MD/PhD Candidate @ Penn

Finding a Gap Year Job

Should I take a gap year(s)?

An increasing number of MD/PhD applicant are taking gap years. WashU’s historical admissions data indicates that a significant share of applicants and interviewees have >2000 research hours at the time of applicant, which is nearly one year of full-time work.

However, the majority of such research-heavy applicants have accrued their hours during gap years.

Here are the main benefits of taking gap years, especially for social-science applicants:

  • Accruing research hours.

Social science research is often not as “hours intensive” as basic science research, as work at the bench often necessitates waiting around for an experiment to run. Personally, over 80% of my hours came from research completed during my two gap years. Given this extra time to dedicate to research, I could focus on my coursework during college. Many of my fellow applicants had dedicated time to taking the MCAT during their gap years as well.

  • Figuring out whether you want a nearly full-time research career.

Doing research all day, every day is very different from doing research in college and balancing it with other priorities. Immersing yourself in research will help you discern whether you love research enough to spend a majority of your life dedicated to it. In other words, full-time research during gap years serves as a litmus test for whether you should pursue an MD/PhD. Personally, I’ve realized how much I love doing research over the past two years, and it’s helped me confirm that MD/PhD is right for me.

  • Honing research skills.

I work in a “dry lab” environment where I spend a lot of my time programming/writing code. My skills have improved significantly over the past two years to the point where I am confident that I can handle the empirical load of research in graduate school with no issues. Since my skills are already well-developed, I can hit the ground running in graduate school and spend more time focused on idea generation and scoping out ideas as opposed to working on my coding skills.

  • Giving yourself a mental break.

Pursuing an MD/PhD takes the better part of a decade, and the application process itself is grueling and takes another year in itself. Research time can give you a much-needed mental break and the space to handle applications on your own time, without school getting in the way. This was the largest unintended benefit of gap years I heard from fellow applicants and I wholly agree.

What should I do during my gap years?

One word: research. (Caveat: if you are lacking in clinical experience, you should try to find a volunteering/shadowing opportunity to engage with during your gap years as well.)

For students interested in health policy, I recommend pursuing an opportunity as a research assistant (RA) within a health policy center, lab, or academic department. If you’re more economics-inclined (like myself), one of the “classic” economics RA positions will work as well. Try to find a place where you’ll be able to relate the work you do/skills you learn to future work within healthcare——this was what I did with non-healthcare related projects, which most of my work at OEMA has been.

When I was searching for jobs, I was also offered positions in consulting. I ultimately opted for an RAship at an academic institution over consulting because it would help me get a better sense of the day-to-day of academic research, which is my intended end goal.

Some places where you can find positions (specific to health policy/economics):

Labs/Institutes:

Economics RAships: