful. I think that will be very helpful for all the older applicants that are applying to Pritzker.

JK: Sure, no problem.

BF: Take care.

JK: Thanks, you too.

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