What Makes a Medical Student Academic...

What Makes a Medical Student
Academic Demographics

In my first post about the constitution of a medical student, I talked about population demographics, looking at the biological side of a future professional. Here, I talk about the academic component.

First, let us take a look at the education level of medical students, which like the population demographics can vary from region to region, school to school. Correlating with the age of the majority of applicants, roughly three-quarters have Bachelors degrees. Given the scientific nature of medicine and the fact that many of the required courses are from stem sciences like biology and chemistry, most come from a Bachelor of Science. As I have often mentioned, it is quite possible to enter medicine through other avenues so long as all of the requirements are met. The bachelor of arts and others are proof of this.

The older the population, the more likely some higher levels of education are in place. Again, the most common Masters degrees are in science; Doctorates are less common.

Overall, a typical medical student has an average between 80 and 85 percent. While the marks will favour higher numbers, lesser averages are possible as well. In these cases, a student may have shown improvement during his or her application cycle or may have a well rounded application in other areas.

(The data used to plot the above charts came from my faculty’s admission statistics. As a matter of privacy and with respect to my faculty’s social media guidelines, I have refrained from naming my university)