An additional year

[M20012002]

I'm considering taking a fifth year for my undergrad because there are several courses I wanted to take but didn't have any space for. Does the admission committee look down upon this?

Thanks!

[Ian Wong]

Best course of action would be to ask them.

As long as you weren't chronically taking a lighter workload throughout the four years of undergrad, you should be fine. I believe there are a number of med schools that check to see if students are taking a regular courseload each year, and take that into account. If you haven't been attending class full-time, the med school may start to think that you can't handle the time pressures of a med school curriculum. If you haven't there should be a good reason why (eg. sickness, jobs, taking care of dependants), rather than "well, I wanted to do well in my pre-reqs, so I'm only taking 3 courses a year..."

Ian
UBC, MS2