Addressing Gap-Year Misconceptions in Pre-Health Advising: A Study of First Year Health Professional Students
Whenever the topic of gap years comes up in advising conversations at the Pre-Health Student Resource Center (PHSRC), students are often worried about how gap years look to health profession admissions committees. Will a gap year hurt their application? If they take a gap year, what are they going to do during that time? How will they stay motivated to continue their health professional journey? The health profession admissions process is nerve-wracking, and students are understandably concerned about all of the unknowns that a gap year, or gap years, can introduce into that process.
To help allay some of these fears, in 2025, the PHSRC decided to conduct a study of University of Minnesota first year health professional students’ gap year experiences. PHSRC staff members Zoe Marquis-Kelly and Dana Hegre Lovold, MPH designed and administered the survey, which asked both students who did and did not take a gap year to reflect on their gap year decision. Read on to learn about the results and how they incorporated their findings into their gap year messaging to students.
What prompted your interest in gap years as a research topic?
We noticed in our conversations with students that there was a disconnect between students’ assumptions about how a gap year would reflect on their application and what the available national data and UMN health profession admissions offices were telling us. Students were often worried that a gap year would hurt their application. However, this is not necessarily the case. For example, according to the Matriculating Student Questionnaire from the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), from 2023 to 2025, anywhere from 72 to 74% of the national incoming MD student class had taken at least one gap year. Another example: the average age of matriculation to PA school nationally during that same time period was 24. What this tells us is that there are a lot of students getting into these professions who have probably taken at least one gap year!
Additionally, when we reached out to UMN health profession program admissions committees, many expressed that taking a gap year in and of itself is not a positive or a negative sign - it depends on what a student does with their gap year. Susan Wold, Assistant Director of the Office of Admissions at the UMN School of Dentistry, told us that “Generally, applicants who are taking one or more gap years tend to have more professional experience.... This often leads to [more] competitive applications.”
Given this disconnect, we wanted to know how to better support pre-health students as they are navigating the gap year decision and planning process.
What was the goal of your study?
The goal of our study was to learn more about students’ experiences of gap years and the beginning of health professional school. Did students who either did or did not take a gap year regret their decision? Why did they make the decision that they did? For students who took a gap year(s), what did they do during that time? We hoped that by learning more about the student experience, we would be able to provide better information to current pre-health students as they are planning out their timeline to health professional school.
How did you conduct the study?
After the IRB approved our research proposal, we sent out a Qualtrics survey to first year University of Minnesota health profession students in the following programs, in all totaling 534 invited participants:
- Dentistry
- Medicine (M.D.)
- Master of Nursing
- Occupational Therapy
- Pharmacy
- Physical Therapy
- Veterinary Medicine
At the end of the survey, respondents were able to opt-in to be entered into a drawing for Visa gift cards, which we were hoping would increase our response rate. And although it’s hard to state cause and effect, we were pretty happy with the 35% of invitees that ended up filling out the survey!
What were some of your most interesting results?
There were so many, it’s hard to choose! But here are a few that are perhaps more relevant for current pre-health students and their advisers:
- Of the respondents, 69% took gap years
- Of students who took gap years:
- 95% indicated their gap year was a positive experience for them: they were able to gain clinical and professional experience and reaffirm their career decision.
- Students found application, professional association, and program websites valuable while planning and during their gap years, as well as test preparation and advising resources.
- Students wish that, when deciding to take a gap year and during their gap year, they had had more access to speak with current health professional students, including those who had taken gap years; normalization and education around gap years; and advising, application help and mentoring resources.
- Of students who did not take gap years:
- 91% were happy with their decision not to take a gap year.
- Many students made this decision at least partially based on their desires to 1) finish school and start serving patients and 2) to remember course work and keep up their study skills.
One big theme we came away with was that the decision to take or not to take a gap year is very personal! Every student has a variety of factors they may need to consider when making this decision, including academic, professional, financial, emotional, and familial. Ultimately, the best path to health professional school is the one that works best for the student.
How have you incorporated your findings into advising students at the Pre Health Student Resource Center?
We want students to be as informed as possible when deciding on their timeline to health professional school. Here are some steps we have taken to make sure this is the case.
- Implemented a more proactive approach when talking to students about gap years, including adding a gap year question to our appointment intake process
- Improved our gap year educational offerings: including an update to our gap year webpage and a pilot of a Gap Year Panel with UMN health professional students in Spring 2025
- Further developed our Pre-Health Action Plan Gap Year Assessment so that students can begin to self-assess whether a gap year(s) might be right for them